05/30/2026
TLDR - Wife is lashing out at the kids when she is tired, i want to help
My wife has always been grumpy when she is tired, but its increased a lot of late and she's started lashing out at the kids.
We've been married 5 years, together for 8, we have a 4 and a 2 year old. I work full time, she works 3 days. She has one child on one of the days she isn't working. When the kids were babies we had much less sleep then we get now, but it wasn't an issue then.
We put one kid to bed each night, and usually rotate. the eldest sleeps in his room, the youngest in bed with us. I'm the one who gets up in the night if the eldest wakes, which he does fairly frequently. The youngest who sleeps in our bed wakes less often, when he wakes it's usually a pat while still laying down to help him bakc to sleep.
She's great mother all the rest of the time, but the past month her mood when tired has extended to the whole day, and its leading her to treat our children inappropriately. Yesterday she screamed at our 4 year old for not getting ready to go to kinder, which lead to him becoming an emotional mess for which i had to hold him and help him calm down (my son likely has ADHD or a mild case of autism and can be a handful, but not unreasonably so for a 4 year old), when it happened i intercepted and helped calm him down, but the same thing happened right as she was about to drop him off and he ended up so worked up she actually couldn't drop him off. That night when she was reading books he was having a tantrum because he wanted a different book mid book and she ended up pushing him off the bed and yelling at him, when i came in he seemed to hyperventilating from the incident and i had to tell her to go away while i calmed him again. She broke down crying upset from seeing her behaviour, but again tonight i heard her snapping with a snarl at our four year old while i was putting the two year old to sleep.
I spoke to her about it today, trying to be objective and jsut say that behaviour isn't fair for the kids, she agrees. That said i've found in similar situations with other issues her agreeing she needs to change something doesn't actually lead to her changing anything. she just seems to get stuck
I need to work out how i can help her fix this, because its going to have a lasting negitive impact on our children if this continues to happen. I'm caught up in anger myself but i know this isn't useful so i'm trying just to be constructive about how i can help her and make sure everyone in my house has a positive experience.
The chores are fairly split - many things are 50/50, i do 100% of the dishes, she does 100% of the laundy, she cooks a bit more than me. I deal with 100% of house and financial admin. She has an hour of spare time most nights, i end up with two, but thats because i'm trading sleep for more alone time. I know we're in the thick of it with young kids and I've made a point to literally never say no to giving her a night off to go have fun and actively push her to make plans with friends. She went camping with a friend recently, she's going out for dinner with friends tomorrow. Last year she went on an overseas holiday while i looked after both kids for 9 days.
I just don't know what i'm meant to do to help her? She's getting 10-11 hours in bed, i'm minimising the interuptions to her sleep, she isn't drowning in chores, she's able to spend social time away from the kids. What else are you meant to do to help someone have better control of their emotions when they are tired?