In laws feeding my daughter things

[Mummystrawb]

Hello,

I just wanted to see how people would approach this situation. My in laws will soon be having our 14 month old daughter once a fortnight when I return from mat leave. The other night, they kindly babysat whilst me & dad went out for a meal.

I sent a huge pack up of things for my daughter- homemade finger foods/fruits/yoghurt etc and things she is used to eating. We choose not to give her things with additives/added sugar etc whilst she’s so young.

When we collected her, my MIL commented that she “wasn’t keen” on the food I’d sent for her. They had decided to feed her some Heinz ‘biscotti’ which had sugar listed as the second ingredients and some fruit gummy “worms” that were full of additives and colourings.

Its really important to me that she has a healthy diet and, although I’m grateful they’re helping with childcare, I don’t want to do this at the sacrifice of her eating healthily.

How would you approach this? I find it tricky to know how to ask them to do to this as they didn’t ask for permission in the first place or say “was it ok that she had those?” Etc.

Thanks

I'm really impressed you can remember back to when you were 14 months! Regardless, I think hot ribena in bed is a terrible idea for a 14 month old!

Or if you're remembering back to when you were primary school aged then that's not really comparable is it.

If OP was annoyed the GPS were giving a 12 year old wine would you say "my grandparents let me have wine when I was 25 and it never did me any harm"?

I'd let it go if it's one or two sugary items a fortnight when her diet is otherwise good

The biscotti wouldn't bother me, but gummy worms are a choking hazard

I was quite precious about sugar and treats with my first. FAR less so with my 2nd.

A treat like a biscuit now and then is totally fine IMO, but they need to know that chewy sweets aren't safe.

If you're not happy with any treats/biscuits tell them in no uncertain terms. But keep in mind, it is coming from a place of kindness, and love towards your child.

Hmm, I wasn’t drawing an exact comparison at a specific age….i was talking about GMP wanting to make it special. If you read my post it was about a compromise where they both give a little and agree it up front, and encourage go to find other ways to “treat” gc that aren’t food .

i think you’re being deliberately obtuse in that response 🙄🤦‍♀️

I think it's perfectly ok to say that you don't want her fed sugar.

The problem is not mainly them-it's you. You aren't communicating what you want.

You need to work on telling them what you want, without offending them. Have your reasons ready if they challenge. Remain polite and , most importantly, not defensive or rude. But insist.

It isn't the case that because they are doing you a favour, they are right to ignore your philosophy on food. Equally, there are areas where you'll have to let them do things their way eh eg if she sleeps on the move. Remember they aren't paid care, and even a paid nanny has her way of doing things, and flexible arrangements work best.

Finally, expect that they'll be giving her the occasional treat, and let it go.

If they insist on feeding her crap constantly, I would find other childcare. She's your child. How you want to raise her matters. But they aren't mind readers and maybe they are people who can read hinting.

Personally I wouldn't worry too much.
When you say gummy worms, were they the Kiddilicious ones for 12 months plus? I let my toddler have the odd treat (older brother so hard to avoid) and it's really not a problem.

Or probably they aren't fine. Childhood obesity rates are soaring. Fat children will be fat, unhealthy adults who will die early and have compromised quality of life.

If you love your children and grandchildren then feed them a healthy diet instead of going for the lazy option of letting them eat crap.

Yes teenagers may well go off the rails for a few years and children will eat junk at parties which can't be helped, but feeding a whole pack of sweets to a 14 month old who would be equally happy with fruit is not really justifiable.

Exactly - if she wants to be all oh I'm granny I give treats and zero discipline that's fine as an odd 'treat'. It's not great consistent childcare and it isn't really being a fun granny - it's being a lazy granny.

My grandparents were so fun. We did so much! They took us on the train and bus places like the beach, parks, softplay, crafts. We were NEVER picked up clean, but we always had a ball. Sure we maybe would have an ice cream or something but it wasn't constant, was only if we ate our proper meal first and we had rules to follow and consequences if we didn't.

Centering it around treats and discipline is a really lazy, low effort way to be seen as fun.

Have you actually had a conversation with them about no sugar until she is a certain age? Parents in my family/friend group have always had different food rules and I understand it being more difficult children get older and know what they like or what other children have, but I cannot understand how people don't respect the no sugar rule for small children. It is addictive and not necessary and the longer they don't know it exists the better as far as I'm concerned.

Before making any judgements, try and have a chat with MIL. It may be that the food you sent was not as great as you thought, and I would assume that MIL has your DC's interests at heart. Given she has raised children herself I would imagine that preparing one meal for an infant once a fortnight is not beyond her, but maybe that meal will look different to what you might prepare, which is fine. Play this right and it could open up new foods to your DC.

But I agree a bag of jelly gummies does not replace a meal.

Haven’t RTFT, but seen the poll result so far.
No you’re not BU, but obviously as per MN rules, your child should be fed any old crap, especially if you’re relying on free childcare. If you’re depending on childcare from DGPs then they’re allowed to feed her kebabs, Diet Coke and a McFlurry - thems just the rules!
If you’re wanting to feed your child a healthy balanced diet then send them to nursery and pay for it, but obviously once there you should be grateful for the overstretched nursery staff, and they are also permitted to feed your child whatever lazy ass crap they fancy as well. You’re only her parents but that apparently doesn’t give you the right to want the best.

You're expecting your in-laws to act as substitute parents, following your parenting rules as if you'd hired them to stand in for you. It's irrelevant that you don't need the childcare, you're still treating them as employees.

They are not substitutes for you. They are DD's grandparents. It's a totally different role that stands alone: they're part of your child's wider family and, hopefully, lynchpins in her lifetime support network. This is about building their personal relationship with DD as an individual; it's an important factor in her long-term socialisation and emotional security.

In short, you need to see them as grandparents in their own right. They're no longer just DH's parents. They've expressed their interest in building a solid relationship with DD and, as her parent, it would be wise to facilitate that.

FWIW, grandparents are the traditional source of less-healthy snacks 😉 My parents were obsessed with diet & nutrition, which my grandparents did their level best to compensate (Werther's Butterscotch and treacle tart are outstanding memories). Once they became grandparents, my still-orthorexic parents magicked up a steady supply of cakes, crisps and Haribos for the kids!

Not the gotcha you think it is. One list is natural, the other upf man made.

But still, dad job to have a word and decide if it's worth changing childcare / falling out

I found lots of older relatives will really push junk food and screens at babies and kids so they're liked.

My DM constantly holding her phone up to my 3mo used to drive me crazy. I think my son's first taste of cake was a random aunt feeding him chocolate cake at 9m when we weren't looking. For me it was less annoying as the kids got older. You can give directions but I found in reality they sneak food and 'forget' guidelines. My nephew was on diet for a health condition and my parents still ignored it.

All you can realistically do is limit the time spent with grandparents if they're going to be bad influences.

Ignore the idiots banging on about paying for childcare. Whether a mum can afford to pay for childcare or not, Grandparents should be supportive of their children. Using the argument of "you can pay for childcare" is disgusting and penalises people without villages. Best way they can be supportive is to be sensitive to boundaries set up. It's so hard but get your husband (it's his responsibility) to feedback on the boundary you've set in place. If they continuously challenge it or other boundaries then keep a note and talk to a therapist as you'll need it. The list will help you see that you aren't "overreacting" or "sensitive" or "ungrateful" if you take a step back and see an unhealthy pattern. Mistakes happen and hopefully that's all it is but if not... boundaries

I think she was just expecting them to have a little bit of common sense and not feed sweets to an actual baby. Pretty reasonable really.

But now she knows they're not sensible she just needs to sort alternative childcare.

Yabu. Don't send to dpil then and pay for childcare.

Not really, as OP says that they get free childcare so money isn't an issue. OP's partner wants his mum to be involved with their child.

Well, the first post does nail it. If she wants to stop mil doing this, she needs to put the child in childcare...

All of which have nutritional value which a pack of gummy worms and a sweet biscuit do not.

Surely you can't really believe that fruit and vegetables with naturally occurring sugars are the same nutrition wise as sweets and biscuits? You're just being goady now.

A biscotti once a fortnight will not cost your daughter a healthy diet.

unclench and chill and leave it alone. GPS get to spoil. It’s the job description.

They are obviously either incapable or unwilling to provide their grandchild with healthy, nutritional food.

Lots of people take their own food for babies and toddlers. Her in-laws only looked after her for one evening and had stuffed her full of sugary treats with no nutritional value.

OP doesn't need to chill but her in-laws do need to follow her instructions about her daughter's diet if they want to provide childcare.

YANBU. I would not be allowing them to have her unsupervised no matter how much partner might want it.

Don’t ever leave your child with someone you cannot trust, regardless of who they are.

She's not a beggar. OP has said that she gets free childcare and the arrangement for her in-laws to look after her daughter for one day a fortnight is only because her partner wants his parents to be involved. She doesn't need the childcare so if they can't or won't follow her very reasonable rules for feeding her daughter, they shouldn't be allowed to look after her.

What's weird is that your in laws probably didn't feed your DH gummy sweets instead of meals when he was a toddler, so why is it OK for a grandkid?

My MIL did this, although the kids were quite a bit older when she first had them alone. They came back completely nuts, wouldn't sleep... miserable experience for everyone. She just seems to have forgotten or doesn't want to face that kids throwing food everywhere is basically it for a long time. But you can't jump straight from milk to not a crumb being left. As others have said, that's lazy, and undermines the good work you're doing elsewhere.