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Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here or post it in the Slate Parenting Facebook group.
Dear Care and Feeding,
How much input should my mother-in-law have about what happens at her house in relation to my child? I have an 18-month-old, and my mother-in-law is a doting grandmother. However, she seems to have no respect for our parenting decisions, and flagrantly disregards them. Recently, we went as a family over to grandma’s house. Right after we got there, it came up in conversation that we still aren’t letting her watch TV. We are holding off as long as we can, partly because we don’t trust ourselves to be able to regulate it once it starts. Immediately my MIL began saying that things like Sesame Street are OK because they’re educational. I replied and said that yes, I understand that, but we’re not doing TV right now. After dinner she was in the living room playing with my daughter, and I heard the TV going. My husband rolled his eyes and said that they were watching Sesame Street together. I was livid, as we had just discussed our feelings on TV and she had gone ahead and turned it on anyway.
There are other things—like we don’t let my daughter have very much sugar. We don’t see the point in feeding her a bunch of sugar when her favorite foods are green beans and bananas. She’s still so young, and it seems unnecessary for me. When we’re at my MIL’s house, she gets so upset that we don’t feed her sugar (putting out cookies and things that wouldn’t normally be put out, just because she wants to give them to my daughter), at one point she told me “one bite won’t hurt” and went to feed her anyway, until my husband sharply told her that was not OK. I totally understand wanting a special relationship with her granddaughter, and I also understand that sometimes rules are bent at a grandparent’s house. However, it seems unnecessary to be doing this stuff with an 18-month-old. What was the point of watching Sesame Street when we were only over there for a few hours? It seems as if she’s doing it just to prove that she’s in charge. If our daughter were older, and understood that rules are different at a grandparents, that would make more sense to me.
I also worry that her constant disregard of our ground rules is going to undermine our relationship with our daughter as she gets older. My husband is supportive of me, but struggles with setting boundaries with his mom. I’ve asked him to have conversations with her, and he did discuss the recent TV thing, but he never brought up the larger picture of her disrespect for our parenting styles, only that specific instance. Honestly, I don’t even feel like my daughter’s mother when I am with my mother-in-law, she’s constantly telling me what I should be doing, and has never shown any interest in how our family has come to the decisions (evidence-based research) on how to raise my daughter.
Am I overreacting? No one example is that terrible, I don’t think. It’s the constant undermining of my husband’s and my decisions that frustrates me. But should it just be anything goes at Grandma’s house?
—Disrespected Daughter-in-Law
Dear Disrespected,
Ah, mothers-in-law—don’t you just love ’em?
The short answer is you are always 100 percent in charge of how you choose to raise your daughter—especially when you’re present—regardless of where she happens to be. For example, if she happens to be at school, then the teachers get to call the shots, but you can still share with the teacher what you want for her.
Link: slate.com
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