DMIL giving TV time and oven food for toddler - should I say anything?

I’m late 40s and I’d struggle energy wise to entertain a toddler two afternoons a week. I’m fit and healthy but it’s a long time since I did that. You’re saying “MIL is retired, MIL doesn’t have a health condition like me, MIL should consider my health and not use up the short cuts I need for when my condition plays up” but you’ve shown no regard for her situation, her energy levels. She may be retired, but the energy levels of a 61 year old are not the same as someone of your age. Plus, when it’s been decades since you ran around after a 2 year old, the mind/body isn’t in that place anymore. It’s harder than you think. I say that as someone who works full time and can run 10k. I’m fit but I don’t have the energy to parent a toddler anymore.

MIL is offering you free childcare. Twice a week! You say you’re very grateful, but being grateful is more than just saying the words “I am grateful”. Because you don’t actually sound very grateful. You sound a bit judgemental about her time and energy levels (despite thinking she ought to be considering your health condition and your need for short cuts). Either put up with the way she wants to look after your child or pay someone else.

Well, she is minding him... He's safe and looked after.

She's not childminding, she's plonking him in front of a TV and cracking on with her life. A bit of TV while preparing dinner is one thing, but this a lot.

I think zero was the goal but realistically when home full time with a 2yr old I would do 2 x 20 mins in a week. I would sometimes manage a couple of weeks with none.

I think 2x4hrs of childcare and having to resort to TV is pretty poor.

With regards to the food I understand about saving the lazing meals for when you need them and to me 2 lots of oven junk a wek for a 2yr old is waaay too much. I would batch cook and freeze small portions or make packed lunches and send with him.

OP, if you were paying for a trained, experienced and knowledgable child-carer or nanny your niggles would be legitimate.

She is just a grandmother doing you both a favour. Babysitting and caring. But not educating as such or paying too much heed to his milestones. Just both enjoying each other’s relaxed company. She brought up your DH and he must have turned out alright or you wouldn’t have married him.
If it were mornings, I’d say she could maybe get him out at the park for fresh and exercise. If it were not the dead of winter, I’d say the same thing.
I bet she adores him and is forming a real healthy attachment with him which is a massive bonus.
I’d say you would do well to concentrate on the blessings that this arrangement provides to you all and, having already mentioned your niggles, leave it be for now until the better weather and then carefully make other suggestions.

I think you aren’t being unreasonable to notice and discuss your niggles with DH but I think you would be unreasonable to upset the apple cart.

Her feelings count too and as previous posters mentioned, you can provide the sort of food you want him to eat without too much trouble and you can also make sure he gets plenty of outings, fresh air and exercise during the rest of the week.
Make sure he has a varied supply of toys and books that he likes at MIL’s house and let her see how you engage and lead play with him, with those toys and books you provide so that she knows what to do. Praise MIL up if you notice something knew he has learned and let her know what you feel he needs practise with and what he is particularly enjoying for now eg singing and dancing together or having a favourite book read to him over and over again or pouring rice etc. Give her plenty of ideas without making her feel bad about things.

Good luck with your health struggles OP.

I think you need to be easier and kinder on yourself. I have a son the same age. He doesn’t get a whole lot of screen time, but does watch something daily, and has done for months (buys me time to make food/sit!). The past few weeks, he’s asking for the TV more, which I think is an age thing. Since 19/20 months, he is definitely more interested in what he’s watching and has started to interact with the characters (like dancing along with Ms Rachel or showing us a dramatic moment in old school Thomas). They’re reaching the age where they understand everything, so it makes sense. I would definitely ask your DH to be a bit firmer with what types of shows DMIL puts on though - I don’t think that would be unreasonable at all.

With regard to the food - he’ll be fine. Seven days of breakfast, lunch, and dinner is 21 meals. So what if three or four of them are oven food? It’s all about moderation and it sounds like the rest of his meals are healthy. Just because she gives some oven food, it doesn’t mean you can’t too when you’re struggling. His narrowing appetite is probably also just an age thing. I doubt two-ish oven meals out of 21 would do anything there ☺️

It's not snobby. Screens emit blue light which is bad for eyes. Our screen time is to blame for early macular denegeration. So you definitely don't want to expose children's delicate, developing eyes to it too much. Watching a play or reading a book doesn't expose eyes to blue light.

www.aao.org/eye-health/tips-prevention/screen-use-kids

Yes.

You say thank you.

As an aside, I am surprised how many posters are saying they often have the TV on in the background while their DC are playing. I thought constant background noise from TV (or radio 4 or Mozart) was one of the things known to be bad for development because it is distracting and it makes it harder to pick out and learn language from parents and siblings (or the TV), because babies and toddlers tune out all the noise so don’t listen to speech and babies take longer to understand that words are for communicating rather than “noise”?

You're the mother. She is the fun grandparent. She's not doing anything on purpose. She'll be doing oven foods as it's quick and easy and wants to spend as much time as possible with your child, not cooking away in the kitchen.
Show some gratitude. You're very ungrateful

and, perhaps for her, the oven food means she gets to spend more time with her grandchild, who it sounds like she loves very much, rather than leaving him on his own while she cooks.I don't think that's unfair. a lot of grandparents LOVE every minute with their grandchildren, and yes, they do often have looser rules than the parents, but not usually damaging. if they're together, watching the TV and eating nuggets, that could be very precious and not worth losing to spend time in the kitchen, prepping and mixing and keeping an eye on something.

maybe you could suggest they cook together. that might not be an ideal option, because children in the kitchen can often make more mess and make a quick job into a long and very messy one. but on the other hand, it could become something they really enjoy doing together.

It's not complex or nuanced really though is it? I'm sorry you have health problems, I do myself, so I understand but it's really not complicated. Gm gives ds a meal twice a week and watches some tv with him. That's all. Why is it a complex reality?

OP, it won't hurt him to watch TV two afternoons a week, I expect your mother in law does other things with her grandson. My mum looked after mine from babyhood until he started Kindergarten school at three something, two days a week. After that she had him in the holidays.

He would come home and talk about things he'd seen there, such as daytime soaps, Countdown (which is of course educational), and the odd film including a Carry On film in which a watch was left inside a patient so he had to be opened up again! He also watched the news and could impersonate Prince (as he was then), Charles. It was quite funny. We never minded, it didn't hurt him. My mum was widowed and would cook for herself at lunch time so he ate what she had once he got past a certain age. He also had a few sweets. She read and played with him, took him out etc, but when they were at home, the TV was on.

I've never had chicken nuggets and always cooked decent meals but sometimes we'd have burger or fish and chips, sausages, pizza or whatever. Occasionally is fine!

When your son gets to the age of having friends round you will probably opt for things like that because kids often don't like or mistrust things that their mum didn't cook. The same goes if you have lunch or a snack whilst out shopping, you're not going to go anywhere a la carte.

My child grew up fine and healthy. Yours probably will too.

I'm sure most of us ate a bit of junk food in our lives, especially when young, and more sweets than kids do nowadays, and we're still here.

Moderation in all things. Two afternoons of telly and junk food is not going to hurt your son, honestly, and please forgive yourself for the odd time when you take a soft option, it's normal. You all probably eat quite well on the whole.

As you have a mother-in-law, presumably you have a husband. If he is still living with you, he can take a turn doing your food, especially at weekends if he's home then.

I do hope things improve for you, healthwise but do stop worrying about this. Good luck.

If you’re unhappy, then pay for childcare. 🙂

Have you considered unplugging the tv so it appears broken to ds? You can magically fix it when it’s ok to watch tv but obviously don’t let him see you plug it in again. If he watches on a tablet then don’t charge it so it looks like it’s broken. He will talk about the tv being broken but he won’t be watching it.

It makes sense but it's unreasonable. You talk as if you're talking about your child's other parent who has as much responsibility as you do. She is not the parent and when she does childcare it's as a favour. She doesn't owe it. She didn't choose to have a child with you to raise together. Surely that's fair, that the person who is doing the favour gets it easier.

I'd stop being so hard on yourself about TV as well. Your chronic illness means there are some things that just aren't the way you'd like. I'm not the parent I thought I'd be before I had kids either.

My DS has more than recommended TV time but often he's not watching it when it's on, or he watches for a bit then uses his toys to recreate scenes and then make his own stories up from there.

Also I think (anecdotally - from my own experience) that the main issue with screen time is actually personal devices like tablets and phones, especially endless scrolling. I don't think TV is the same. My DS talks about what's on TV while he watches it. As adults in our house we chat while watching TV too.

When we scroll Mumsnet or Facebook on our phones we're like little zombies, completely oblivious to what's around us and not socialising. We've all noticed and now try to limit our 'scrolling time' on our phones so that we can better connect with each other in the evenings.

Doing nothing but watching TV would be bad but I really think it's a far better type of screen time than other things. I wouldn't let DS have a tablet for that reason. Someone else might disagree. They might do 30 minutes of tablet time a day but would be horrified by the amount of Peppa Pig on my TV. You have to weigh things up and choose for yourself.

Your son is very lucky to have family members around who love him, and it's great that he gets than time with his Granny, who he will likely grow up to be very close to.

Would he take a stir fry with noodles, I wonder? Easiest ‘from scratch’ meal on the planet. Cut up onions, peppers, garlic, tomatoes, protein of choice. Add or omit anything of choice. Fry meat/fish first, then do the veg. Dunk the noodles in simmering water for 3 or 4 minutes.

@Cailleach1 Lol at that being easy. It actually takes quite a lot of planning to buy all those ingredients, and time and effort to do all the chopping and washing up. Stir fry is also not something you just leave to cook, you have to stand over it constantly.

It's quite a leap from bunging some frozen chicken nuggets in the oven.

Something like pesto/ tomato pasta would be a much easier mid point, but I think the point is that the MIL simply does not want to cook like this.

Wallace and Gromit is wayyyyyy too scary for a two year old.

Some of the stuff on cbeebies is actually pretty good.

There's also a huge difference between leaving your child alone to watch tv and sitting and watching tv with them.

She does sound a bit useless (she can't manage to entertain a kid for a few hours and feed them some proper food?) but it's just how a lot of people of that generation parented, in my experience. Especially the things about making separate "kid" and "adult meals". She is doing you a favour, though, so I think you could say that you're trying to limit his screen time and feed him fresh food as much as possible (or even better, your partner can raise this) but you can't necessarily expect her to change.

@Chilliinitiative

MIL is retired. Therefore I also resent it a little bit that I have to juggle a job, being a Mum and also sort food for when she has a lot more free time and better health than I do.

I'm a bit astounded by this comment. You're taking about your mother in law being kind enough to provide free childcare but you resent the fact that you have to juggle a job, be a mum and sort out food when YOU chose to being a child into the world? Youve said that your mother in law is in her 60s and retired, so I think she's probably done her share of juggling work and children in the past and is entitled to have some time for herself now! It won't hurt your child to eat chicken nuggets and watch TV a couple of times a week!

and yet, you can't always do that for your own child now. are things going to improve when you're 60? or, more likely, you will struggle a lot more by then.

I get it. I have chronic pain and fatigue issues. my lovely husband does the bulk of stuff. I love to cook, but I have a bar stool in the kitchen because my back seizes up a lot, and that's the right height for me to prep and cook. even then, sometimes it hurts so much I throw up. so he's had to take on a lot of the cooking as well. and as he's not an enthusiastic cook like I am, that's often convenience food. I'm just grateful that on my bad days, he takes that load off my shoulders. and tell you what, that man makes the BEST omelettes, scrambled eggs or fried eggs ever. they're always done JUST perfectly.

This. And also unnecessarily hung up about a bit of TV and chicken nuggets.

I think you may be agonising too much about this. How lovely for your son to have this time with his GM. It is capital in his emotional bank, and will pay dividends throughout his life. Ok, oven chips and chicken nuggets/fishfingers aren’t the most nutritious meals out there. But it is better than a mars bar and a coke with crisps.

Would he take a stir fry with noodles, I wonder? Easiest ‘from scratch’ meal on the planet. Cut up onions, peppers, garlic, tomatoes, protein of choice. Add or omit anything of choice. Fry meat/fish first, then do the veg. Dunk the noodles in simmering water for 3 or 4 minutes.

The air fryer is brilliant for one pot meals. Do the chicken legs/meat first, then add small chopped potatoes to roast, with any veg of choice. This is as quick as putting nuggets and oven chips on, turning them over etc. And it’s real food.

I think the benefits of an interested GM really outweigh any concerns with your ds’s care. He’s a lucky little boy.

You know, I think I do get why this bothers you - especially if you've tried to raise it and she's ignored you. It's hard feeling undermined and I think parenting has changed a lot over the last generation or two - it feels like there's more pressure to "get it right" than there was on e.g. 90's parents (I ate a lot of Findus crispy pancakes and watched quite a bit of TV, which seemed fairly standard among my peers).

However, I agree with the majority that, given the big favour she's doing you, you are probably going to have to come to terms with it. It won't cause long term harm.

I have a fussy toddler; when we visit my in-laws, I bring some portions of frozen homemade meals that I've had stashed away. That way I can guarantee she'll have something decent to eat and not just fill up on bread and pastries if she rejects their (very nice!) cooking. I'd suggest you try similar, bunging something in the microwave will be even easier than chips and nuggets .

2 afternoons a week? Don't complain about trivial things. It doesn't really matter how old she is the point is she is looking after a toddler which is tiring which means she's going to do what is easiest for her.
I'm only 37 but I had my children young and now I'm completely over the whole baby and toddler stage. My sister has recently become disabled and so I have been helping out more even though i really cannot be bothered. You best believe there are no such crafts and outings and what not because I just don't have the energy it's as simple as that. But im doing my sister a favour so she wouldn't dream of complaining