How to stop MIL over-feeding DC

[JavanDawns]

Our DC is due in summer and I am already concerned about MIL's tendency as a feeder. She'll make a brilliant nan and we get along really well, I've just noticed over the years that she expresses her love and care for people through baking large quantities of sugary puddings and encouraging them to over eat in an unhealthy way.

She acknowledges herself she could lose a bit of weight, her 2 cats are obese and her husband is also overweight and she over fed my husband when he was growing up so he was always over weight as a child/teen.

For example, her husband is borderline diabetic and medically obese but she keeps baking him batches of 20+ sugar free muffins every week. She also baked 2 huge puddings for Easter Sunday for 6 of us and looked disappointed when people only wanted one. This was on top of Easter eggs and a mountain of roast dinner.

I'm a foodie and love my food and treats as much as the next person, but tend to have smaller portions and balance with lots of activity to keep a healthy weight. I'm really concerned that she doesn't recognise her feeding habits and enjoyment of baking is actually creating an unhealthy culture around food and I'm worried that she'll do the same with our DC. I'm particularly I'm concerned if/when she's babysitting it will be very sugary food focused and not healthy for them.

Has anyone else encountered this with in laws? I'd appreciate some ideas on how to tackle it so our child doesn't have a negative relationship with food, aside from a full sugar/sweets/chocolate ban..

If you’re not happy with the behaviour of someone providing free childcare, then don’t use them for free childcare.

Oh wow don’t worry about this yet! I’ve found my kids don’t eat unless they’re hungry plus you’ll find it easier to tell her no if she’s trying to give them sweets etc. I have no problem telling people no now I have kids 😄

PFB before the baby is even born 😂

In the nicest possible way, I think your attitude is more likely to create an unhealthy culture around food than your MILs.

The child hasn’t been born yet and MIL is getting it in the neck!

If you’re MIL doesn’t do things exactly to your specification don’t rely on her for free childcare

Limit contact?

Why would you limit contact because grandma gave PFB some cake?

It's fine unless she'll be doing childcare for full days? In those circumstances it would bother me and would be worth a conversation and some ground rules. But no problem if you'll just be visiting every couple of weeks.

My MIL is like this but it's fine for the odd bit of babysitting. After a couple of occasions when they actually felt sick after a visit we taught them to very politely say no thank you if they didn't want anything. She was baffled at first but got the message and there's really no drama now. If they're hungry they'll gladly accept, if not, they say no thanks. It's particularly relevant when it comes to drinks as it happens. The dc prefer water mostly (and they are teenagers so I do think it's now their choice) and don't like cordial much and for a long time that's all they were given, even though they'd asked for water. We did have to talk about that one - she genuinely thought it wasn't the done thing to offer just water and thought cordial was healthier. I don't care about a bit of cordial but they've never liked it!

It will only be when they visit her so I honestly don't think you need to worry. It won't be all the time. A treat when you visit Grandmas is perfectly ok wkd actually very nice.
My mother had jars of sweets on the table and fizzy drinks in the fridge for my children when we visited. They didn't have them at home. They grew up perfectly fine.

Home made food isn’t going to be as unhealthy as shop bought. She uses real flour, sugar, butter, eggs so there should be a balance of protein and fibre and fats with sugar and carbs. In fact having done Zoe I’ve been losing weight by having homemade puddings everyday over ‘lower calorie’ options such as crackers that I used to have.

I think before you have kids you need to educate yourself on what healthy eating actually means.

You can't do anything about her relationship with other people and her cats. You can think about her relationship with your children. I think it depends on how often they will see her. Once a week or less? Then just factor in that as a "treat day". My children are grown ups and ate very healthily at home. But they have joyful memories of granddad cooking them turkey dinosaurs and the little pink iced cakes grandma made. If she's going to be seeing them very frequently or actually looking after them then your partner needs to sit down with his mother and plan what she's going to give them to eat. A menu plan on the wall might help. Abd ask her to cater for birthday parties. That's a win/win!

Thanks for the useful feedback and comments everyone, much appreciated! This post wasn't really about free child care so I'm not going to respond to those comments.

The relevant responses about healthy eating and over-eating were really helpful and reassuring, thanks to everyone who shared their personal experiences. I'll keep an eye on how things go and be ready to have a conversation with MIL if/when needed. Hopefully won't become an issue!

I think people were just mentioning childcare as a potential pitfall, probably the biggest of them all. Obviously you’re not there yet but should it come up then you need to think very carefully. If MIL provides childcare then that’s DC spending considerable amounts of time there without you to set and enforce boundaries. Worse still is if it’s so you can work not just a bit adhoc babysitting because that leaves you in a funny position where you feel like you can’t rock the boat and have that conversation because you’re so reliant on her. So I know it wasn’t exactly the point of your post but it’s definitely something to think about. If it’s just Sunday lunch once a week (for example) then that’s 1 meal out of 21, and you’re there to say no to seconds of pudding, so total non issue. But childcare - that’s where it has the potential to get sticky! But good luck to you, I’m sure you’ll figure it out.