to be pissed off that my MIL is annoyed that my 15mo can talk?

[Spottedmirror]

My 15mo is becoming a chatty little thing. Lots of new words by the day and happily starting to sing the odd word on a song “quick, quick, quick” in Polly had a Dolly or “inkle!” in Twinkle Twinkle, that kind of thing.

LO is our PFB after over a decade of trying so we are VERY proud, but I’m very careful not to be too overbearing (I know how wearing that is on other people) whilst still remaining encouraging. Lots of “yes that’s right shoes” when she points at shoes and whatever else - surely just normal parenting?
(and if anything I think I consciously keep my voice down when parenting outside our home because I’m always so aware that I might hurt someone who wants a baby but isn’t where we are now).

SIL is coming back from Australia for an extended stay. We have yet to meet her little one who is 3 (due to being mid-miscarriage when they were last here). Her 3yo is a very active and happy child by all accounts but as yet doesn’t speak.

MIL is very annoyed that my LO can speak and is picking things up rapidly. Each time we FaceTime she is outright annoyed that my child is chatting away with us.
She sighs, rolls her eyes and says things like “she doesn’t stop talking!” and makes snide remarks like “maybe Mummy talks too much!” or “mummy should turn your pram round so you two aren’t always chatting!”

On Boxing Day via FaceTime she hinted that when we visit her house and DIL is there, we should try not to encourage our child to talk.
She was insinuating that our 15 month old was showing off.

I understand that BIL and DIL are possibly concerned about potential issues but that shouldn’t be taken out on our small child.

I was a bit shocked last night by the hints on the phone call and I was working last night so I’ve stewed over it a bit.
Surely I’m not unreasonable feel pissed off by this?

EDIT: should add if I wasn’t out the door to work as the call was happening, I’d have probably told her to repeat what she had said.

Narcissistic triangulation and splitting of the children so they can’t become allies.

I have 2 DC’s (now young adults), dd1 said her first word at 9 month and didn’t shut up from that point onwards…..she’s now almost 22 and still doesn’t shut up. Dd2 was non verbal until 5 and is now 19 and struggles with communication and speech. Both my dc are diagnosed autistic. I would never have expected dd1 to keep her mouth shut and I would never expect people to silence their child around my non verbal child, it’s just crazy. Yes I found it upsetting seeing children dd2’s age that were more chatty, I find it even harder now she’s 19 and isn’t independent (needs 25 hour care), but I wouldn’t expect anyone to act differently around us.

Always chat to your baby/child, always encourage them to communicate…..it’s really important. You can’t silence a 15 month old baby.

This.

I’m sorry but some people are just thick. Who on earth hasn’t heard that communicating with a child in early years is a good thing (speaking to Mummy etc). Absolutely bizarre.

And as for feeling bad for the three year old if her worry is coming out sideways in this manner it’s still bizarre

All the children i have known that have grown up in a multilingual environment like this have been late to start speaking. I am no expert, but my understanding is that it takes time for them to parse out the different languages and work out where to start. But once they do, yes, they hit the ground running.

She sighs, rolls her eyes and says things like “she doesn’t stop talking!” and makes snide remarks like “maybe Mummy talks too much!” or “mummy should turn your pram round so you two aren’t always chatting!”

come on she is of course insinuating that her granddaughter should stop talking. It is batshit.

I have every sympathy with worrying about a late talker but trying to shut up your other grandchild is weird. OP isn't boasting about her child or shoving it in MIL's face - MIL's problem is hearing her grandchild speak. That's bizarre.

This sort of glib comment is not actually reassuring to parents though - lots of children who are totally non-verbal at 3 do have an underlying issue and are not just 'hiding' their ability.

DIL is very much the best child EVER! Whereas we are just the people who do every thing for this woman.

Who is DIL? I thought that stood for daughter in law? Do you mean your daughter in law? Or is this your mother in law's daughter?

MiL’s problem is her problem - she is missing out on enjoying the grandchild close to hand. If she is unpleasant when you talk to her or spend time together then reduce the time if cutting it out entirely is too difficult. To criticise a grandchild in this way for talking “too early” is not normal behaviour in the slightest.

If DH and his sister don’t get on then they will gradually drift apart. I’m sure they are concerned about the child but if he has been assessed and there isn’t a language deficit in eg comprehension then it may well be he will speak late but fluently. Its not uncommon for OPOL children to speak a little later but then bilingually. As you say - he will be regularly meeting children speaking earlier, this won’t be a new experience for them.

Honestly don’t overthink it - meet your nephew, come home again, leave them to stew.

Of course it's personal. She's telling the op that she speaks too much to her child and to face the pram forward so they don't chat too much. In fact she's not telling the op she's pretending to talk to the child in that passive aggressive fashion.

Honestly I know it's normal but these things are not worth fretting about. I have five adult sons and the age they began talking had absolutely no relevance to anything ever. It's more about personality than intelligence in my experience. My youngest was the latest talker and he turned out to be incredibly intelligent. So just point that out if the subject crops up.

No she does understand, this isn't a matter of ignorance. But there's a dynamic in personality disordered people who do this whole "golden child" / "black sheep" splitting thing within their families that's really difficult to get your head around if you haven't experienced it.

Because the nephew is the son of the golden child, he is the golden grandchild - and therefore he is the best, at everything. He's perfect. That is the grandmother's perspective.

(Obviously emotionally mature people can understand that he is perfect and can be loved 100% with or without a disability but people like the grandmother are very status focused).

Unlike other people, who alter their perspective when it is challenged, if something challenges her view she feels distress and rage. Because she can never be wrong. She is also completely unable to take accountability for her own feelings, because she can never be wrong. So those feelings must be someone else's fault. They can't be the fault of anyone golden, therefore the person left to blame is the OP and her child.

On some rational level she probably knows that expressing this outright would make her look like a psycho which is why she's actually restraining herself to only make these snide sideways remarks. But it is how she feels and I doubt it will change. These things always come out / escalate at one point or another. Give it a few years and OP's daughter will be a "nasty, mean, spoiled little girl". Hence why a lot of people advise distance from this sort of grandparent.

Occasionally a switch does flip and a grandchild can suddenly become a golden grandchild, if the status of their achievements is too alluring for the personality disordered grandparent to resist and if they are able to flatter the grandparent perhaps because they share similar interests and most importantly because they happen to be non defiant and eager to please, which some children naturally are.

The main takeaway is that you just can't really change people like this. You have to change your mindset to interested observation instead of active participation and/or reaction to their behaviours / "games". Sometimes completely ignoring / not reacting makes people like this calmer and more pleasant to be around. They actually don't like any negative emotions, get angry/defensive and then have to find someone to blame (never themselves). But can be superficially nice.

I imagine there is a great deal of concern that a 3yo is not yet speaking. She’s probably worried how tough it will be for the parents to see a child less than half the age chatting away with ease. I’m not sure what the answer is, but it’s not like you can stop your child from taking. Maybe you need to speak to your MIL about it before you go. Her expectations are unrealistic, but maybe there’s a sensitive way of dealing with it. I don’t what that would be, but I suspect that’s where this is all coming from.

@Spottedmirror my dd was a chatter box from young and my dm hated it.
Mainly because dd would talk to me when dm was on the phone and dm wanted her to be quiet and me to concentrate fully on dm’s words.
Dm actually said ‘you should lock her in a room on her own for an hour a day until she realises that she can’t monopolise you all the time.’ Dd was about 3 years old at the time.
I just laughed and told dm that would never happen.

Tell your mil that you will not stop your dd from talking to appease anyone.

Which version makes it normal or remotely OK to tell parents to prevent their 15 month old from speaking? Would it be normal to tell them to keep the child seated because the cousin isn’t walking? Yes there are always two sides but the fact that one side is in therapy tells its own story.

Golden Child scenarios and families are commonplace, as are fractured relationships within and between families. Its not that hard to imagine someone having a favoured DGC because its not a rare scenario.

DC speak, walk and pass through the early stages of standard development at their own pace. I never saw early as something to take pride in or late stages to be something shameful. Nor is an early talker or walker “rubbing it in”. It is the DGM making an issue of this, she has the problem and one solution for the OP’s DH is simply to keep away from it all.

Sometimes it is because of parenting though. There is a link between excessive screentime and delayed speech for example.

I think the point you're missing is that all of this is obviously written by the OP who will be biased in her account of what actually did/didn't happen.

Sorry I did mean SIL!

As a parent of a non verbal child who was late with most milestones, your MIL sounds absolutely bat shit. Did I feel upset (in private) that my child wasn't developing at the same rate as their peers, absolutely, would I have ever wanted another parent to avoid seeing me or alter the way they interact with their own child because of my child's difficulties- absolutely not!

Probably time to have a tough convo with your MIL - both children are her grandchildren and she isn't treating them equally or fairly. If her other grandchild does have as yet undiagnosed condition this is something that the whole family are going to have to navigate without unfairly impacting your child.

She's an adult. 'It coming out wrong' is not an excuse. She needs to be put straight in no uncertain terms. She should be absolutely ashamed of herself, being discouraging and snide about her own tiny gd's development like that. And even saying it to the child herself. Appalling behaviour!

Wow she sounds awful and you sound lovely and have dealt with her comments much more graciously than most would have!

Imagine being so pathetic to eye roll a baby and say they’re showing at 15 months old! And to tell you to turn her pram around and stop talking to her. What a nasty bitter woman.

What a fruit loop, I’d be stepping back from her massively OP!

There maybe a link but if a child's not speaking by three ,there is usually more going on the excessive speech screen time.

MIL sounds weird, to the point where I'm surprised you're giving her any headspace over this. Your daughter is completely on track with language milestones so the fact that your MIL thinks it's out of the ordinary (and in particular, thinks it's an issue) shows she either knows nothing about children or has a VERY weird hangup about her other grandchild.

Obviously you don't need to try and limit your daughter's talking. You know yourself your child is normal and your MIL is very odd. Give MIL a wide berth and carry on as normal.

Genuinely curious and not trying to be inflammatory, but why?

Given children build their worlds from what they experience, would a child whose parents ignore them/ don't 'life commentate' (say, because they are glued to their phone) and never read to them, and who then entered school with a S&L problem really have exactly the same chance of having the same problem if they were regularly practising speech/ hearing it modelled with an engaged parent?

I accept in some cases it will have nothing to do with parents, as I know of someone with a S&L problem whose sibling is fine, but all cases?

@Daaaaahling really interesting post.

Ugh. I absolutely knew this was going to be related to SIL being the golden child. Because if MIL was genuinely worried about her other grandchild, she would seem, you know, WORRIED, and maybe anxious, and concerned. She surely wouldn’t seem “annoyed” at your DC talking! The fact is that she seems to indicate that she’s more worried about an adult (SIL) being upset, than either of the children involved. I think your DH might have the right idea about not going, but I understand you might have to suck it up because he wants to meet his nephew. But maybe after Christmas, it’s time for a short break from seeing (or helping!) MIL.

And OP, you sound plenty compassionate about others going through pregnancy loss and infertility, as well as also caring about your nephew not meeting milestones. Concern: normal. MIL saying your 15-month-old child needs to STFU: not normal. Please don’t worry! You’re the normal one 😂