I have a 1 year old baby, and we live very close to my in laws, so we see them everyday, and many times we even have lunch or dinner together
one thing that drives me crazy about them, especially my MIL is that she doesn’t respect our way of raising our baby, she keeps making fun of us because we read books about babies and says that we are raising a baby acording to a book and whenever we say something she says “is that what the book says?!!!!” sarcastically which is very annoying and now that my baby can eat almost anything we give her many healthy organic food, we made it clear my husband and I that we don’t want to give our baby sweets, and I told that to my MIL and asked her to give only healthy food no cakes no sweets nothing
but a few days ago, I caught her giving my baby a cake and she said “will it’s just a small piece!!” that drove me crazy!!!!
I like her, and she is a nice person but she thinks that she knows better than us the way to raise babies, she keeps saying that she had 4 kids. I know that, everyone keeps telling us that, I know she knows more than we do and she has the experience but why cant we have our own way?!!
what can I do to make it clear that it is not about her, how can I make her respect our way of doing this? without hurting fer feeling?
now I can’t trust her with my baby, I can’t leave him with her. because I don’t know what other things she does when I am not around and I want to have a full control over what is happening with my baby. and i feel bad about that
please advise me
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Advice
7 Responses to “MIL and my baby–need advice please”
OUR house, OUR baby, OUR rules. You will just have to keep repeating this to your MIL. As far as leaving the baby alone with her, that is out of the question. I am in the same situation. These people do not change. They continue to meddle. Just ignore the comments, and act like you don’t care.
Hey, guess what…this is YOUR baby. Your chance to make the rules, to experience every first, your chance to feel good about the parenting decisions you make. I would politely write her a letter explaining that you need her to stop the jokes, sarcastic comments, etc. She had the chance to raise 4 kids on her own terms. Her chance is over now. Let me tell you something else-if you don’t keep all visits with her supervised, the toxicity will only get worse. She will say negative things about you when the child is old enough to understand, undermine your authority, etc. A relative is going through this exact scenario with my MIL right now. She did this kind of stuff when the kids were young. As they got older, it got worse. Now my MIL buys the girls cell phones to replace the one their parents got them if the parents try and use the cell phone as punishment. Gives them money if the parents take away allowances as punishment. Buys them gifts that parents say are too extravagant for children to have. Get control now and keep it. You are the mother. It’s much easier to get the snake out of the house at a young age and keep it that way.
I had the same trouble when my daughter was a baby (she is now 4). I followed a book with fixed routines, etc and was accused of stopping them seeing her when it was her nap time during the day and also had to endure the sarcastic comments about text-books. But get this….when my sister in law got pregnant with her first, my mother in law bought her the very same book, much to my surprise! She never told me this to my face, she only told my husband. So, console yourself with the fact that your mother in law is probably just jealous that you are doing such a great job! Our relationship has never improved since then – the best way to deal with mothers in law like this (passive aggressive I would call mine) is to keep them at arms length if you can.
MIL: “…..but I raised four kids….”
You: “Wow! You did such a good job!!! Your work is done.”
I know what it’s like to have bad inlaws, really, really bad inlaws–but in this case, I think you are sweating something really small–there is a small clause somewhere that says grandparents get to do a certain amount of spoiling. We have rules in our house, which are our house rules, there are different rules when they go to Grandma’s house. A little piece of cake isn’t going to kill your baby, don’t let it kill your relationship with your inlaws.
I’ll add that in a perfect world it would be nice if she saw things and did things exactly the way you want them, but the world isn’t perfect, we all have to bend a little to get along.
Love, love, LOVE what Kirsten said!!!
I have a question…
We usually don’t have any problems with my mother-in-law…but just recently she came over to a party I had at my mom’s house, which I’m currently living at. Anyways, instead of telling me face to face, she emailed me a letter, saying that she had noticed something dangerous in my mom’s backyard. It was this agave plant, this cactus like plant, anyways, its located east end of her yard, and my son is 2 years old, and although he does play out there, he is well supervised. She mentioned how she has some plants of her own, and instructed her husband to remove them because she couldn’t live with herself if something happened to her grandchld.
Okay everything sounds fine and dandy, except for the fact that she never mentioned it when she was here, and I clearly remember a specific incident, while we left for vacation we left my son with her, in her home she has a sewing machine, and she had this in the living room, along with this thing which holds the needles, available for my son to get hurt. Anyways, I assumed she would handle that, or watch him, but before we left, I simply stated, that I thought it was dangerous, but she quickly said. “Oh don’t worry, I watch him carefully, and plus he knows not to get near that.” WOW, HOW IRONIC. almost same scenario, but she does have the odacity, to email me about what my parents should do. Does anyone see this wrong. I also have a question, my son is getting into the stage where he knows the word NO..and everytime he goes and spends the weekend with her and his grandpa, she brings him back with a new toy, and he doesn’t come back too spoiled, but whenever i mention to her that he was being a brat and that i have to scold him, she tells me that while in her care, there are no rules, I GET THE WHOLE GRANDMA THING, AND WHATEVER, but when he gets raised like this , isn’t it the same when two parents divorce, some rules at dad’s and some rules with mom, isn’t that NOT SUCH A GOOD THING. I would love to me more consistent. She has told me that she doesn’t scold him at all, because in her eyes he doesn’t do anything wrong, and that she lets him do whatever he wants. When he’s at home, he follows my rules, and sometimes he doesn’t. CAN THAT NEGATIVELY AFFECT MY BABY, CAN THINGS GET WORSE. I know that ultimately I care more about my son, than I do her feelings. What good does it do if a grandma gets her way, while the mother gets headaches, whats fair about that.???