More mothers than you may think are in this exact same situation. Unfortunately, some husbands let their children disrespect their mother. If that is the case, action needs to be taken immediately.
It is easy to blame your husband at first. Yes, obviously he should not be allowing that behavior but in reality, your daughter is the one that disrespected you not your husband. There are many details to breakdown when deciding what to do next and we will walk you through a step-by-step guide for what to do when your husband lets your daughter disrespect you.
The specific of the situation is what will decide what kind of action to take. For example, if your daughter does not do this often and your husband just was not paying attention, your reaction should be very different than him allowing her to disrespect you is a regular occurrence.
You may feel annoyed or insulted that you’ve been disrespected but do your best to look at this in the most objective way possible. Looking at it from an objective position reduces the chance of your overreacting or causing a scene.
Why Your Husband Lets Your Daughter Disrespect You
The first step is finding out why your husband allows your daughter to treat her mother like that. This can be a hard answer to find if you don’t know how to look for it. There are a few possible answers but only you can find out which.
The first possibility is that your husband does not respect you. This is difficult for most women to hear but if your daughter is repeatedly disrespecting you right in front of your husband and he does not react at all, he may not respect you himself. The best way to find out if this is the case is to ask yourself if your husband is also being disrespectful towards you. The keyword is repeatedly.
If your husband does not respect you, how can you expect him to defend you when other disrespect you. Many women jump to this conclusion, especially when they are still frustrated with this situation. This is one possibility of many.
Another possibility is that he did not see the words of his daughter as disrespectful. Your husband may have a different level of tolerance of disrespect than you do. This is also heavily dependent on your daughter’s age. If your daughter or husband does not typically disrespect you then this is most likely the case. There are many different kinds of disrespect and people have a wide variety of meanings for the definition. What I find disrespectful will be different than what you find disrespectful which may be different than what your husband finds as disrespectful.
Here are the biggest questions to ask yourself when trying to find out the intentions of your daughter and whether or not your husband really allowed that behavior.
- Does my husband let my daughter disrespect me often?
- Does my husband disrespect me?
- Could I be misinterpreting what my daughter said?
Emotional Outburst
Many times disrespect follows an emotional outburst. When engaging in a heated conversation, people often say things they don’t really mean just for the purpose of winning the argument and being hurtful.
If this is the case, then you should be more understanding of the disrespect. Obviously, you still cannot allow this behavior towards you, but we have all said things we do not mean during the heat of the moment.
If after taking a closer look at what happened, you still believe that your daughter was being disrespectful and that your husband allowed it then you need to have a conversation with him.
Have a Conversation with Your Husband
The next step is to have a conversation with your husband first before speaking to your daughter. Make sure you are both on the same page. First, speak with him about what happened and if he feels like your daughter did indeed disrespect you.
He may give you a whole other perspective on the situation that you may have not even considered. Have an open mind. Sometimes we can misinterpret disrespect. I’ve told my mother she was putting on weight when I was 17 and she yelled at me, she considered it disrespectful. The way I said it may have been disrespectful but the statement itself was not.
The point is by speaking with your husband you get an extra set of eyes on the situation and he can tell you if you are being unreasonable. Next, both you and your husband are going to speak to your daughter. Before you do this, you need to make sure that you are both on the same page. By providing a united front it is less likely that this behavior will be repeated.
Because your husband “let” her disrespect you, she may have the idea that what she did was okay, when in reality, it’s far from. By approaching her with your husband she is getting a unifying message that this kind of behavior is not okay.
If your husband does not see the situation as severely as you do, you may want to first consider his point of view. Are you over reacting?
Speak to your Daughter
After you and your husband get on the same page, the next step is to speak to your daughter. If you truly believe you have been disrespected, this is not something that will just go away. Give children an inch and they will go a mile. Meaning if this is not addressed, you could potentially be inviting future disrespect.
Sit her down with your husband and go over the situation in detail. Go over why you believe it was disrespect and how that kind of behavior will not be tolerated in this home. Allow your husband to say a few words. Then LISTEN.
After you have said your peace and your husband has said what he needs to, hear her out. For all we know, her intentions could have been completely different than what you understood. Back when I was 17 and told my mother she needs to lose weight. She had a conversation with me about it later. She explained to me in detail that she felt that I had disrespected her in front of other family members.
I explained to her that it was not out of malicious intent but rather I was genuinely concerned about her health. We came to the agreement that I was right to bring it up to her, but the time and place as not suitable for it.
The goal of this conversation is to come to an amicable resolution.
Punishment should only be applied if you and your husband are both 100% confident that she disrespected you on purpose. If it was an emotional outburst during a heated argument, an apology is typically a sufficient punishment.
Final Thoughts
Many parents take it personally when they feel like they have been disrespected by the children. You feel like you put in so much effort in caring for them and in return, you get met by disrespect. It is even worse when your husband lets your daughter do this action.
No mother should be going through that and it needs a topic that is discussed if it is happening in your household. As a mother, you should always try to de-escalate a situation no matter what it is so your first goal is to understand why she acted that way towards you. You also need to take note of the frequency the disrespect happens. This will give you a clear understanding of your daughter is doing it occasionally or constantly.
In this case, if your husband is not stepping in to educate the daughter about respect, you should have a talk with him about how you feel. Let him know that him not stepping in only giver her more freedom to disrespect others. If both parents are involved in fixing a bad habit of one of their children, the child will know that it is more serious.
Talking with her about the way she disrespected you brings awareness to the situation and it shows that you are concerned about the behavior. Let her explain why she disrespected you hear what she is saying because she could have had a bad day and unintentionally took it out on you. The key to getting your husband to help out is to have him sit with you during the talk. This will also bring awareness to him that this should be taken as a big deal and not lightly.
If you are a mother going through this situation, understand that it will take time and effort to fix this situation and get the respect that you deserve. Don’t give up in trying to change your daughters attitude because the older she gets, the more disrespect can spew out and that is the last thing you want as a parent.