So I need to know who is insane here. DH and I know for sure we do not neglect in any way shape or form our child. Dd is 2. I want to put that out there flat out so no confusion, yet my mother continues to imply and flat out accuse me of neglect.
For context she and I have a difficult relationship, she was abusive as a teen and a narcissist and I was the scapegoated child.
So I need a reality check.
Big trigger for my mum is my daughters size- she follows 9/25th centile for everything has done since birth. In regularly accused of starving her. She has 3 meals and 3 snacks a day, along with milk. We eat a wide array of food (no pork- Muslim). I don’t offer her sweets like candy lollipops, but we have treats like cake and chocolate here and there. No HCP has ever any issues but it constantly comes up and the lack of sweeties is neglect and abuse and ‘f’ing up her childhood’
She also accuses me of neglect over the type of food I feed her, as it’s not ‘British’ enough. She’s also triggered by the cuts of meat we use- I.e. slow cooked mutton for Jamaican curries, or chicken thighs. Apparently this is neglect.
Where we buy her clothes and the style of clothes- this is probably one of the biggest ones. Full disclaimer I don’t buy designer clothes for DD as it seems a waste. She goes to nursery and they said don’t send them in good clothes they’ll get ruined, so we tend to send her in multipacks from George asda as she dirties her clothes all the time. This is apparently disgraceful. We tend to buy a fair few multipacks in general for her home clothes from places like H&M and next, again because she dirties them. She’s mainly a leggings and tops kind of girl she doesn’t like dresses and tights (think it gets in the way of her playing). We mainly get her clothes from next, m&s, George, TU, H&M and maybe a few bits and bobs from tkmaxx. Some times I do sale shopping too for bits. It’s what we can afford- I see 0 issue with this. It’s normal right? I’ve had constant accusations of neglect and abuse and how mortified my mother is seeing her because she looks like an urchin. Her clothes are always clean and ones that do have food stains on that don’t budge we use as our outdoor exploring clothes or our arts and craft/ messy play clothes.
Toys- another big one- I won’t list all the toys and books dd has but you could honestly say it’s too many. But a huge blow out occurred when dd was 1 and she wanted her to have one of those amazing huge wooden climbing frames. They are lovely but we live in a new build house with an adequate yet smallish garden so we don’t have the room. The garden is also on a slope. Cut to her ordering a £1000 climbing frame the dimensions of which were larger than the garden (width wise). This was a huge deals and again accused of fucking up dds life and ruining her childhood.
She’s also insistent that DD is behind and this is a sign she’s neglected. Big one is she can’t read yet (she’s 24.5 months old) and can’t count (she knows numbers but can’t count per se). She’s sailed through all her HV checks and her nursery have no once highlighted a concern.
There’s so many more examples, she’s not spent a night away from home since she was 3 months - neglect. Not been on holiday- abuse. Doesn’t have a pretend makeup counter - miserly.
I could go on honestly. I know I’m not mum of the year, nor would I pretend to be, but are the things we’re doing bad? Those are acceptable places to buy kids clothes right? I feel like I’m in the twilight zone a bit.