BPD husband raging at kids

[Lakebreeze]

I have gotten so much help and insight from the info here, so first off a huge thank you for the help. My question is how I should handle the situation when my husband is disciplining our children ( ages 5,4,4 and 1). He is always in a very emotionally reactive (?) If the kids have misbehaved. So if he was just raging at me I would aim at keeping myself calm and trying to ride it out. So my question... .what should my response be to him kicking the 4 year old s chair to get her attention or picking the chair up and dumping her off of it. Or telling her repeatedly that she is "such a baby" over and over untill she is crying. Is the chair incident physical abuse? He has always insisted that he is never physically abusive. I guess I'm just so unsure here and I really want to protect my kids from his behavior. Thanks

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[babyoctopus]

Hi.
Yes its definitely abuse. Those are really tiny kids. They shouldn't be yelled at and ridiculed until they cry.
Please get help for yourself so you can protect your children - read up as much as you can.
I stayed 23 yrs + in a marriage where raging husband emotionally abused me then started in on the kids. I wish I'd have left earlier believe me.
Good luck.

[isilme]

Yes, this is abusive.  As the adult he is supposed to have the emotional maturity to realize a 4-5-year-old is limited in how they can understand and respond to things.  Children ill make messes, they will make noise, they will act up and be disobedient at times.  This is all part of normal human development, and of them building blocks to become the individuals they will grow into.  They have to test waters, they have to do things that are new to them, they have to have attention to feel loved (and stave off their own potential for BPD themselves), and have some security in which to make these growing errors. 

My father, today when I am 40, is still the boogieman to me because he acted like this, and from as far back as I can remember, about age 2-3 based on what house we lived in, would pick me up by the arms and shake me till I had horrible bruises on them.  He would use a belt on my backside when he was really angry and left marks down my legs and up my back.  I CANNOT today see how you could get that mad at a child.  And then succumb to that violence not once, but multiple times.  When he was finally put into therapy, I think by his superiors in the military ( I think my bruises were seen even though I tried to keep them covered), he still acted out.  At 10 he picked me up by my hair and threw me against a brick fireplace.  At 15, I had to intervene to stop him from strangling mom, who has her own bag of crazy, but seriously, had I not been there, I think a murder-suicide would have happened.  At 17, he decided I was driving too slow on the freeway and started hitting me to make me drive like he does.

You need to set a boundary of making him leave the house or you plan ahead of time ways for you to grab them all and walk out for a bit.  Discipline is fine - abuse is not.  Even today, I am not 100% adverse to spanking... .but there have to be rules set in place BEFORE the child misbehaves, and BEFORE the adult reacts.  No belts.  No paddles.  If it hurts your hand, stop.  Lying is 2 spanks.  Talking back is one spank.  And only after several timeouts have failed, etc.  If you have rules BEFORE, then it's a lot easier to say, "you're getting too angry, stop, you've gone beyond the rules."