I'm writing this because I do not know where else to turn and it's my hope that someone else has dealt with this.DH is NOT handling son's speech delay very well at all. He was in denial for a long time. He believes I completely opened a can of worms by calling the state for an evaluation. He was on board with it at the time but now 6 weeks later, he feels like everything was fine and we just needed to give him more time. He believes I "forced" him into getting our son the help he needs. He is outraged at the cost of services which will be approx 800/month. He is very, VERY mad at me. He says I have stolen all of the joy out of being a father because now he feels like he needs to be a drill sergeant with my son at all times.
I am at my wit's end. I love him very much but he just doesn't handle stress very well. I do not know how to help him. My only concern has been for my son and his well-being. Maybe I'm failing as a wife but I cannot manage his expectations/disappointment as well as my own. Any guidance on how to help him or me would be greatly appreciated. (p.s. I suggested we needed some counseling and he laughed at me and said "So let's spend more money on 'therapy' to have people tell us how we should be acting")
Re: Strain on marriage
DH would blame me from time to time for DS's special needs. It was not helping especially when MIL was around to also blame us for being bad parents. Both DH and MIL had so much negativity about everything. During this, I continued on to make sure DS had the therapies he needed. I had to do a lot of the leg work to make it to PT when DS was 1 alone.
We had to cut MIL out of the picture recently because she was getting into our marriage and the negativity was too much for us. Then recently I had to get DH involved by getting him to take DS to his therapy appointments because I could not make it because I had to work and DH was not working. Then I got DH involved in the 3rd evaluation we had to do for DS. Now I am trying to bridge the gap so DH can communicate with our ABA therapist to involve him more.
All of this took time to get DH on board. It looks like the past 3 years to get to a teamwork position to advocate for DS.
BFP#2 2.5.11 (EDD 10.15.11) DS born 9.28.11
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~All AL'ers welcome~
Good luck with starting this journey--this board is a great source of support and info.
That's great. Glad you had a productive talk. My best marriage advice to someone who has been on this journey a bit longer is keep the lines of communication open, compromise, try not to criticize the way dh does things even if its not necessarily what the therapists would recommend, and make time alone without kids.