A quick overview of the scenario: A friend of ours was being sent on a short term deployment (military related) for roughly 2 months. This was a short term notice situation, as in she got the call Friday night that she was being put on a team catching a flight Monday morning before dawn. Dad’s not in the picture, so she turned to my wife and I. Her son, about 2 1/2, has always latched on to me, to the point he would fight his mom to stay in my arms when I would hold him. He just clicked with me like that and I’ve done on and off babysitting as time permitted or to let her and my wife do things together. So she came to us and we accepted the responsibility short notice.Our current situation has my wife working full time, and me in the midst of mandatory OT at my job, 6 10 hour days every week since September that will tentatively end at the beginning of December. Mom will be back mid-December as it stands as well. We don’t have any of our own kids yet, so babysitting has been our only experience before diving into this.With that long set up out of the way, I’m looking for advice to help my wife. I’m out the house before they get up and I get home well after both of them. Luckily, day care is covered and close to her job, so she hasn’t had to change up too much there, but he makes morning and afternoons really difficult for her. He cries and whines as a constant some days, and it seems to be worsening. When I get home, he wants to latch on to me, and I try giving my wife breathing room to compensate when I’m not around.He responded well to a schedule at first, but especially regarding sleep, he’s becoming more resistant. We are in a one bedroom apartment, so we set his bed up at the foot of ours. He was used to sleeping with his mom, and we let him in our bed the first night, but that was a never again experience. (It’s almost impressive to me that he was managing to spin at 15 sec intervals while actually unconscious 5 hours in to bed time... and I desperately needed that sleep.) I want to lay him to bed and leave instead of staying in the room, and it seemed to work at first. His crying went from boo-hooing to death shrieks as of the last couple days.I don’t spank him, but while he screams bloody murder I get flash backs of my own dad going berserk with a belt, and it reinforces my decision not to. If I stop him and engage with him with words, it’s like flipping on and off a light switch. I try to use the neutral/firm voice for discipline (I’m discovering how big I am on not doing anything to a child out of anger), and it works, but it means he has me back in the room and is keeping my attention. He can’t speak well enough for me to understand more than a here or there word at best.My wife is struggling to deal with this on an emotional level the way I am on a physical level (not 30 yet but went to the doctor the past week with a bp of 167/128 from stress, dehydration, and lack of sleep). She feels like she can’t handle the constance of the crying, it makes her question if she wants to have kids of her own (we are trying to make that happen now, so this is a huge red flag for me). She’s disconnected from me because of my work demand taking me to bed about the same time we manage to get the boy to sleep. She is feeling the child like an anchor to her mental and emotional energy. I am trying to take him off her hands more to get her some decompression time, but it won’t be enough to fix us missing each other as a separate issue.TL/DR: no kids of our own, but took in a 2 y/o wrecking ball short term. My wife isn’t handling well and I want to know how best I can help her. via /r/Parenting https://ift.tt/2QCRbvd
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