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Relationships

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Original poster

Don't give him that! - MIL's obsessed with feeding your baby rubbish!

17 replies

leonsmum · 21/02/2006 10:34

Went around to my MIL's for Sunday dinner a while ago. DS at just 6 months was on day two of baby rice and after announcing that I'd begun to wean him I had to spend the rest of the meal fending of offers of giving him salted mash potato dripping in bisto gravy and other such items.

Even now at 10 months, after DS has had a full meal and is fit to burst, they ignore my pleas not to give him any more and put cold, gravy soaked bits of food on his tray. Even with me sitting there saying 'no'.

Why is it that MIL's seem so bent on the idea of feeding our baby's unhealthy, chokey food stuffs that they don't need and we dont want them to have?

I brought up this subject at baby group the other day and was horrified to hear that one mum cought her MIL, sneekily feeding her DS, at the tender age of 4.5 months, a 'Blue Ribbon' bar and later that day stuck a finger of trifle in his mouth.

Why do they do it and what's the worse thing your MIL has tried to feed your baby?

OP posts:

Missblossom · 22/02/2006 15:45

Hi there, my mil does it because she tries to undermine me in front of my kids and dh and just basically tries to make me feel stupid and small which I hasten to add dosent work.I just laugh at her and tell her she is talking crap.

MeAndMyBoy · 22/02/2006 23:52

Chocolate - sweets and more choclate. In spite of making it very clear that he can't have it - last christmas she bought a lovely pocket advent calander type thing where you fill the pockets up - and sweets and chocolates to fill them all. It was lovely just entirely inappropriate.

jowen · 22/02/2006 23:58

Hard jelly sweets at the age of 8 months old. They do it because they are not the child's mother, and are therefore not as concerned witht he child's health as the mother is.

Also, it has been a long time since they raised kids, and they forget which foods are appropriate for which age group. I can't remember when ds first had finger food, it was somewhere between 5 and 9 months, but I couldn't say exactly, and ds is only 3. They have had 30 years in which to forget.

Chandra · 23/02/2006 00:10

Mine used to do the same, but complaining that DS had so many eating problems because we were not feeding him correctly, so she started those elaborate fancy dishes for him, which he never ate anyway but only caused a lot of yelling between my MIL and DH with DS sitting between them. This happened in so many ocassions and was definitively a factor that got me into a right state before finally spitting out all the resentment I had built against her and her lack of respect to our decisiions.

She doesn't do that anymore because... she doesn't have opportunity, since she went that step to far she has seen her GS only once. But I can't trust her to follow her "intuition" -and ignore our instructions- when I have a very food allergic child to deal with.

If she can put the food in your DS tray, you can take that food out of it. Wish I had the courage to do it earlier, and stop the problem when it had just started.

RudiRedNose · 24/02/2006 20:34

My mum does this too. 'Sneaking' extra salt into food after being asked a hundred times not to is a favourite. Oh and covertly giving dessert to the screaming toddler who is in the process of refusing his dinner!
We just keep saying 'I'm sure you are right but we want to feed bubs this way, OK?' We have said it a gazillion times and it is finally staerting to get through, although we still have the odd relapse.

wannaBe1974 · 24/02/2006 22:15

Last year my mum started going about how many easter eggs she was going to buy for DS in about February, to which I replied, "that'll be lovely! I'll enjoy those!" She only bought one egg in the end, lol.

goldstarlover · 24/02/2006 22:18

eh? i've read this thread before... but it had more replies... what's going on?????

chipmonkey · 24/02/2006 23:08

Is this the same thread?

Maddison · 24/02/2006 23:35

My mum and MIL are okay about what we give DS2 to eat - he's 9 months.

Nan-In-Law (aged about 87) is the worst I've ever known. When DS2 was about 4 months old she peeled an orange and tried to give him a piece of it to suck on, followed by a sip of lemonade, followed by a half coated chocolate orange digestive biscuit!

She means well, honestly!

mrtumnus · 24/02/2006 23:40

chipmonkey yes! figured it out though... 2 identical threads and this one is in relationships? not sure why... but the other one had loads of replies!

mrtumnus · 24/02/2006 23:41

see here!

chipmonkey · 25/02/2006 23:41

Oh, that's all right, then. I thought someone must have said something norty and we all got deleted!

Original poster

leonsmum · 28/02/2006 20:00

mrtumnus, chipmonkey - sorry about this thread being in two places.

Am very new to mumsnet and started this one in the relationships section first. No-one replied for a day or so , so I thought I'd put it in the health section where there were more similar threads and it seemed more appropriate.

Sorry for the confusion everyone!!!

OP posts:

Soopermum1 · 28/02/2006 23:03

every day my DS (aged 2) spends with his granny is a 'crisp' or 'chocolate' day. she also gives him radioactive looking orange cordial. i just grin and bear it, he doesnt spend that much time with her and i think she sees it as her right and role to spoil him. she does give him healthy meals though, just loads of snacks in between which he gobbles up coz he's a greedy lad!

saying that, he's no longer a baby, i was more careful about what i and everyone else fed him when he was smaller

Nbg · 28/02/2006 23:13

MIL did it until we had a major falling out.

She wanted to feed dd those packed ready meals when both dh and I had asked her not to.

That passed and then we went on to her feeding her sweets, followed by sweets and if she didn't eat her dinner, gave her sweets followed by a large fruit shoot (which IMO are made by the devil himself)

I think we've tackled that one too but tbh it's my FIL thats a pain now.

Dh and I work on the rule that if a meal isn't eaten then there is nothing to eat until the next meal. Well if we have sunday dinner at IL's, FIL thinks it is more than acceptable that dd just eats a yorkshire pudding, leaves her meal and has pudding after.
No matter how much we say NO they still do it.

It may sound really petty to some but it can create such a rod for peoples backs if it's done. DD only ever wants to eat crap when she's been with my IL's and makes me very angry.

You have my full sympathies LM.

chipmonkey · 28/02/2006 23:46

Leonsmum, you are young, you will learn.

dyzzidi · 01/03/2006 00:06

MIL has offered to make homemade rice pudding for my dd when she visits next week. err no thanks she is only 9 weeks old.

Mind you my MIL comments on all the food i feed my DH as being not right.

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