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Dear Care and Feeding,
How do you gently set boundaries with relatives? My 8-year-old gets along well with her cousins from my husband’s side. In the last year or so, there have been more frequent trips and sleepovers. I was generally easygoing about the arrangement for a while. But now my child is old enough to be aware that different houses have different rules—and my household’s rules tend to be stricter.
She has come home being overly dramatic about any restrictions, complaining about our house and habits, talking back with attitudes, and being mean to her little brother. It usually takes a whole day or more to turn her back to the sweet girl I raised, and sometimes this has to be done with discipline. I am tired of it.
The thing is, when I want to enforce some boundaries that I think are appropriate (with my kids only) when everyone is together, my husband’s relatives sometimes dismiss me or can be patronizing. My husband is more like his family, so he doesn’t see it as much as I do, despite multiple private discussions. I do not want to overly restrict her play with the cousins, as they are really good kids. But I want to be more mindful when I let her have extended sleepovers at the relatives’ house.
Recently during an outing, a relative directly said he planned for her to stay over during the summer. I felt weird about it—the statement was not even phrased as a question to me. I had a chat with my husband and told him that I would prefer to have my daughter stay closer to me for the couple of weeks that she doesn’t have summer camp, and that she should use the time to prep for her next grade anyway. If this is brought up in front of me again, how do I phrase my feelings politely? I don’t want to hurt the future relationship, but I do want to let my husband’s relatives know I have the parenting rights as a mother, and they should not circumvent me, as though my husband is my children’s only parent.
—Boundary Time
Dear Boundary Time,
Whether you are sending your kid to her cousins’ house or a neighbor’s or even just to plain old school, they will come home with some new opinions about how their lives are set up. This age is just about when they really start to notice these differences between families, and to remember them, and to comment on them, and it can be very annoying and feel like your kid is being ungrateful by not recognizing that you have your rules for a reason. But I believe this would be happening whether or not you happened to have the in-laws you have.
The only sane response to this kind of display of 8-year-old aggrievement is to just keep on doing what you know is right, and try not to get too triggered by your kid whining about the other house having Eggos instead of homemade waffles, or letting the kids stay up until 10:00 instead of making them go to bed at 8:00, or whatever the difference is. No, your kid doesn’t know how good she has it, but I don’t think it’s fair to expect her to have that perspective yet. Your options are either to figure out how to act unfazed by this kind of petty complaining, to yell at your kid to keep her feelings inside and always act pleasant and grateful around you, or to keep your kid from hanging out with cousins/going over to neighbors’ houses/going to school. I don’t think the second or third options are healthy. You have your reasons for doing what you do in your parenting, and you have to have faith that in the long run, your kid will appreciate that you were setting up something good for them.
But this seems like only half of the question, here. This is actually a question about in-laws and whether or not they respect you—as a parent, or even as a person. I suspect your kid’s behavior wouldn’t be bothering you as much if you felt respected by your husband’s family. Your husband needs to be much more active in standing up for you—not “seeing it” as you do is not a good reason for him not to act and intervene on your behalf. If this is bothering you, it should bother him that you are bothered, and he should work with you on putting up a unified front.
—Rebecca
Link
How do you gently set boundaries with relatives? My 8-year-old gets along well with her cousins from my husband’s side. In the last year or so, there have been more frequent trips and sleepovers. I was generally easygoing about the arrangement for a while. But now my child is old enough to be aware that different houses have different rules—and my household’s rules tend to be stricter.
She has come home being overly dramatic about any restrictions, complaining about our house and habits, talking back with attitudes, and being mean to her little brother. It usually takes a whole day or more to turn her back to the sweet girl I raised, and sometimes this has to be done with discipline. I am tired of it.
The thing is, when I want to enforce some boundaries that I think are appropriate (with my kids only) when everyone is together, my husband’s relatives sometimes dismiss me or can be patronizing. My husband is more like his family, so he doesn’t see it as much as I do, despite multiple private discussions. I do not want to overly restrict her play with the cousins, as they are really good kids. But I want to be more mindful when I let her have extended sleepovers at the relatives’ house.
Recently during an outing, a relative directly said he planned for her to stay over during the summer. I felt weird about it—the statement was not even phrased as a question to me. I had a chat with my husband and told him that I would prefer to have my daughter stay closer to me for the couple of weeks that she doesn’t have summer camp, and that she should use the time to prep for her next grade anyway. If this is brought up in front of me again, how do I phrase my feelings politely? I don’t want to hurt the future relationship, but I do want to let my husband’s relatives know I have the parenting rights as a mother, and they should not circumvent me, as though my husband is my children’s only parent.
—Boundary Time
Dear Boundary Time,
Whether you are sending your kid to her cousins’ house or a neighbor’s or even just to plain old school, they will come home with some new opinions about how their lives are set up. This age is just about when they really start to notice these differences between families, and to remember them, and to comment on them, and it can be very annoying and feel like your kid is being ungrateful by not recognizing that you have your rules for a reason. But I believe this would be happening whether or not you happened to have the in-laws you have.
The only sane response to this kind of display of 8-year-old aggrievement is to just keep on doing what you know is right, and try not to get too triggered by your kid whining about the other house having Eggos instead of homemade waffles, or letting the kids stay up until 10:00 instead of making them go to bed at 8:00, or whatever the difference is. No, your kid doesn’t know how good she has it, but I don’t think it’s fair to expect her to have that perspective yet. Your options are either to figure out how to act unfazed by this kind of petty complaining, to yell at your kid to keep her feelings inside and always act pleasant and grateful around you, or to keep your kid from hanging out with cousins/going over to neighbors’ houses/going to school. I don’t think the second or third options are healthy. You have your reasons for doing what you do in your parenting, and you have to have faith that in the long run, your kid will appreciate that you were setting up something good for them.
But this seems like only half of the question, here. This is actually a question about in-laws and whether or not they respect you—as a parent, or even as a person. I suspect your kid’s behavior wouldn’t be bothering you as much if you felt respected by your husband’s family. Your husband needs to be much more active in standing up for you—not “seeing it” as you do is not a good reason for him not to act and intervene on your behalf. If this is bothering you, it should bother him that you are bothered, and he should work with you on putting up a unified front.
—Rebecca
Link
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