AIBU to think my MIL should stop commenting on my parenting?

[DearDog96]

DD turned 4 last month and is our only child (6 months pregnant with baby no. 2). She’s still not potty trained after several attempts, and after the most recent one in January we decided to go back to nappies for a bit to reset things and hopefully try again soon. She also still uses a dummy, mainly at night or at home when relaxing - we rarely let her use it when out and about, and has a bottle of milk at might to fall asleep with. I’ll admit we’ve probably babied her more than we should and been too lenient, but we’ll work on potty training once the weather improves and the dummy and bottle will hopefully go after that (one battle at once and all!). Her dentist has said her teeth are fine so far, so no immediate concerns over that. Over Easter the in-laws were visiting and my MIL kept making comments at DD, telling her she’s too old for nappies, dummies etc. and she’s gonna get bullied when she starts school in September.

I fully plan on having all these things solved in time for school, plus the world is a different place now compared to when she had her kids. AIBU to think she should just keep her nose out and let me parent how I want to

I agree with a lot of this. I think there is a lot of expectations around potty training on it being as simple as here is a potty you now wee on the potty, tell me when you need a wee which misses out a lot for key steps in learning the skills to master potty training

We introduced a potty with my eldest at 7 months and when she started to sit unfortunately after a spell in hospital she refused to use it from 13 months. When it came to potty training we did it at 2.5, we would have done it earlier but as a 1st percentile baby toddler we couldn't find any underwear small enough. Before we commit to no more nappies we did a series of small sessions without a nappy on. We started with an hour and built from there. She needed teaching what a potty is, the sensation of when you need a wee, to hold a wee until your bladder is fuller. The first hour we did without a nappy on she wee every 3 or 4 minutes. By the third time we were doing this she wee once in the hour. We treated pull ups like knickers whilst we were working up to doing the full training and kept putting her on the toilet/potty throughout the day when we were at home. Until we started training we were in cloth nappies we only moved to disposables at the start of training for ease of getting to use the toilet when it was available

Can you set prizes for so mant stars? Maybe 5 she gets a small treat, 10 another nicer treat, 15 means a soft play trip etc

Hi, been following along but not commenting - well done for the progress made so far @DearDog96

We potty trained a long time ago now but I remember I had a sheet on the back of the toilet door. It wasnt exactly a star chart it was a picture of a butterfly with circles on its wings. When DD did a wee in the toilet she put a sticker on one of the circles. When all the butterfly circles has stickers she chose something from the shop - something small like a magazine (this was before magazines cost £8 😂)

We didn't have a dummy or bottle problem but we had a massive massive thumb sucking problem. Be very careful you don't replace dummy with this.

For this, I read that it takes 3 days to break a habit. So for 3 days straight I just gave her absolutely no opportunity to suck the thumb. It was exhausting as it meant no TV, no books, basically very little down time as this was the time she would suck. We did loads of outdoor time so she was shattered and when home we kept hands busy so we did loads of playdoh and baking and I also bought lots of new art kits and we did one after another!

Bed time was harder. Very strong sleep association. We cracked days first then went for nights. It took a couple of nights of me sitting with her while she fell asleep, holding the hand with the thumb she sucked. She did cry but after a few nights the habit had gone. I wished I had done it years earlier.

Yep that’s what we’ve done! We said we’d take her to the shop when she gets to 10 stars (1 for wee, 2 for poo) on the chart