First of all, my BIL is great. He's 30 and has no kids yet.
He loves my DD and DS a lot and is a great uncle.
I have nothing against other adults setting boundaries for my kids, generally. They need to hear no from other adults they spend time with, especially if they're doing something unsafe etc.
BIL has started being really quite strict with my DD. It's like he thinks we are too soft and he's trying to take it upon himself to be consistent and strict with her.
He gets into battle of wills with my 3 year old, which I just think are unnecessary.
For example if we are playing a game and my DD isn't quite understanding the rules properly and being a bit silly and not wanting to wait her turn, he'll make a really big point of being super strict about it, rather than leaving it to me to sort out in a more positive way. He'll get into a battle and she ends up crying. I'm not saying he is wrong for trying to teach her, but his approach is the way I would have approached it pre kids. Now I actually have them, I don't get into these kinds of battles constantly. I would just explain it calmly to her a few times and if she continued not taking turns, I may just end the activity and focus on something different whilst explaining that we need to play games by taking turns etc.
My BIL will dangle stuff in front of her and say she can't play it she's not playing properly and gets into these huge battles which end up in her crying.
Other times she wants to play with whatever toy my brother in law has. Rather than redirecting her, he'll get into another battle and dangles it ' you can't have this one, it's mine ! No! You can't have this one '.. again, leaves DD upset. I would either just give her what I was playing with or I would try to focus on what she had and explain gently that I was playing with the other toy and she needs to wait until I'm finished. If I got into a full on confrontation every time DD was behaving this way, I would be fighting with her constantly.
Anyway, some may say I'm too soft or whatever. But it's how I parent. I don't like how BIL does it and I don't think it works well. I think that kind of ' discipline ' should only come from parents. Not even our boomer parents get into these battles with her. Of course they tell her 'no ' and explain things to her, but they don't make her cry and leave the heavy lifting to me.
I want tell BIL to stop doing it and I also feel a little bit like he thinks how we parent her is wrong, because we don't do what he does. I think he thinks he can do it better by being super strict. So that annoys me as well.
Can anyone relate ?
I know I'll probably get a lot of posts saying that I'm super soft and unreasonable and that BIL is doing the right thing etc. but I thought I would post anyway.