to be disapointed with grandmother????

[thumpinghead]

My husbands step mother has taught my three year old daughter to find seed pods in the garden, crush them and scatter them on the lawn. Am I being neurotic to now worry about daughter messing with possibley poisonous seeds that she was oblivious to before? cant decide if she was stupid and irresponsible teaching her this, or I am being a silly?

Eh?

You're being silly.

I'd be more bothered about my lawn tbh

um i'd say you were being slightly over the top, I'd encourage nature things, I'd presume though your grandmother would know what was safe though?

I think you have issues with your step MIL tbh. I would try to examine what those are and then decide if you are blowing this out of proportion.

Do you generally think it is stupid and irresponsible to teach children stuff?

Watch out for reading. Nothing more dangerous than the notions they've got in they books.

YABU. unless she was then telling her to eat the crushed pods.

encourage hand washing after messsing around in the garden.

well, the step mil doesnt know if the seeds are poisonous or not, but I`m just worried that she has started something now and introduced a risk. My daughter won't know which are and aren't poisonous in future.

YABU. It sounds like you just don't like your step MIL. I would be more annoyed at random plants popping up all over my lawn tbh.

presumably as DD is 3 she will be supervised when playing out, and if you see her cramming her mouth with seeds, you can intervene?

Dont always supervise her playing out, not every second, she comes and goes. I keep an eye on her, but don`t watch her every second.

is there anything poisonous in your garden?

Not that I am aware of.

Well, we moved here in January and its only now that some of the plants are identifyable as they are flowering IYKWIM. This is why I am nervous of her messing until we are certain.

perhaps you could buy some sort of gardening book

encourage DD to dig and plant and play in a set area. she is old enough to help bed out plants etc...

really don't think you have anything to be uspet abut with MIL

I do wonder about some people's commonsense. It's one thing to introduce young children to nature, but on the face of it that's not what happened. Taking seeds from a plant and putting them in some compost to see what grows is a perfectly valid thing to do(*). Taking seeds and scattering them around on the lawn is, well, strange, to say the least.

Of course, you're right to be concerned that your child might repeat that behaviour in your garden when you have no idea whether you have any plants that have poisonous or irritative seeds.

(*) Providing you know what you're doing - does your sMIL? There's a plant in our front garden that's been there for years. I have no idea what it's called, and I've only just noticed that it has seeds. Since I don't know what it is, I don't know whether handling those seeds would be a good idea or not. And there isn't a 3yo around here whose safety I need to be concerned about.

You are being silly - your DD is unlikely to come to much harm handling seeds - just teach her not to eat them.

Yeah, i know, its just I wouldnt have had to had the stupid woman not done it. Its like my Dad showed her how to sprinkle salt onto her dinner FFS! We have dealt with it and educated her etc but had he just not done it, life would have been easier. I do wonder about "responsible adults" sometimes.

I can't think of that many poisonous seedpods in commonly grown garden plants.

Laburnum is the only one that springs to mind. Is there any laburnum in the garden? If not, I think you're probably fine. But hand washing afer gardening is always sensible.

And I love popping seed pods!

I was going to say about laburnum too. (they can be fatally poisonous).
You just need to know what plants are in the garden that may pose a danger. And teach your DD never to eat plants/berries etc without asking a grown-up first.
www.thekidsgarden.co.uk/plants-avoid-garden.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_poisonous_plants
Symptoms/first aid treatment...www.thekidsgarden.co.uk/poisonous-plants-faqs.html

Another plant with poisonous seed pods you might have in your garden is lupins.

How very sad that you are 'disappointed' that your daughter had a lovely game playing in the garden with her Granny learning how to pop seeds.

What I wouldn't give for my daughter to have an interested Granny spending time with her in the garden.

OP YABU and joyless.