Managing GP when living together

[Newlysinglemum1]

I'm currently living with my parents and my toddler after my marriage ended. Prior to this I was living with ds and doing everything alone and managing well but moved in order to save to buy which will be more manageable financially long term due to rent prices.

My mum has always had some issues with control and boundaries and for the most part I can deal with that and let it wash over me. But when it comes to ds I'm struggling.

She undermines my parenting constantly. Nothing I do is the way she would do it and she makes that very clear but my main issue at present is the way she tells ds off for things. She does 1 day a week childcare for me (at her request) so I expect her to tell him off when she's looking after him when something happens but she's so harsh with it and she's telling him off for things that are minor and developmentally normal. Like for example if he drops his cup and spills his milk she will stand over him and give off to him telling him he's naughty and bad and demanding he tell her why he did that. He's only 2! Today he ripped a page out of his book and I did tell him off and explained that we need to look after our toys and mummy can't fix the book now. He said sorry, tidied the bits up and put it all in the bin. My mum came in and saw and I told her I've already told him off for it so we're moving on and she immediately launched into another telling off, telling him he was naughty and being very cross with him. I asked her if she'd heard me telling her that I've already dealt with it and that there was no need for her to jump in and she got angry (er) and said he needed to be told and it needed to be really driven home how bad his behaviour was so he learns not to do it again and then went off in a huff.

Ds is 99% of the time a very chilled, easy child. He's polite and caring and helpful and most of the time he does what he's asked and I do feel that I am firm and consistent in how I tell him off while also trying to be fair and take his age and abilities into account. My mum is treating him like a mini adult and the way she treats every little accident or mistake he makes as being something he's done on purpose is really bothering me. I've tried so many times to explain this to her but she really seems to think I'm incapable and she knows better. Truthfully it's probably a little triggering in terms of my own upbringing where i grew up believing i was just a 'bad' child and there was never any room for mistakes. Anything that went wrong was an end of the world level big deal and keeps my therapist in good business!

Obviously a grandparent relationship is very important and they're doing me a massive favour by letting me stay with them at the moment but any ideas on how I can get her to hear me and approach this differently? It got so bad with my sisters kids before that they didn't want to come and visit her because of how harsh she was on them and how angry she got and I don't want my ds having that experience but I also have no other support nearby.

Whilst I understand you wanting to save, I think this isn’t going to work. You won’t change your mother. All you can do is change how you react to her.

Tricky. We have lived with GPs long-term. It ended up with the kids being told off by so many adults that it was awful and relentless for them, so we came up with a rule between us that whoever is present at the incident, deals with the incident, and nobody else says a word. Kind of good cop/bad cop, but we all take turns being bad cop. It has worked really well - sometimes people forget, but we remind each other and generally stick to it.

Do you think if you sat your mum down after your DS is in bed and had a chat with her like this about it - that you really appreciate what she's doing for the two of you, and you really appreciate her desire to help with DS, and you know it's hard living under one roof again and you've got some ideas about how to minimise conflict - and then suggest that she's responsible for DS's discipline when she's in loco parentis and you're not there, but otherwise it's up to you? You could use the split, maybe, as a way to reason why you want things differently to how she brought you up - you could say he's had a big life change very young, and you want to make sure he feels emotionally secure, and one of the ways you want to do that is by how you deal with the discipline?

If you don’t want their input don’t live with them.

We're currently homeless and moving out to rent would mean a large chunk of my salary would be basically eaten up by childcare and rental costs so I'm not exactly in a position where I can just up sticks and leave. I'd much prefer to get to a position where we can work together a bit better and where ds can have a better experience of his grandparent.