To be angry that MIL may have indoctrinated my child?

[FruitCider]

I've been away for just under a week volunteering abroad and got home this morning. My mother in law (reverend) has been to stay with my partner whilst I went away. I'm completely atheist, partner is agnostic. MIL tried to give me a nativity set at Christmas for DD and a book full of bible stories, I declined and said I didn't want my daughter exposed to religion by people with a bias to a particular religion until she was 7/8.

I've come home today and my 3.5yo DD is continuously talking about Jesus, how God made the planet and told me I should thank god that my journey was safe. My partner says MIL had not mentioned religion when he was at home but he had to leave DD with MIL on Tuesday and Thursday whilst he went to work.

I'm absolutely RAGING! AIBU to be this angry? I literally want to banish MIL from my house and tell her she is not allowed contact with my DD for the foreseeable future.

Also is my DD likely to forget about God as she grows up if it's not mentioned again? Or is she now indoctrinated forever?

Sorry to those who may find this post offensive, I just wanted my DD to make her own mind up when she was old enough to understand that religion is a belief and there is no firm evidence for a God. She could have decided herself to be a Christian and I would have accepted that.

And was being lectured about Jesus having a great time for a 3 yr old? Probably not.

Isn't this projection? Child doesn't sound particularly traumatized. We don't know what was said.

MIL announced she was coming to help & had booked coach tickets, wasn't this before OP left?

If you were that bothered, then don't go, but it's unreasonable to tell her what she can & can't say.

I am staying at my ILS at the mo. Their cat died last night. (Long story, we just arrived and I had to do a midnight dash to the vets with FIL as I was the only sober one) but poor cat was DOA.

Anyway I knew my children would be upset and was hoping to tell them myself this morning but MIL did it for me. She said that she was hoping to leave it to me but I was having a lie-in & she was looking after them. Reason being is that they kept asking her to see the cat and she didn't know what time I was going to get up. She didn't want to lie to them. Fair does innit!

The OP could start the job of informing her DD about gods and religion with these:

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Someone else looks after your children for you, and you take the rough with the smooth.

Children are capable of developing into adults with critical thought. Who really cares that a 3 year believes in God? Control freakery & intolerance in abundance on this thread.

Maybe I am odd but I wouldn't be leaving a 3 year old on their own with their dad at work and in the care of a SIL, who has a control freak overbearing mother. Selfish I know, but I'd put the needs of my impressionable 3 year old first. Plenty of time for volunteering later. Ho hum.

Dolly teaching your DCs a moral rule of thumb that is for the most part true like 'do not steal' and then adding nuances that show how the rule doesn't always apply when considered in the context of other considerations like justice is not indoctrination, it is part of moral development. Indoctrination is teaching someone in a way that leaves no room for independent, critical thinking, which crucially allows for the possibility that the learner might reject the lesson.

The MIL holds inflexible, intolerant, prejudiced views and thinks they are god's truth. This is a very dangerous lesson to be passing on to a child.

Well said dolly - I can't remember what I thought at 3 yrs old. OP's DH obviously came to his own conclusions - why wouldn't her DC?
Her DC will think her nutty if she loses contact with her grandmother and the only explanation is that she told her about God one or two years earlier than she will hear the concept anyway. Strange thing to rage about when she will get it at school daily! 3 year olds are old enough to have discussions and views of their own, if anyone bothers to actually listen rather than just tell them things.
If it was easy to indoctrinate children then the churches would be full to bursting on a Sunday!

dolly your post comes across as sexist drivel. Exactly what is the problem with "mummy" being away?

As a "committed Christian" I would have thought you'd be applauding OP's attempts to help some of the most desperate people in our proximity, rather than sneering.

Also, I don't think the material issue here is that she exposed her to the concept of Christianity, but that she took the opportunity while OP was away to go against her wishes. That's a pretty underhand thing to do. I wouldn't leave my child alone with someone who had so little regard for me.

I think it better for the child to have a wide family who love them than a mother so controlling that she expects to censor everyone and issue them with a set of rules if they babysit!
Have a discussion with the child- they might surprise you if you listened to them! They are more likely to be discriminating if they are used to a parent who expects them to think for themselves and have views rather than 'my mummy says....'

Maybe I am odd but I wouldn't be leaving a 3 year old on their own with their dad at work and in the care of a SIL, who has a control freak overbearing mother. Selfish I know, but I'd put the needs of my impressionable 3 year old first. Plenty of time for volunteering later.

I'm sure my 3 year old won't be troubled by me going to France to bandage other children up. It's called positive role modelling - it will teach her to help others wherever possible. I've been working since she was 5 months old. She quite often does not see me for 4 days at a time anyway!

I'd be furious too. Yanbu.

I think that the biggest insult is your MIL not respecting your wishes and slyly manipulating your young child when in a position of trust. Subject matter aside I believe it shows a calculating side to her personality and I do not think YABU to be annoyed by that. I think it is a terrible shame that she could not just enjoy her granddaughter without taking the opportunity to undermine you in your absence.

As you say FruitCider you are a good role model- why on earth would a few days with granny undo that? Children do as you do, never as you say.
Carry on as you are - she will be fine. Trust your child.

DollydoesDalaman

calling you a whore, while deeply unpleasant, I wouldn't take too seriously, in that though it's a sexually charged misogynist term, sounds like she totally lost her temper and meant it more in the sense of a dirty slattern etc. Someone who she felt was all over the place. I am not excusing it, but just think it doesn't sound like it was meant in a sexual way.

Wow. Are you serious? It's OK to call your son's partner "a dirty slattern", she should only get upset if insults are meant in a sexual way?!

I believe that the insult was indeed meant in a very pointed sexual way, but your apologism for any level of insult by the MIL pretty much confirms everything that I ever thought about "committed Christians".

calling you a whore, while deeply unpleasant, I wouldn't take too seriously, in that though it's a sexually charged misogynist term, sounds like she totally lost her temper and meant it more in the sense of a dirty slattern

Are you kidding me? She called me a whore for being pregnant out of marriage!

Strange thing to rage about when she will get it at school daily!

Which is utterly outrageous and should be stopped. There are faith schools
For those that want their children's head filled with the teachings of one religion. All other schools should be secular with RE taught as a subject not a lifestyle.

If it was easy to indoctrinate children then the churches would be full to bursting on a Sunday!

Churches aren't full because fewer people are choosing to believe. Christianity is no longer a majority religion in the UK.

If schools become secular then all those that are glad their child is having religious instruction at school may well start taking their children to church as an extra curricular activity, which is exactly what it should be.

Her own son (your partner) is agnostic - doesn't sound like you have anything to worry about. If she can't get her own son to believe having endless access to him growing up its unlikely she could indoctrinate you child in a couple of days. As an atheist did you never hear of God or religion until you were 7 or 8? Is that the dangerous age cut off point? Honestly the words mountain out of a molehill spring to mind. Have you nothing really serious to worry about

Oh, Dolly.

Coming late, so I don't even know where to start. Nice job goading, though.

I am not excusing the insult, however it was meant, but what's apparent is that both OP & MIL lost control and both ought to have apologised to each other post row. Instead it brought out deeper simmering feelings of resentment.

Many of my girl friends have jobs which involve periods of foreign travel. They do however try to minimize them and ensure that they have additional family support in place for when they occur.

You can't decide to go away for a week when you have a 3 year old, expect everybody else to pick up the pieces and moan when they don't do things your way.

3 year old doesn't understand about the refugee crisis. All she knows is that mummy has gone away & that granny/auntie are looking after her because daddy is working.

Turn the tables and it wouldn't be ok for a man to go away for a week while expecting his wife not to take any leave, roping her family members in to take the slack and then getting angry about it.

It's not un-Christian to put family members first. It's about relative needs. It's not a bad thing to go and volunteer, but doing so shouldn't endanger the emotional wellbeing of your 3 year old.

My 3 year old wouldn't cope very well at all being left and another of her siblings desperately missed me when she was aged 3 and I had to spend 5 days in hospital.

If I went away for a week, I'd ensure my partner was not working, but no-one, no matter how needy is more important than my young children. If their parents don't put them first, who will?

And given the disproportionate level of hysteria displayed by the OP, she obviously does feel that her child's emotional wellbeing could have been compromised.

You handed over responsibility when you went off to do your own thang. Deal with it.

Dolly, and you all the OP hysterical?

call, not all.

Yes, she did overreact, but so are you for the sake of 5 days away from a child.

It's a pity your wishes weren't respected and I can understand you being cross about that in the same way as if you'd been undermined with regards to diet or any other parenting issue.

I think you can relax a bit about how it will affect your child long term though. Because kids get told all sorts of guff about Father Christmas and the Tooth Fairy etc etc and believe many things that are not true and then when they get to a certain age come to their own conclusions.

It is quite hard to believe in God even if a person really really wants to and they have a community around them insisting it is true 24/7/365 so in your family environment I would expect you will be balancing it out okay.

I speak as the grandchild of missionaries ( my grandfather was a methodist minister) and the daughter of an agnostic father and a fairly hippy mother who was the head of the RE department at a grammar school.

I had God and discussions about God going on around me from the moment I could understand conversation but we took a thoroughly academic approach and being religious never took hold with me at all. Although I do have to admit to a lingering wistful hope that Father Christmas might after all be real.

I was sent to Sunday school from a young age, I think mostly at the behest of my Gran and my parents' eagerness to get shot of me for a few hours on a Sunday morning.

Putting aside your MIL's behaviour (which is reprehensible) I would not worry from an indoctrination perspective- I am an extremely committed atheist and have very similar attitudes to religion as you do- I genuinely cannot remember ever believing anything they taught us at Sunday School and in fact I think it may well have been that early exposure which showed up what a load of nonsense it was. And I hasten to add that the Sunday school people were all very nice and everything- we're not talking rebellion against fundamentalist bullying or anything here. I guess the only slight difference is that here your DD is being "taught" by someone who is part of the family and to whose views she might therefore give more weight.

3 year old doesn't understand about the refugee crisis. All she knows is that mummy has gone away & that granny/auntie are looking after her because daddy is working.

My 3 year old knows v well that I went to bandage up children with no mummies and daddies. She doesn't understand why, but she understands enough!

If I went away for a week, I'd ensure my partner was not working, but no-one, no matter how needy is more important than my young children. If their parents don't put them first, who will? 

My DD has me 50 weeks of the year. She is a very bright, intelligent, and well attached child to BOTH parents. Sometimes she goes for 4 days without seeing me because of my job. The only difference this time is that her hours have dropped at nursery to part time due to transitioning nurseries. The people (including children) that I patched up needed me far more this week than she did. Nice attempt to guilt trip and play mummy wars though!

Yes, I am a bit old fashioned in that I think that if you have kids you shouldn't be needing to acclimatise them to your regularly being away for periods of 4 or 5 days by the time they are 3.

My grandma came out with a lot of incredibly racist stuff when I was younger. I remember her grabbing my hand in terror and marching me quickly past a Rastafarian when I was about 7, saying some unrepeatable things.

No doubt commentators would claim that children shouldn't be exposed to such bigoted and unpleasant views and call my nan out as a terrible person.

She wasn't, she was just of a certain generation and I never once accepted her views and even at a young age could see that they were stupid & irrational. I ignored them but still loved her and she provided a lot of kind and generous care when I was growing up.

So let's not write the MIL off, put things in perspective and accept we cannot control what views our children will be exposed to, not what they think or believe, but our role is to help them make sense of and contextualise things.