In laws and baby's first steps

Thanks for quoting and questioning me 4 days later 🙄... As I received a large number of thanks and have been quoted by others agreeing with my post, I'm clearly not alone in thinking encouragement by loving relatives is acceptable.

Perhaps you could look up the difference between encourage and force, as I didn't condone forcing and neither had it been suggested that this was the case.

As I said on the thread, my own mother and sister encouraged my first baby and indeed he took his first steps while I was in the shower. It was disappointing that I didn't witness it, but at 11 months, he was ready to move on from cruising, so no, I had no issue with my relatives encouraging him. My mother raised 5 babies and we all walked successfully and with no apparent trauma from being encouraged.

I don't have your apparent qualifications (?) in child development, but my younger children also were ready and walking multiple steps by 12 months.

You don't see an issue that the in-laws were attempting to force a baby to walk when anyone who knows anything about babies knows they walk in their own time? 🙄

Why is it a shit nursery?? The child
Made an important developmental step, the nursery informed the parents, what's wrong with that?
Are they all supposed to conspire to make the mother believe she was the first to witness it?? Honestly, grow up!!!!

@PlasticOno If someone has been entirely conditioned by society to feel mum guilt and it’s not innate, does it still make them childish, self-indulgent and precious if they can’t shake that guilt off?

What nonsense. This ‘mum guilt’ thing is a socially-imposed meme in the wake of workplace/equal pay legislation, not something innate. Most women with children have always worked, and even those who didn’t certainly weren’t poring over their children’s every developmental stage. Children belong to the world, as well as to their parents.

I think this is a really good point. Surely a lot of our maternal feelings and responses are fairly irrational - and, personally, I don’t think that anyone who can’t persuade themselves out of them by logic is childish, precious, self-indulgent or any of the other charges being levelled at them here.

Anyway, we are actually allowed to have emotional responses. We are all ( or most of us!) equipped with emotions and reason and the two work as complementary though sometimes opposite forces.

I don’t necessarily disagree at all re: your child’s milestones happening in someone else’s presence. As has been said many times on this thread, this is often unavoidable and even more often hard to pin down exactly anyway. What I am struggling to understand is OP giving a very clear context - her PIL undermining her parenting, nagging her about her DS not walking yet, then deliberately encouraging him to achieve that milestone while she’s out of the room for five minutes - and posters telling her that that they wouldn’t be bothered by that, she needs to stop being so precious, etc etc.
Surely the fact that some posters are not troubled by someone else seeing their child’s milestones in the wider sense does not mean that OP is wrong to be upset in her specific case where there is far more going on?

I have zero interest in animals. I have no pets and have never wanted any. I would not, however, dismiss a pet owner’s grief at the loss of their cat or dog as irrational.

It surely doesn’t require much imagination to understand that having other people crow about seeing your baby’s firsts before you can be deeply upsetting to many and fury inducing in others (me).

That kind of post is very understanding and insightful.

If my PIL had tried to claim my DSs’ firsts and shown zero understanding that they matter to me our relationship would be dead.

I think maybe it twinges some very primal sense of guilt or fear that we were not with the child at the time - which of course is often no longer practical or needed. But I suppose in cave days mum needed to be alert at all times and missing something could have been catastrophic. Perhaps that’s what’s behind the visceral but slightly irrational response?

Yes I agree with this. It does sound as though FIL is wanting to relive (or redress!) his time parenting given his dc were not the sensational infant athletes and potty poopers that he was himself. The backstory is pertinent in this post. They were doing it in a way that sought to exclude OP.

As many posters are saying, it doesn’t really matter when the firsts happen and often they are quite wobbly or a bit slurred or equivocal anyway. One of mine I can’t really say when the first step happened as it never quite did ( always holding with one hand or leaning against the sofa slightly etc); but then suddenly it had been happening for a while. Realistically, if you are not a full time sahm others will get to see some of these firsts. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a natural desire for mums to be part of it. I remember collecting one of mine from nursery and being asked by a beaming posse of staff members if I knew my dc could read. I didn’t- and had an irrational urge to say snappily it was simply not true. Then I realised they had clearly all seen it that day so I gave a very muted response which must have left them thinking I was the most disinterested parent ever. I just felt very emotional, blindsided and frankly a bit left out! By the time I was home I had got a grip and I felt very proud, but on the way home I remember a faint sense of wanting to cry. It’s irrational but also, I think, a common response.

you’ll have plenty more “firsts” they won’t see. Don’t be so precious - They are allowed to be excited too, you’re not the gate keeper of all your child’s firsts other people are allowed to feel joy and encourage too.

You are welcome. 🙂

This kind of post is so self-indulgent and over-emotional it does actually make me feel ‘dismissive’.

Not sure why it matters whether it bothers some posters or not. To me that is missing the entire point and is very dismissive. Just because such things don’t bother some, doesn’t mean for those who do, they are automatically wrong to feel a certain way and vice versa, nursery situation included. I wouldn’t feel it patronising if they didn’t let me know if my child had done a first or if they did, doesn’t take away from someone feeling differently. Plus, I would think it is something that could be discussed before child enters nursery with the staff anyway if such a thing bothered one anyway.

The issue here is family members deliberately trying to prove a point and waiting til a parent leaves the room to do so because of their own views on what they think should be done. FIL has shown and told OP unnecessarily and without consideration what they think of her parenting and assuming she is doing something wrong because they feel they know better. There was no reason they could not have shouted for her if her child was actually taking their first steps nor a need to wait til she was out of the room to try to urge him to walk. OP’s child is not another go for FIL to be a parent.

YANBU OP given the history and they have shown you that they have no qualms over doing whatever they want to do to/with your child regardless of what you say as a parent and that will continue to be an issue from the read of things.

Having someone caring for your child is lovely, BUT purposely undermining the parents is not on barring emergencies and safety of child.

What I don’t really understand on this thread is parents giving those milestones no emotional significance at all.

You are completely wrong here. The first time I see it does hold emotional significance, but I really don't understand the hysteria surrounding these milestones if someone other than me witnessed the first steps or the first word or other significant milestone.

It's just bonkers. We don't own these milestones. They just happen.

Presumably they didn't start doing that just when you went to the loo? They weren't being unreasonable to play and coax him. They were being unreasonable to tell you. They should have just waited til
You came back and pretended it didn't happen

What I don’t really understand on this thread is parents giving those milestones no emotional significance at all

It’s not that at all. Obviously it’s a delight when your child starts walking, in the same way that watching them do so many things , and change and develop over time, is always a delight.
But the idea that a parent has to (believe they are) the one to witness the “very first step” is contrived and childish. A child takes their first steps when they take them. (As we have learned from this thread, apparently a significant amount of the time parents are believing they are witnessing the first steps when they aren’t because other people are lying to them! )
As a parent there’s nothing about my child’s development i would want deliberately withheld from me by their nursery, GP or anyone else! Knowing they had stumbled a few steps earlier in the day at nursery wouldn’t in anyway detract from my joy at witnessing them doing it later at home! Why on earth should it?

who Posts here and expects 100% agreement??? … be glad your kid is healthy, and is safe w family.

If you can’t handle other people encouraging or seeing your kid do stuff, then never go out & Home school !

Maybe your in laws are the adults

I’d also thank her for relieving me of the chore, freeing me up to spend the money she saved me on something nice for me.

I had DD after 17 years of infertility, then at 9 weeks she ended up in ICU. She had health issues until she was three and a half.

I honestly couldn't have cared less about milestones as long as they happened in a timely manner. I just wanted my child to be healthy.

I really don't understand why parents (and it's usually mothers) get so territorial about stuff like this. The first time I see something new is good enough for me. In the grand scheme of things it really doesn't matter if someone else witnessed a milestone before me.

In fact, I'm pretty sure an ICU nurse saw DD's first smile before I did.

No, I wouldn't be unnecessarily gleeful about it. And there's clearly a lot of history in your specific situation that means they quite possibly trying to get one over you which is very unpleasant.

But GPs generally encouraging walking if they are looking after the child and not keeping it a secret is totally reasonable.

Oh I totally get that. With my kids I assumed the first word was the first non-mama/dada sounding word. (Weirdly it was “shoe” for both of them!)