To be annoyed at my mother taking my daughter in the bath with her?

[Emmylou22]

We left our 15 month old daughter with my mum and stepdad for the weekend as we went away for our wedding anniversary. This is the first time I've spent the night away from her. When we picked her up, my mum told me she'd taken her in the bath with her. I found this a little unsettling. I sometimes take a bath with my daughter but feel very strange about someone else (other than my husband of course) doing this.

I have had many issues with my mum in the past so not sure if that's clouding my judgement or if anyone else would feel uncomfortable with this! I often feel like my mother thinks she should be mum to my daughter rather than grandma and to me this just illustrates my point. What do people think?

I think op has said over and over its more about the boundaries here than anything else.

Not to mention the danger if the grandmother slipped on the wet floor holding toddler?

Why would she bathe with a toddler? I don't get it? Couldn't she just have said oh I didn't get a chance to bath her you'll have to do it ... My DM narc bathed my newborn once and only one at kitchen sink and baby 'slipped' out of her hands - I was beside her thankfully and caught baby before it was too late but her reaction was very very strange. Still to this day I saw it as an intentional action to frighten me

Yanbu - I'd be annoyed too.

Mrsdevere - you've summed up my relationship perception of my DM also. That is exactly how it is. Even as adults we keep hoping they'll change. We keep wondering what it was we did to make them behave like that.

"I don't think I'd mind my Mum doing this but wouldy MIL (no logical reason as get on with her!)"

What you're forgetting- and what many people forget - is that while your relationship with your mil is obviously very different from your relationship wth your mother, your child's relationship with your mother and with your mil is exactly the same...........

Hakluyt- not really as how the GM and GM in law behave towards that child may be two entirely different styles of grand parenting. The child yes will see both figures innocently as key people in his/her life

Hakluyt.

And what many people who say things like that forget is that it is not the child who is bringing up themselves.

Perhaps the father of the child would be ok with his mum but not his mil. Nothing wrong with that at all and that would be the time for both parents to talk about it and decide if both could or none could.

As a gran, this isn't something I would do (nor feel comfortable doing). A bath with mum or dad is fine but with grandparents I find it a bit odd! I bathe my GC but not IN the bath with me.

Ds had a bath with my mum when he was 16/17 months - I have no problem with this. I don't really see how it is a problem?

mrsdevere - I'm ok, just a lightbulb moment.

"I think its perfectly reasonable to A. allow someone you don't have a brilliant mother and daughter relationship with to babysit."

I agree but this isn't just "not a brilliant relationship", OP called her mother 'selfish' and 'narcissistic'. Why would you leave your child with this person and then complain that she did something you don't like?!

NeedsAsockamnesty:

I would have a massive problem with it and would consider it to be a huge boundary issue

Its not acceptable behaviour to bath shower or co sleep with someone else's child without checking if they are ok with it or not.

Lots of people would be fine with it but others wouldn't be something's you just check.
__

My Mum also (as well as bathing) co-sleeps with mine until they are about 5 when she has them for a sleepover. Because they often co-sleep at home so it is the most natural thing in the world.

It would never occur to me to need to be asked, nor occur to my Mum to check with me.

Other people live on different planets to me.

If something is important like covering the naked body, burka wearing and modesty then obviously people need to make it clear to those they entrust with their children. In our family nudity is fine - naked swimming, nudist beaches, the works.... not all families are like that so of course none of us would be naked when visitors were here unlike William Blake and his wife who in the 1980s often sat naked at home.

I am surprised that bathing together, getting changed in front of each other and co sleeping are being lumped in together. They are all very different things. People may be OK with one and not another.

Flowerfairy so are you suggesting that people who don't want others to sit naked in a bath with their child need to make that clear first? I would have though it was the other way round. EG If I babysit for you child I will expect to take a bath with them! Rather than just doing it and then being surprised when that bothers someone. When you say in your family do you mean all your extended family or just immediate family?

Hopefully families will think the same. So my mum would no more have had a bath with my dd than fly in the air, for all kinds of reasons. But she co slept with children in the family because when family visited there no other space. The kids were about three and six and again if they had been a lot younger I am sure she would not have because of concerns over safety (if they were babies).

What is unfortunate in the OP's family is that the expectations are different, or perhaps, as is suggested bathing is thought of as mother and child and only and OP's mother sees herself more as the mother than the grandma.

Public nudity wouldn't really bother me its more preferring my children not to think its normal to be naked in situations I perceive as more vulnerable ones like showers and baths with other naked adults they don't live with just because they are related.

Excellent and very perceptive posts Mrs DeVere. Sensitivity has been in short supply on this thread. OP, you can see that some people get it and some people just never will

Mrs DeVere has it exactly correct. YANBU OP. Your child, your rules. There's nothing wrong if other people don't mind but I understand why you don't. The idea of either DM or MIL naked in the bath with dd is not something either DH or I would want. The thought alone I find very bizzare.

must now erase from brain before sleep image of naked in-laws, having seen FIL in Y Fronts this am

I never wondered what I did to make my mother such a miserable cow, that was just her personality & she'd have been miserable no matter what. I never expected her to change either, by the time I left home I was passed caring.

But she'd never have got in the bath with her grandchildren, I'll say that for her.