The Grandparent Files: Trust No-one

It’s a sad sad fact that we just cannot trust my mother-in-law around BabyBoy and BabyGirl.

I thought we were making progress. She was knocking when she came to our front door instead of barging on with her key (which Multidaddy had foolishly given her, but that’s another story), she was asking me what food she could give to the children when we went out for meals together, she would double-check with me if she thought one of them needed changing.

But now that’s all been shattered by one weekend visit.

Regular readers of this blog will know that we have had problems with sleep, especially when it comes to BabyBoy. So I am very very strict when it comes to sleep – and one cardinal rule is to allow the babies time to resettle themselves rather than going in straight away if they make a noise. Knowing that the grandparents find this very difficult to comprehend, we have always and repeatedly said that Multidaddy or I will decide when naptime is over.

So BabyBoy and BabyGirl went down for their lunchtime nap. They are pretty good nappers – at least an hour and a half at lunchtime so I took the opportunity to take a shower. I had the monitor with me. Mother-in-law was watching tv in the living room. Multidaddy was on a call in the study.

Less than a hour after they’d gone down BabyBoy made a few noises. Brushing my hair in the bathroom I kept an eye on the monitor. It was unusual, but BabyBoy was clearly half-asleep. Then, as I watched, the door to the nursery opened and I see mother-in-law creep in.

The sheer audacity of this hit me hard. Thinking that Multidaddy and I were out of the way, she deliberately ignored our express instructions not to go into the nursery during naptime. If she was worried (and there was no reason why she should have been, BabyBoy wasn’t distressed) she could have knocked on the study or bathroom door to check with us, but no. The fact is, she doesn’t think we can make decisions about our children. And I find that really really disrespectful.

That was the main incident that has set our relationship back several steps. I don’t know if she was in a bad mood during this visit, or just determined to take over, but I also caught her giving BabyGirl tea (a big no-no for me, I’m keeping them on water and milk drinks as long as possible, and why does a 12 month old need caffeinated drinks??) and giving BabyBoy her opened bottle of mineral water to directly drink from (eww, and I don’t give the kids mineral water, and he has his own cup).

The sad thing is that is that all of these things could have been avoided if she’d just asked: ‘Shall I go in and check on BabyBoy?’, ‘Does BabyGirl have tea?’, and ‘Do you think BabyBoy is thirsty?’.

But she doesn’t have the courtesy, or respect, to do so.