"stop being silly"

[AliceAbsolum]

MIL has DD (21 months) 2 days a week. She's really good with her overall. BUT she doesn't share my (very high) gentle parenting standards.
She rarely takes DD out so by 5pm she's running around the house with loads of energy and MIL will often tell her to stop being so silly.
Or if she's crying she'll say don't cry, don't be upset.

Now maybe I'm being a batshit pfb. Highly likely.
But basically I'm worried DDs being invalidated and it'll impact her mental health in the future.

I don't intend to say anything obviously. It's just hard to hand your child over to your village.

But this is exactly the point the previous poster made, for the last 10 years or so there have been vast amounts of children brought up using gentle parenting methods and kids mental health is worse than ever. It’s the ridiculous pandering to every whim that has cause kids to not be able to hope with any set backs as they get older.

She rarely takes DD out so by 5pm she's running around the house with loads of energy

This would concern me. Why doesn't she take her out?

What does MIL do with your daughter all day long?

Reading/story telling, drawing/painting/artwork, baking, playing, games, doing puzzles, building duplo towers...... or what?

I hope the little girl isn't just parked in front of the TV or otherwise left to her own devices.

Can she not take her out a bit more? Is she happy with the arrangement? I wouldn't be happy with that type of parenting with such a young child.

Spot on. My sister and me were brought up in the 60s/70s. Always told we were being silly because we were. We were told to get up so an adult could have the seat: shock, horror. Parents parented kids back then and kids respected that. Fucking world has gone mad

I can imagine loads of scenarios where a 2 year old can be told to stop being silly...because they are being silly!

That's normal behaviour for a 2 year old. It's the job of people around them to teach them what's appropriate and what's not.

If you don't like what the (free) caregiver you have chosen is doing, you can always or for an alternative (paid) caregiver.

I'd be more worried by the fact that you've clearly never encountered a situation where you had to tell your 2 year old to stop being silly.

That thread cheered me up and made me say “enough internet for today” in equal measure

I think this summarises nicely why highly gentle parenting doesn’t work. Because people can’t look beyond that week. I get it / toddlerhood is like living in a bubble you think is never going to burst. But I don’t think people think so far ahead and they really should!

I wonder if @mnhq could do reward sticker sheets?....
What would we get them awarded for? 🤔

This is made up.

The causes of the rise in MH issues are known to be poverty, social media pressure, reduced support services, poor MH provision, increased insecurity about the future (both individual and global).

Honestly this world has gone mad if we think invalidating the feelings of a 21 month old might affect their mental health.
I despair of gentle parenting.
Sensible parenting has been around as long as time itself, why not just stick with this.

Well if the OP wants her DD to play out then she can pay the £500 a month I guess for nursery! But it’s not reasonable to make demands of OP’s MIL. I imagine if she has a garden she will let her play there.

You know that some people live in flags don’t you? Or places with no usable outdoor space?

Sorry but simply having feelings about something doesn’t make them valid.

Children have to live in and grow up in the world. Not everyone will 'validate her feelings;' I promise you that.

That’s why it’s important to a child’s wellbeing that their nearest and dearest do.

'It's just hard to hand your child over to your village'

What a horrible thing to say.

Your child's loving grandmother is not doing anything wrong.

Gentle parenting is a load of crap unless you specifically want your child to grow up and be unable to cope with anything.

This is why I stopped teaching Higher Education. We had parents phoning in to get exam dates changed because they were clashing with the family ski holiday. Complaints about grades when their legally adult children hadn't done the coursework. Absolutely batshit.

Exactly! And they wonder why there is a mental health crisis with children and young people… 🙄

Too many weak, avoidant adults pandering to their offspring instead of parenting.

Actually dialling down the angst and upholding strong (but kind) boundaries allows children to be psychologically safe, reassured that adults are in charge.

Within reason. No children get mental health issues from being told by grandma that they're being silly.

Honestly this “mustn’t upset the children” mentality is so annoying and selfish. Like those wanker parents who let their kids climb up the slides at the park and do nothing about when other kids who queued the right way fair and square. A mum in my NCT group was like this and now homeschools because the school apparently can’t meet her kids’s needs

I’m pretty sure one of these mums was at my local indoor funfair at half term too. Took DS into one of those fun houses and at the very end it has a hamster wheel type thing that goes round by itself. There was a child splayed out across it just lolling about as it turned, but because he stretched the whole length of it it would have been impossible to step over him as we’d have fallen on him as the wheel moved. I was looking around for a parent, there were a few standing nearby obviously waiting for their kids to come out. The problem was that behind us was an escalator and loads of people were appearing. I was the only adult on that side and and a loads of kids asked “can we step over him” like I worked there or something. I realised how dangerous this was to have a load of kids potentially stuck on a moving escalator so I said “Excuse me sweetheart can you move please”. He did nothing, just kept giggling, and I could see the next kids coming down the elevator were gonna be stuck in about 0.5 seconds so I made a snap decision. I picked the boy up and hurried him to the other side so the stuck kids could one out the attraction. It turns out his mum was one of the women standing nearby the whole time!! She told me not to touch her child (🙄) I said if I hadn’t picked him up a load of kids would have been trampling on him or been injured themselves and she ought to thank me. She just said I have no right to touch her child. Idiot

I like to think I parent gently but I would never have validated that a turning off a TV show was a hardship for them. It’s bedtime, that’s life get a grip. That IS overly gentle. How are they gonna cope with actually hardship if they think not being able to watch TV is traumatic?

It’s abuse to tell a child to stop being silly

Blimey you’d positively faint at what I’ve said to my kids in the past.

The MIL isn’t parenting she’s babysitting

They are SOME causes, that list is not exhaustive.

Child poverty is not a new thing.

I don't really like the whole 'stop being silly' thing about behaviour that isn't actually silly, like a child being upset about something. It was a favourite phrase of my gran and I still remember specific situations she used it in. She was very much of that 'Now now, stop being silly' school, but she had her own deeply entrenched issues related to emotions that I think really shaped how she treated me. It wasn't out of unkindness but I think her childhood had not allowed for any 'silliness' and it was a trigger for her.

That said, while I wouldn't really like that kind of language being used, I probably wouldn't say anything because at the end of the day she's doing two days a week of childcare. It's the problem with family childcare really, you have to be grateful so can't ever really complain or feel like you can do anything in the way you would if you were paying a third party.

But how is never checking her behaviour validating her feelings?

Seriously some of you will shit yourselves when your kids start secondary school and other kids will call them stupid cunts because they got in their way in the corridor (I live in an affluent area BTW, this is from an outstanding school)