In laws and baby's first steps

[Timeforsomecoffee]

First of all, there is a huge back story anyway.

But my question is, if you were a mil/fil, would you have done this?

Baby close to taking his first steps but hadn't done it yet. Mil and fil had been banging on for ages about how we needed to get him walking, he should be walking by now bla bla bla. Doing the arm dangling thing every time we saw them.

Baby was 13 months and standing independently so well on track with his development.

On a visit they decided to stand him between them, coaxing him between them (while I was gone to the toilet) then when I and back announced proudly that he'd taken his first steps.

you’ll have plenty more “firsts” they won’t see. Don’t be so precious - They are allowed to be excited too, you’re not the gate keeper of all your child’s firsts other people are allowed to feel joy and encourage too.

Yes I agree with this. It does sound as though FIL is wanting to relive (or redress!) his time parenting given his dc were not the sensational infant athletes and potty poopers that he was himself. The backstory is pertinent in this post. They were doing it in a way that sought to exclude OP.

As many posters are saying, it doesn’t really matter when the firsts happen and often they are quite wobbly or a bit slurred or equivocal anyway. One of mine I can’t really say when the first step happened as it never quite did ( always holding with one hand or leaning against the sofa slightly etc); but then suddenly it had been happening for a while. Realistically, if you are not a full time sahm others will get to see some of these firsts. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a natural desire for mums to be part of it. I remember collecting one of mine from nursery and being asked by a beaming posse of staff members if I knew my dc could read. I didn’t- and had an irrational urge to say snappily it was simply not true. Then I realised they had clearly all seen it that day so I gave a very muted response which must have left them thinking I was the most disinterested parent ever. I just felt very emotional, blindsided and frankly a bit left out! By the time I was home I had got a grip and I felt very proud, but on the way home I remember a faint sense of wanting to cry. It’s irrational but also, I think, a common response.

I think maybe it twinges some very primal sense of guilt or fear that we were not with the child at the time - which of course is often no longer practical or needed. But I suppose in cave days mum needed to be alert at all times and missing something could have been catastrophic. Perhaps that’s what’s behind the visceral but slightly irrational response?

That kind of post is very understanding and insightful.

If my PIL had tried to claim my DSs’ firsts and shown zero understanding that they matter to me our relationship would be dead.

I have zero interest in animals. I have no pets and have never wanted any. I would not, however, dismiss a pet owner’s grief at the loss of their cat or dog as irrational.

It surely doesn’t require much imagination to understand that having other people crow about seeing your baby’s firsts before you can be deeply upsetting to many and fury inducing in others (me).

I don’t necessarily disagree at all re: your child’s milestones happening in someone else’s presence. As has been said many times on this thread, this is often unavoidable and even more often hard to pin down exactly anyway. What I am struggling to understand is OP giving a very clear context - her PIL undermining her parenting, nagging her about her DS not walking yet, then deliberately encouraging him to achieve that milestone while she’s out of the room for five minutes - and posters telling her that that they wouldn’t be bothered by that, she needs to stop being so precious, etc etc.
Surely the fact that some posters are not troubled by someone else seeing their child’s milestones in the wider sense does not mean that OP is wrong to be upset in her specific case where there is far more going on?

Thanks. I did try to give context in the op and early on in the thread.

I haven't just come on saying "my baby walked at nursery, aibu to be fuming".

My fil, who I've been nothing but nice to. Doesn't like it because I don't do what he says. He used to people always doing what he says and agreeing with him and now here I am with my own way of doing things and he doesn't like it. To add to that I work with early years so that really pushes his nose out of joint.

Anyway, we are actually allowed to have emotional responses. We are all ( or most of us!) equipped with emotions and reason and the two work as complementary though sometimes opposite forces.

I think this is a really good point. Surely a lot of our maternal feelings and responses are fairly irrational - and, personally, I don’t think that anyone who can’t persuade themselves out of them by logic is childish, precious, self-indulgent or any of the other charges being levelled at them here.

What nonsense. This ‘mum guilt’ thing is a socially-imposed meme in the wake of workplace/equal pay legislation, not something innate. Most women with children have always worked, and even those who didn’t certainly weren’t poring over their children’s every developmental stage. Children belong to the world, as well as to their parents.

@PlasticOno If someone has been entirely conditioned by society to feel mum guilt and it’s not innate, does it still make them childish, self-indulgent and precious if they can’t shake that guilt off?

Why is it a shit nursery?? The child
Made an important developmental step, the nursery informed the parents, what's wrong with that?
Are they all supposed to conspire to make the mother believe she was the first to witness it?? Honestly, grow up!!!!

You don't see an issue that the in-laws were attempting to force a baby to walk when anyone who knows anything about babies knows they walk in their own time? 🙄

Thanks for quoting and questioning me 4 days later 🙄... As I received a large number of thanks and have been quoted by others agreeing with my post, I'm clearly not alone in thinking encouragement by loving relatives is acceptable.

Perhaps you could look up the difference between encourage and force, as I didn't condone forcing and neither had it been suggested that this was the case.

As I said on the thread, my own mother and sister encouraged my first baby and indeed he took his first steps while I was in the shower. It was disappointing that I didn't witness it, but at 11 months, he was ready to move on from cruising, so no, I had no issue with my relatives encouraging him. My mother raised 5 babies and we all walked successfully and with no apparent trauma from being encouraged.

I don't have your apparent qualifications (?) in child development, but my younger children also were ready and walking multiple steps by 12 months.