My eldest ds (nearly 16) has a brilliant relationship with his youngest sibling (DD2, nearly 5). He and ds2 and dd1 are all away at boarding school, so this half term, as usual, dd2 was crawling all over her big brother, getting tickled, roughed up, having her toys played with, and generally having a riotous family time. Anyway, my mother came over on Saturday afternoon and saw ds1 playing with dd2 and rang him 'in confidence' later that evening to say that 'he should be careful that people didn't jump to the wrong conclusion' if they saw her 'crawling ' all over him . I am still so angry I can hardly speak, partly because I thought it was such a sick thing to say to ds, and partly because she bloody said it 'in confidence'!!! Thank God he was able to tell me why she phones. The sad thing is that - whatever he says - I can tell it HAS affected his relationship with dd2 . To put it in perspective, my siblings and I were brought up in a very non-tactile way, but even so I find the fact that she could come up with such a comment really upsetting................