So this is my first thread as I have come to the end of my tether with DD’s grandmother on her dads side.
I’m going to just give facts so people can give unbiased opinions and advice.
In April this year DD was 5 months old. We went to visit his parents.
His mother insisted we walk to a nice pub for a drink after lunch.
On the way we had to cross a very busy road. Vehicles travelling at 50-70mph.
His mother got frustrated with waiting for a safe gap to cross the road and proceeded to run across the road in front of a coach (the type that carry around 45-50 passengers) with my child in the pram.
When DD turned 7 months I agreed to let grandmother take her to the local swimming pool.
I allowed this to happen a few times but eventually put a stop to it as it was causing so much disruption to DD’s routine and grandmother would bring her back 1-2hrs later than agreed, meaning she was always tired and starving.
So a week after I put an end to the swimming, we go and visit them again. (They have 2 houses, one is less than 2 miles from us, the other is an hour and a half away)
So it’s saturday morning and grandmother wants us all to go for a walk with the baby. She decides that me, her son and his dad have to walk over a small mountain to the end point. I insist that I’m not going over a mountain, she tells me I am and that she will walk round the path at the bottom with the pram.
She’s very forceful about it and to save arguments I reluctantly go up the mountain.
When we get to the other side she said “if you hadn’t of come down when you did I was about to ask someone in the beer garden to watch the baby whilst I went to the toilet”
I was horrified. She told me not to be ridiculous because it was the Lake District. I said that doesn’t matter, you can’t just leave my child with a stranger in a pub beer garden!
She said why? I leave her with people I vaguely know when we go swimming so I can have a shower, dry and straighten my hair and get dressed.
That evening I was in the kitchen helping her make dinner and she starts degrading me. She thinks I’m disadvantaged because of my upbringing (because my parents split up when I was a baby and my mum remarried - my relationship with all 3 parents is fine, my mum still regularly checks in on my dad and I’m 31)
She also thinks I should change my career and only work ‘school’ hours. That my 15 year career in hospitality is a waste. (I work in the same restaurant as her son, it’s how we met)
My qualifications in business and administration are “worthless” though so she believes I would struggle to get “a proper job.”
Since DD was born, grandmother has always asked to take her for a few hours. She never comes round for a coffee or to visit her at my house and she always insists on picking the baby up from my house instead of me going up to hers unless we visit their home in the Lake District.
The undermining of my parenting I can get over, snatching DD from me when she is fussing, I can bite my tongue.
But am I overreacting by feeling this woman is putting my precious child in danger?