Ask Amy: Grandma doesn't believe infant care best practices have changed since 1983, mad about it

[lemonsharks]

DEAR AMY: I’m 36 years old and have recently had my first and (most likely) only baby.

My baby means the world to me. For now, we’ve opted to have his daddy take a year off of work to take care of our little dude.

My mother-in-law is complaining that my husband isn’t “sharing” our son with her. She seems to think she can send us away from our own son so that she can have her alone time with him, but several times when we’ve actually needed someone to watch the little man, she hasn’t been available.

She even went so far as to say she’d forward us her schedule each week so we can coordinate, based on what’s convenient for her. Amy, she’s retired!

We don’t need someone to watch him routinely; after all, my husband is home with him.

When we do have her watch him, she refuses to put him on his back alone in a crib to sleep, and the in-laws have a lot of inappropriate ideas about feeding. They seem to completely ignore the fact that I’m breast-feeding him. Due to my career in health care, safety is a top concern of mine.

I can’t have her babysit him if she refuses to be safe. We tried politely asking her not to hold him while he naps, and she hasn’t spoken to us since.

I don’t want to keep my son away from his grandmother, but she refuses to respect our wishes. Plus, she won’t take him when we need her to, nor does she include us as a family in her otherwise busy plans. I’m hurt that she only wants my son and doesn’t seem to want to have anything to do with us.

DEAR MAMA: Your letter reminds me of the old joke about a restaurant: “The food was terrible, and in such small portions!”

My point is that when it comes to unpaid babysitting, you take it (more or less) under the conditions it is offered, or you don’t take it.

Conversely, if your in-laws don’t respect your non-negotiables, they won’t be babysitting your child. Your standards seem on the rigid side (to me), but it is your right to establish them and expect them to be respected.

However, you don’t get to cast your mother-in-law as disrespectful and/or incompetent — and then complain that she is not available on your schedule. (Retired people have lives too, by the way.)

It seems that you and she are locked in a power struggle. If your mother-in-law wants access to your child, she will have to adjust to your parenting style. One of your gripes is that you want to be included (as a family) in her life, but you don’t seem to have invited and included her, or provided much of an incentive for her to want to spend time with the adults.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/08/01/ask-amy-new-parents-are-locked-in-power-struggle-with-in-laws/

Comments

[lemonsharks]

My take:

Amy, no. No, Amy, no.

[cereta]

Pretty much, yeah.

[cadenzamuse]

THIS.

[laurajv]

is amy capable of good advice? ever? not that i’ve seen!

[cereta]

What's really scary is that she's gotten better over the last five years or so.

[sporky_rat]

Oh no, Amy, no.

Oh honey, no. Seriously, no.

[movingfinger]

So many red signals here. I hope the OP ignores Amy's crap "advice" and sticks to her guns. I would not leave a baby with that MIL.

Anything "free" usually has a price---just not cash.

[laurajv]

my spouse says “the cheapest way to pay is money” alllll the time. and it’s true.

[tielan]

I feel like Amy is more MIL than LW, which...I'm having a serious problem with the MIL. And a serious problem with Amy's reply.

Retired doesn't mean they're absolutely free - my mother has been five years retired and is social and activist and busy, but I think the schedules of a set of new parents beat out the schedule of a retiree at least every once in a while. Giving the kids a schedule so they can fit their life in with hers when they have a baby is a big problem.

Unfortunately, it looks like the option is to pull back from the MIL and when she complains, simply point out that she won't follow the requirements for looking after LW's child, and that the times they asked her to look after her grandchild, she refused to do so. I would advise LW against complaining that it's not at their convenience; just say "when we asked, you said no" - they are the parents, they are offering the MIL the chance to bond with her grandchild; they are not obligated to foster the bond just because the MIL wants it.

[cahn]

I must be missing something, but (as someone who has gone through similar things with my own mom) this seems mostly reasonable to me?

If your mother-in-law wants access to your child, she will have to adjust to your parenting style.

Well, yeah. I mean, this right here.

I don't like or agree with the "power struggle" thing -- the parent should have all the power here, and rightfully so -- and Amy is more kind to the MIL than I would be, but on the other hand I do think the mom is sort of obnoxious for not considering the MIL has a schedule because she's retired. It sounds like a great solution to me -- I didn't want to keep asking and being told someone was unavailable; it's much easier for me to just look at a schedule and see whether someone is.

...The mom is burying the lede, it feels like to me. She complains about everything about the MIL and her schedule and then only at the end about how MIL is super unsafe, which... whaaa?

[rosefox]

"She refuses to put him on his back alone to sleep" is the safety issue, I think, but there's nothing inherently unsafe about an infant sleeping while held by an adult, as long as the adult is also awake, so I'm really confused.

"They seem to completely ignore the fact that I’m breast-feeding him" so they... feed him formula instead of the pumped breast milk you provide? Give him solid food way before he's ready for it? This letter is really remarkably vague about what the actual childcare issue is.

However, "she... doesn’t seem to want to have anything to do with us" sounds quite hurtful and like it's probably the core issue here.

[shirou]

I'm with you; Amy's response is pretty reasonable.

[fox]

Yes, I agree.

[xenacryst]

If I were Amy, I'd be tempted to write back and say, "Please try again and tell me what the actual issue is, because what I see here is a garbled mess of hurt." Yeah, MIL sounds like a bit of a piece, but LW is also not being level with us here. I bet if we dug further there'd be more to this than babysitting.

[minoanmiss]

... I am pretty sure I have not killed any of the babies I held while they slept, but whatever, parents call the shots.

[cereta]

Yeah, I held my daughter through most of her naps for years.

[ashbet]

I kind of wonder if she means that MIL is holding the baby in bed or on the couch and ALSO napping (i.e., co-sleeping), and the LW is saying it unclearly.

(Don’t want to get into a co-sleeping debate, I did it with my own kid 26 years ago, but recommendations have changed since then, and I’m OK with LW calling the shots on what she’s comfortable with.)

I agree, though, that “not safe” and “won’t babysit when we need it” doesn’t quite gel, and I have a feeling there is a lot of history unspoken in this situation!

[conuly]

It is so not clear what percentage of this is actual MIL won't follow best practices and gets huffy at being asked to do so and what percentage of this is first time parent syndrome.

[eleanorjane]

Yeah, that's my thought too. I am not particularly sympathetic to LW on the basis of her letter, I will admit.

[euphrosyna]

I have lots of sympathy with this because my MIL is the same way. She wants to help, and keeps offering it. But she’s unwilling to provide the help that we need, and is never free when we need it. She wants us to go out and leave the baby with her, which I’m not comfortable to do for safety reasons. But sometimes it would be helpful to have an extra pair of hands (eg I’m pregnant again and was very sick, and asked her could she help feed my 18 month old because looking at food was hard for me, or when he was little and I was stuck under him breastfeeding I wanted just some company or someone to make me a cuppa) but she’s never available for that. Even if I say along the lines of “if you’re free at any point this week at toddler’s dinner / lunch time”. I get that she’s got her own life too and I’m delighted she has but I do feel like she wants to help in the specific way she wants and not in the ways that would actually be helpful. I dunno am I putting too much of my own experience on the LW but I can see how it can be tough.

[lemonsharks]

That was exactly the read I got on the letter, which was why I posted it.

[ayebydan]

I agreed that grandparent should follow the wants of the parent in regards to how the child is looked after.

I do not agree that grandparents, in general, have any sort of responsibility to be there at the whim of their children. Expect no help from grandparents unless previously agreed before you get pregnant and then any help you do get is wonderful. The woman has taken the time to hand over her life schedule to show when she IS available. What if she wasn't retired? LW would not be able to make her change her work pattern. I think Amy did pretty well.