...to be furious with my mil about sweets?

[redjumper]

I have a 3.5 yr old DS and a 1yo DD. Although I previously had a great relationship with my mil, it started going downhill when I fell pregnant with DS. I find her completely overbearing: she would come and stay with us, we coslept with DS, mil would just walk into our bedroom at 7am when she heard him stir despite the fact that I would be in bed naked feeding him. She always demands time alone with DS, insisting he goes to her for sleepovers. She buys him loads of toys, even though we specifically ask her not to as we don't want our kids swamped with things. She shows very little interest in DD but tells DS he is her reason for living (way too over the top for a 3yo!) Anyway, this is just background.

My problem now relates to her giving him sweet foods. We try and minimise how much sugar he eats and have asked her so many times not to give him cakes, sweets etc. It falls on deaf ears. At one point I called her and had a very sensitive conversation with her about how the dentist recommended no sweet foods and how it's hard to achieve that in this world and would she mind awfully helping me out with that. She did seem very on board with it. However soon after she started giving him little sweet treats again behind our back, which has now built up to giving him half a full size battenburg cake, a full pack of jelly babies, sweet yoghurts, a gingerbread man all in the space of one day at her house. He comes home completely wired and always ends up in trouble with us for being 'naughty' but it's not his fault he's on a sugar high! Now she has just started doing it in front of us. DH confronted her again about it and she got all sulky, talking about grandmas rights etc. I don't expect things to change now as we've had so many conversations about it. It feels like she is deliberately disrespecting our wishes and is deliberately pushing our boundaries in the same way a toddler would. I want to know my children are being given generally healthy foods when they're away from me (with the very occasional small treat) but it's just not happening. Also, she seems to have her own eating issues: she always denies she ever eats sweets and cakes but her cupboards are full of them and she has empty packets all over the place so she seems to be in denial about it. She is extremely obese and has loads of related health problems like diabetes etc. I fear that her food issues are impacting on my children Am I being unreasonable to consider stopping my DS staying over at her house alone?

Whiteplace, poor diet, including excessive sugar consumption, is a contributing factor to developing type 2 diabetes.

pearly, the problem is presumably that the OP still wants her son to spend time with his grandma.

Yes the sweets issue is bad but I'd be a lot more concerned at her blatant favouritism towards your DS.
How will this make your DD feel or has she already realised?
This has the potential for real damage. How are you dealing with this?

I sympathise - DM completely doted on her first grandchild to a ridiculous extent. It got better over time though as the other grandchildren grew older so I wouldn't say she has a favourite now. Your MIL clearly equates food with love and that's a really difficult connection to break. I don't know what to advise really - maybe just keep the visits short and allow that to be his 'treat' afternoon for the week and write it off.

One other thought linked to your MIL's food issues. When I was really struggling with my weight there was a temptation to make the DC my "partner in crime". So it was OK for me to eat ice cream because the DC wanted some too, when the reality was I wanted an excuse to eat it. I wonder if she eats the other half of the cake," just to keep him company".

This would also fit with her obsessive behaviour towards him as they are a team - its them against the world

What pp said. But to add: sugar high isn't a thing, its been thoroughly debunked. Its only the perceptions of the adults that change, no physical cause at all. No such thing as a sugar high.

Another voice saying stop unsupervised visits/find alternative childcare straight away.

That is a crazy amount of sugar and she can only do more harm at this rate. You have aksed nicely and explained sensibly. The favouritism is also sad. Have you discussed that with her?

"She always demands time alone with DS, insisting he goes to her for sleepovers."

Yeah, but it doesn't have to happen, does it?

She would not be allowed to spend time with my child unsupervised. You can tell why too. She has been asked many times not to do certain things and she is ignoring you, therefore can not be trusted. It doesn't sound like a healthy relationship for your DS anyway.

Sorry I don't have any advice for you but can sympathise. Yanbu. I'm trying really hard to promote good eating habits to dd 1 and cook healthy meals from scratch, but whenever she is it at my inlaws they just fill her with sugar. I really can't understand why. I found out from dd 1 they had also given dd 2 chocolate cake on one occasion, she had been weaned for 4 weeks .

Whiteplate sugar will cause weight gain which can cause diabetes. So the two are linked.

Agree with everyone else, excessive amount of sugar, even for a doting grandma, plus the DC will spot the disparity in their relationships with her.

I guess you (preferably your DH though) need to te it to her straight, no unsupervised contact as you can't trust her re food and her ibsessuvs relationship with your DS.

"Am I being unreasonable to consider stopping my DS staying over at her house alone?"

Of course not.

If she is overly interested/obsessed with him then you need to protect him from that, not inflict it on him!!

You can sort the food issue and the favoritism issue with one solution:

She visits the kids at your house and you and DH only ever take the kids round to hers yourself and don't leave them with her.

I don't see how much favoritism she can display while you're all there without making herself look a cow (and if so you can pull her up on it there and then) and obviously you can also control what your kids are eating or not.

She can demand all she likes. It falls on deaf ears from now on.

"She visits the kids at your house and you and DH only ever take the kids round to hers yourself and don't leave them with her."

Absolutely!

I would probably just start to do this, not even bother to have a conversation about it.

It isn't doting grandma. She knows you don't want her to do this, you've explained, you've reminded, she knows this is not in ds's best interests and why. So this is determination to do her feeding behaviour on ds because somehow it meets her own needs, and she escalates her behaviour to sulking and worse if she's challenged. It's purely selfish.

I suspect from what you're describing that if you take the children to visit and stay constantly with them you'll find she'll look for any way she can to get sweets sneaked around you and into ds. Be prepared too for the 'grandma's little secret, don't tell mummy I gave you such and such' crap which is also awful for children. In your situation I would stop contact for a good few weeks with a very clear message of no, either you stop or we can't bring the children to see you, because this is about more than the sweets.

I'm another one to advise no unsupervised visits. She isn't respecting your wishes, even though both you and your DH have stood firm on it. It sounds like she def has food issues and the problem is not something that can be easily fixed. If you try to take the emotion out of it, of her disrespecting you, and just treat it as a matter of fact 'she has issues and we cannot trust her not to overfeed our child'. It seems like you realise it's not malicious behaviour but it is damaging. If she tries to press solo visits/sleepovers, just stand firm and say no, but you'd love to see her soon and arrange a visit with you all. That's what I'd do anyway.

She isn't going to reduce her relationship with him to a normal level though. She has already shown she can't be trusted to listen and respect your wishes, therefore she will continue to carry on as she wants to. And that is to stuff him full of junk because in her mind, food = love. This 'love' doesn't extend to her DGD though.

Letting her favour 1 child over the other will cause real issues in the future et ween your children. You need to stop it as the parent and not keep hanging on to this ideal of a doting grandmother with a normal relationship with her grandchild. That just isn't the type of GM she is.

This is not something I could let continue - Both the disregarding of your express decisions for your children (whether they are right or wrong in anyone else's eyes) and the favouritism, whatever her motives. Not good for either child's happiness or self-esteem, or yours.