help! how to deal with bil's unruly 2 yr old

[hazlinh]

b-i-l, wife and nearly 2-yr old kid staying with me, dh and my 9mth old for the week. am ready to tear my hair out cos she runs around loose in my house, opens all the drawers in the kitchens and once took out a knife!!which i have now hidden away! (have told her not to open the drawers very calmly, but she insists on doing stuff i've specifically told her not to), unfolds all my bedlinens and towels and drags them across the house, takes earth from all the flower pots and scatters them all over my carpets deliberately, takes my daughter's toys and dumps them in the kitchen sink, crushes biscuits and deliberately scatters the crumbs all over,the list goes on and on. her parents just seem to think it's ok, and my bloody dh just laughs. but i'm appalled. perhaps it is normal behaviour for her in their house, but surely you teach kids not to misbehave when you are in someone else's house??the parents seem to think it's cute. can someone please tell me if i'm being unreasonable to expect a two year old to behave in my house?? my brother's kids never did anything like this when they were two years old. is it wrong to expect a certain level of discipline among kids????someone pls help!!!i may do something i regret!!

is it ok for me to tell her off nicely?is it wrong if i scold her in my own house?? am worried the in-laws may label me abusive!!

I think she is being a two year old in a strange environment...however it's not on that you should have to tidy up after her tornado. Dh can tidy up, and beside he will be laughing on the other side of his face in a few months when his own flesh and blood is doing all these things (even the perfect ones have accidents, even if they are never intentionally messy).

I would use the opportunity to do a little babyproofing (your kitchen will need to be secure against your little one soon, you could put child locks on your linen cupboard, plants put up high or outside etc.)

It sounds like scolding will only make her more determined and it's simply not worth it with no backup from the other 3 adults. Just get them to tidy up their share of her disasters and look forward to them leaving.

Finally my sympathy, my son is allergic to egg and peanut and I get sick of kids running around my house eating all manner of food and smearing it everywhere, which means ds has to spend an hour in his cot the minute they leave so that I can remove every trace. I have seen (at another house) a kid decimate the wine glasses and only the weakest of apologies from the mother. So frustrating.

oh dear kinderbob. that sounds terrible (peanut etc)

so that leaves me to arrive at only one conclusion...if i bring my dd to someone's house, i can allow her to run amok and terrorise the plants there and it's ok, and no one will bat an eyelid and they'll all say 'aww, how cute,'??

No you take her round and she is a perfect angel, and everyone says "awh, isn't she good!".

My ds can be in a house with biscuits on the coffee table and he will completely ignore them as he knows he is only allowed food from mummy or daddy or when in his highchair. Yesterday he ignored a slice of cake a kid left next to him at Playcentre. I trust him more than I thought I would ever be able to trust a 20 month old, it's just he only has to touch the residue to get a reaction, and if he can't see it because it's on a toy or something...

I have plenty of friends with children with wonderful manners, and one dear friend who makes her older children do health and safety checks before we visit - put away balloons (allergy to latex) vacuum carpet, get out a box of washed toys. She is amazing and luckily her boy and ds get on like a house on fire. Her boy is 19 months and will take your empty cup and put it in the dishwasher.

I think the thing we both have in common is that if our kids start to loose it, we remove them from the situation before the plants get it.

excellent .. your house is being toddler tested

so far she's instructing in the fine art of

.. putting locks on all kitchen drawers and cupboards
moving flower pots to top shelves or removing them from house
not leaving food around, and instigating firm rules on where they are allowed to eat
putting folded clean laundry away in a drawer / cupboard

i think you should be grateful

but seriously ... its not the child you need to scold by the way .. it's the bil and wife .. it is their job to monitor their child when they are guests in someone else's home

wow, love your ds already kinderbob!he sounds like an angel

thanks twigglet. see your point. i had already installed locks on the poisons cabinet cos dd is cruising already but obviously i forgot about the utensils and plates.and anyway, she seems to understand that the kitchen is a no-go area.

i wish i could tell off b-i-l, but i dont know how i'd do that without irritating him/dh/mil.

and i do keep all foodstuff locked up in quite difficult to reach cabinets.
the mother was actually feeding her the biscuits when she crumbled them and scattered them everywhere. mother didnt seem to mind.i just smiled through my teeth.

advice needed, oh wise ones...

deep breaths and hope they leave soon

darn

He's no angel, he's just good at following rules and I am consistent at enforcing them. I'm sure one day he will turn...

update: little terror did a POO on dd's stroller and tried to strangle her!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

feel like strangling her myself!!!

strangle the parents! the little thing is only 2, and cant help a lot of it. if the parents dont enforce rules/restrictions then its not her fault.

hope the poo was solid and easy to clean.

wish i COULd strangle the pair of them.

actually it was liquid poo, cos her tummy's "reacting to a different environment" as her mother says.

but luckily dh and his brother took it upon themselves to scrub it clean. altho i not sure if i trust them to get rid of EVERY LAST bit of poo. sprayed it with enough lysol to kill an elephant afterwards. and placed blanket on top of it just in case there are still germs so dd won't catch them. fingers crossed.

god give me strength

can u take the buggy apart and wash the cover in the machine?

yes, we did try! its a graco edt and we managed to pull most of it away from the main frame but it still attached to it by two straps (part of the seatbelts) so in the end they just washed it in the shower!!!!!!!

oh no, is that not good enuf do you think? (getting goosebumps at the thought of germs crawling all over poor dd's stroller, now!!)

should be fine. just i'd rather wash it in the machine. reminds me, gotta take my cover off the triuphm and wash that as its filthy.

does anyone know if the seat of the graco edt (or citilite in the UK) can be taken apart

spray it with dettox .. it will be fine

thanks twigglett for trying to reassure me...[lopsided smile]!!

Bloody hell, how long have you got left?

just a quick update, b-i-l et al have left, thank god!! even dh must've felt awful about the mess they left, as he personally spent hours cleaning up our tornado-hit home!!

the 2-yr-old apparently had some sort of food poisoning/viral infection with a cough and runny nose towards the end of their stay.
now poor dd has it!!!!!!!!!!

dd pooped about SEVEN times yesterday, which is unusual for a 9mth old as i'm sure you all know. and was sick quite a lot too. also has horrible phlegmy cough.

dr specifically said she must've caught a viral infection from someone who had it as these things were highly contagious, particularly through the poo and other bodily fluids.

of course i didn't have to say 'i told you so' to dh, who'd been nonchalant about the little terror mouthing dd's toys and bottles!!!

aaarrggghhhh!!!

doused everything in the house with dettol after that.

noticed a rather interesting thread on here about how to/not to tell other kids off...will memorise the contents by heart..

beetroot, can't remember if its commonly available in the uk. i'm in malaysia, and it's sold in just about all the local supermarkets. sorry haven't been of more help!

Wow - only just caught up with this you poor love. Although we've never had them for a week, we have relations with a similar 5 yr old boy. We play 'good cop / bad cop' between my husband and myself - I die of shame, but he just walks in a room, and firmly says to a child 'don't stand on that chair', and leaves the room. I follow up with an apologetic smile and move on to the next activity whilst the dust is settling. Horrid situation though - why can't people take responsibility for their own kids bad behaviour? Aghh....

I am frankly surprised at the "hold yourself and smile" approach suggested here. Yes she is a young 2 yrs old toddler but definitively unruly and their parents do little to control her. Although it is not your job to "educate" other people's children I would suggest a long conversation with your DH explaining which behaviour you find reasonable within your house, if they can't provide an acceptable minimum, I would be very tempted not to invite them again until they have managed to take steps to control their girl's behaviour. I have a 21m old and I would never allow him to act like that in other people's houses. The child is not the problem but the parents, you don't have to put up with that behaviour.