Just need a bit of a handhold and some advice, feeling a bit let down and need a bit of a vent as well…
We (myself, DHand DC) have moved away from the UK to DH’s home country to be closer to family (neither of us had any in the UK and want our child growing up with cousins and a family support structure).
More recently we’ve moved my mother in with us. She’s a lovely person to live with, very active still and we all get along really well usually. The decision to move her in with us is due to the increased cost of living and safety issues in the area that she lives becoming more and more problematic. It was a brave move to make, and we’ve done what we can to soften the blow (made sure the house we purchased had a separate ‘wing’ for her etc).
DC is 2 years old, and DH and I have strongly subscribed to a more Scandinavian way of parenting (DH is Danish, and it’s very close to gentle / authoritative parenting which I like - firm but sensible). This is very different from the way I was parented which was very authoritarian - I remember growing up being mostly scared of my parents. I’m not under any illusion that what we’re doing is “better”, we’ve just chosen differently based on our experiences and the information we have access to (I’ve been clear about this with my mother). I have also told my mother if she has any questions / concerns about how we’re parenting to raise them with us - as she’s living under the same roof, and we’d like a ‘united front’ with all the adults (as much as we can). She agreed to this, and has said nothing to me since.
Twice now, on separate occasions, I’ve heard her on the phone (she’s very loud) talking to my sister (who I am low contact with for various reasons - but mostly just to keep the family peace at this stage) talking about how DC doesn’t eat with a knife and fork yet (he’s 2), that when he gets overstimulated and pinches he gets told by me to ‘keep his hands to himself/don’t do that, use gentle hands’ while I physically remove his hands from me, and not a ‘firm no’ (ie shouting at him) and that he’s a, ‘little shit’ when he comes home from nursery, and basically that I’m letting him walk all over me. The tone was incredibly condescending, and the whole conversation was extremely gossipy, which hurt me deeply.
I am aware I should never have heard this - but I was literally on the other end of our house, and couldn’t help it. The first time I overheard a conversation I told her that she was loud enough to hear on the other end of the house, so might want to take calls like that elsewhere, and that I was upset by what she said - and explained (again) why we were approaching parenting the way we were. She got extremely defensive and didn’t talk to me for 3 days. Now that I’ve heard it again I wonder how to deal with it myself (pretend I never heard?) or confront my mother about it. Either way, I know now what she’s thinking and it breaks my heart as I thought of her as an ally in raising DC - and although I absolutely trust her with him, I’m saddened that she feels like myself and DH haven’t discussed and thought through how we want to raise our child.