What the hell do we do? HELP PLEASE

Okay, I need to vent.

Little backstory... I’m 28, married with three kids, two girls age 6 and 2 and a boy, 4. Our kids aren’t the best behaved, especially at home. The two oldest fight all the time, and the oldest and youngest as well. The 4 year old and 2 year old together are best friends.

Usually when we need to discipline it’s pretty straight forward: for complaining, yelling, fussing, saying no, talking back, etc. we do one warning then if it continues it’s timeout for 3-5 minutes (or until they stop crying because they usually do). When they hit/injure another it’s straight to timeout no warning, and for bigger incidents we sent them to their room to calm down. Works pretty well for us. Okay. This bring us to yesterday...

I was alone with the two girls while my husband was at soccer practice with our son. As I states, the girls don’t really get along so I tried to find something that they both enjoy that we could do. We decided on colouring books and crayons.

They were sitting next to eachother and I was sitting besides the oldest one. I was drinking a glass of water and my 6 year old asked for a sip so I let her and then my 2 year old wanted one too but when she reached for the glass, she knocked it over and it spilled all over the 6 year old’s drawing.

She screamed her name and pushed the 2 year old on the floor. The two year old starts crying of course, and there’s water everywhere. Instead of sending the 6 year old to timeout, I sent her straight to her room. I made sure my 2 year old was okay and cleaned out the mess.

Then my husband comes home with our son and tells me that their team lost so he’s upset, suggests that we all go out for ice cream to cheer him up. I explained to him what happened and that I didn’t feel like our 6 year old deserves it. He suggests that we bring her but don’t get her one at first but still get her one after the other kids finish. We agree to it.

We call her down and she’s visibly still upset. We explain to her that what she did was wrong and she needs to apologize. We then get in the car, all three of them now are starting to get in a bad mood...

We get there, my husband gets the ice cream while I’m sitting with the kids. When he comes back, the six year old throws a fit like we expected, starts to cry and tells us “you don’t love me!” and I’m starting to feel really guilty so I explain to her that we only did that to show her that bad behaviours have consequences and then I take her to get the ice cream but they are literally closing. I check the time, we came in 15 minutes before closing time and we had no idea (it was 7 pm).

Then my daughter loses it completely. She runs away towards the parking lot and my husband runs after her. She manages to get almost to the road and was about to cross when a car comes, I’m literally having a panic attack but then my husband catches her. We get in the car and drive back home in almost complete silence.

When we get home, we get the youngest ones ready for bed pretty quickly then look at eachother... what do we do? Do we talk to her, do we just put her to bed? We decided to just let her know that we both love her very very much and that if there’s something wrong she can always count on us. She falls asleep soon after that. Then my husband says the dreaded “I think we need to talk...” So we both go downstairs and he says that he feels that I can’t discipline the kids correctly, that it was just a push, I should just have put her in time out, none of that would have happened if I didn’t do that, that it was stupid to not get her an ice cream because of that and told me that I shouldn’t be left alone with kids if I didn’t know how to handle them...

I was in tears. He knows damn well that I do my best and that the girls always fight and to just have that thrown in my face really was heartbreaking. We agreed on the discipline method, we agreed on taking our daughter out so why is it my fault? I don’t feel like I overreacting by sending her to her room but maybe I did?

I love him. We’re supposed to be a team, to work together, not against each other and I feel betrayed.

I got up and told him he could sleep on the couch. I went upstairs to the bedroom and locked the door. I cried all night. I think I fell asleep at maybe 5:30 am. When I got up at 7 to get ready for work and get the kids up he was gone. No note, no text message, nothing.

I got the kids up and ready and told them daddy was still sleeping. I took all three kids with me to my mom’s and we stayed there. I didn’t want them at daycare or at school in case he picked them up. Now it’s the evening and he still hasn’t called me or anything. What the hell should we do? I know I can’t keep the kids away from him. Should I just go home? Someone help me! I feel so lost...