Expecting first child.... I already see the problems with the inlaws starting. cultural differences, maybe also because of social issues or something else. How do you deal with it? Especially MIL??

[1horatio]

So, we're expexting :) OH is awesome. MIL is being difficult...
OH and I have many different opinions (from violence, the army, children and knives, open fires, fishing, shooting, the law [make sure it's worth it if you break it, know how to skirt it vs just follow the law]).
But OH and I talk, compromise and appreciate we're having different cultural backgrounds (OH is English, I'm not. But seeing as I'm also from Europe one might think there would be less differences. We actually enjoy these differences. Especially OH thinks they're incredibly interesting and has many fancy terms... ).

Anyhow, for example: OH's sister's DC is being bullied. Also somewhat phisically. My response: 'Hit then where it hurts'. SIL sat next to us and listened (I proceeded to explain /show a bit how to hit back). MIL comes: 'That's not how we deal with things like this. Go to a teacher.' I say that the teachers know and that it hasn't gotten better. MIL gives me nasty looks and say DC is better than that....

Said child isn't allowed around sharp knives. Ok, I'm not their parent I'd never interfere.
But I got my first dagger with around... 8? and had pocketknives before I went to school. My little brothers had their first daggers when they were much younger. We were taught how to handle them and hardly ever cut us and never somebody else. MIL would be apoplectic if she just heard about it.
Target shooting with a bow is also a perfectly normal activity in my family. Riding isn't seen as "so dangerous" either.... (guns are obviously not for children).
We've always known that meat comes from animals when we were little. Also because sometimes we were the one that killed the animal we were eating. My inlaws thought it was terribly morbid I accidentally called the beef we were eating a cow....

How do you guys deal with this? Does anybody else have similar experiences? Now that we're expecting LO MIL is trying to influence so much. She wants me to stop doing a sport I love after the birth, makes comments like:"one should never let a child do...." and glances at me meaningfully....

Plus MIL is soo concerned with appearance. Some names are 'bad', screaming children are a disgrace but dummies are ok (I'm of the opposite opinion) and she always gives me this stare. Or says: "we don't like this, do we, 1horatio?" whereas I'm just thinking: "we?!"

Maria, I haven't been involved in kids eviscerating pheasants, but if they were going to eat pheasants, I wouldn't demur over it at all.

Horatio: I think you have 3 answers:
1.your MIL is unreasonable about chairs, haircuts, magazines, behaviour out shopping.

1. You may well be unreasonable disputing the agreed strategy for dealing with bullying in front of the kids. Parents get prickly when other relatives undermine their own approach to child-based issues

which leads us to

1. You may well have difficulties with your MIL once your child is of stick whittling age and you have one approach and she has another. But that won't be for AGES yet.

oh God Cinderella's sisters hacking at their feet - I must have blanked out that horror....

Brits have not always been so averse to risk and unpleasant fairy tales. it is a relatively new thing...

.

Hm... Maybe SIL was annoyed? It's possible. I am biit dense sometimes. But wouldn't she have said something? Her kid has sleepovers at our place (when she wants to go out for example)... Where she has no problems telling us what's allowed and what not. (which is good. She's the mother, I absolutely stick to her wishes)
It was MIL that said something.

I would be a bit pissed off if you told my child to thump someone.

Thanks! Not sure I've been that helpful but...

Good luck again

Any my children know how to use knives and guns and gut rabbits because thy are a) country children of country parents and b)country Scouts. I don't understand why you're making such a big deal out of it, to be honest.

It's all a bit Oh, aren't I alternative look at this super-wet non knife wielding family I've married into- they are so pathetic!

No, MIL is not wet. Seriously. Whatever else she may or may not be, that's not a word I'd use to describe her. Ever.

And I'm not alternative, I'm kind of conservative, in many aspects.
I'd say my inlaws are much more alternative. OH works for a uni, MIL is a feminist (I think) and they do not care about me having an ex gf at all.

I fell out with my MIL a bit when I was pregnant. She became very bossy about stuff like what pram we had to buy. A wise colleague pointed out that as MIL loves children and lives a long way from us, she was probably just feeling anxious about loss of control/involvement.

The other thing I noticed was that once DH and I married, I suddenly got 'one of the family' status and she started to boss me around just like she does her sons.

Our relationship is fine now DD is actually on the scene.

I suggest you get a copy of 'Watching the English' and treat the whole thing as a sociology/anthropology experiment and get a copy (your comment about loo literature reminded me of that book - she has a section on it!)

My last sentence doesn't make sense, but hopefully you get the gist.

My best friend and her DH emigrated to Switzerland from the UK and now have two DC. They have already been freaked out by the walking to school alone. I don't think I'm going to tell them about the pointy sticks just yet.

Thanks for your suggestion. We have that book somewhere.

The pointy sticks... I think this may depend on the kanton and the school... I'm not sure. My (half) brothers for example go to school in bern and it's really different than my school experience was. Of course I'm also quite a bit older than them. So...
Or my Dsis went to the forest with the school to learn about birds and hunting (something I also never did). They also were outside more than my brothers (for sports they ran orientation runs in the surrounding forests etc) but she went to school in a rather little village.
When I was in elementary we made cheese and butter.
So, it totally depends, I think.

sorry you asked me a question ages ago, and I haven't been online.

As a teacher what would I recommend SIL's son does?
Well, SIL needs to up the level with school. In other words, arrange meeting with teacher, outline all of the incidents (it is very important to keep a written record) and then ask school to safeguard her son.
You have to make it more serious and school should then take it more seriously.

I know there are many anecdotal accounts of 'I was bullied, then I turned round and hit back and it all stopped' but in many situations this simply does not work, and it can make matters worse. If the bully is bigger and stronger, hitting them will get you hit back and hurt. If it is a group, they will all lay in and then the bullied child is really hurt.

I am mistrustful of any system that says that they allow kids to sort it all out amongst themselves. I do see that there is a level where this is good, learning to negotiate, to work it out etc, and I did a lot of getting kids to solve their problems themselves, but in a safe context. In my experience it can lead to a situation where the bullies rule the playground.
My mum was a great believer in letting the 3 of us sort it out amongst ourselves. I was the youngest with 2 older brothers. They always voted, 2 against 1, you lose, or we rough and tumbled for it ,and as the smallest I lost. Drove me mad, and even madder that mum couldn't see why it was unfair.

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1horatio Fri 17-Jun-16 22:28:58

"Of course you shouldn't hit somebody because they call you silly names. but in my experice hitting back once hard is more useful than going to the teacher 10times..."

And what if the first child hits back even harder?

And then your child has no alternative other than hitting back again (because that is what you have taught them) and eventually one or both of them ends up in hospital? Quite understandably teachers do not want to spend their time dealing with the aftermath of hit-backs that got out of hand.

I am Swedish and have similar memories of being given my first knife aged 8. But I am also very aware that this is the country my children are growing up in, customs are different here and I will not be doing them any favours by getting hung up, or letting them get hung up, on how odd their culture is compared to mine (which is of course perfectly right in all respects because it is mine .

Schools should have an anti-bullying policy which they enforce. This involves teaching the other children that they are responsible for getting an adult if anyone is being hurt or frightened, it involves teachers having a clear and robustly enforced policy on what to do if bullying happens, it involves everybody knowing that the school comes down like a ton of bricks on physical bullying.

My ds went to school in a system where they kids sorted it out amongst themselves when he was in year 1. Teachers never interfered.
He is very tall for his age and physical. but he told me later how scared he was in the playground (just his year group, no older kids)

When we returned to UK, it took him ages to change perspective. His fundamental ingrained (from previous school) attitude was that you shouldn't tell the teacher, and anything was fine as long as you don't get caught.

Having said that, when we go and play at someone's house, I do not follow mine around or hover, and fully expect them to go off and play, and work out their squabbles.

Thank you for takung the time to answer. I'm also sorry for answering just now. But it's monday (Mondays are often super stressful at work).

So, a sit. like with your sibblings is imo not ideal at all. In the family we had a very strict no violence rule (of course we brawled when we very little. But that always lead to a scolding). So, my younger brothers were scolded quite often, tbh....
And even though sometimes the majority ruled (can't tell the story of red riding hood when the rest wants to listen to nils, for example....) i don't feel it was too unfair (and I wasn't very often part of the majority).
But playfighting, especially with my dad but also other adults and kids was a huuge thing. So, maybe we got most of any possible agression out of our system like that?

It's not that we couldn't go to teachers. In middleschool there was a guy that was fairly severely bullied, they even hung him up in the changing rooms, all lay on him etc (I really should have helped, but I did tell the teacher repeatedly but I guess I didn't want to stick my neck out for a guy I didn't even liked. Not my proudest moment).
There were countless talks, smaller group sessions etc. It just did not help.

I personally defended myself when one of the bullying kids thought the new kid could make a fun target (I really really wasn't). I believe strongly that there is a right to defend oneself against attacks. Doesn't mean that the teacher shouldn't try to help when asked or needed.

I obviously have to accept that it's different in the UK. But I have to admit that it just seems morally wrong. Hitting back when you're hit is just so obvious and natural to me... Sure, if you think the bullies are too strong (or just don't wnt to) then running and asking a teacher for help is a good strategy. I just don't think it should be the only acceptable one... I hope this makes sense?

Well, there was also the issue of me apparently flirting with the bully (I really really did not)... So, whatever one's stance on fighting back is. I firmly believe I did the right thing back then. Nipping the whole thing in the butt, so to speak...

I mean, the bully was upset about me apparently flirting with him...

Haven't rtft but goodness me, my boys would've loved to have been brought up Swiss.

:)

I'm sure some people (those with an adversion to the outdoors) would have hated it...

Lots of rough housing in British families, play fighting is a big thing.

I think one of the reasons we teach kids not to hit back, is that we fast forward to when they are 17, drunk outside a pub on a Saturday night, and a disagreement starts. Hitting back in those circumstances can lead to a jail sentence for GBH, or even to someone being killed.

When I was teaching, I spent a lot of time teaching 8-10 year old boys, that there is an alternative (their instinct was to punch the other person). I saw it as part of my job to teach them that their fists are not the only way to solve something, and that they can learn self control. I hope that for some of those boys it may have made the difference.

I have a 13 yo ds. He also is, by instinct, quick with his fists. It is very hard to teach him that he has to learn that is just going to get him into trouble. That self control is learnt now, in small places.

Look, I don't disagree. Drunken brawls are bad, really bad.

I'm guessing I'm feeling like... An American that hears he now can't shoot an intruder (something you can't just do in switzerland, btw but I'm searching for an analogy.)
Self-defense is smth I see as a person's Godgivenright (??), mostly because of culture but also because of crim law classes (well, law is in a way part of culture...).

So, I'm guessing that if there are really good anti bullying policies in place it's ok. Idk. It's just morally really wrong to me. It's difficult to explain, I thibk. Sorry.

Bw, I'm not a man. So maybe I'm not fully appreciating how difficult male puperty makes impuse controle for some? Idk. But none of my male family members ever got into truble with the law because of violence (at least not my generation. I'm sure there's some uncle twice removed with a violent past. We're a really big family...)

I just used gender neutral terms because in the other thread some people called each other stepford wives, sexist etc whereas others seemed to place a lot of importance on me being a wife and a soon to be mother. Which was luckily avoided on this thread :)

Your MIL problem is very British though ;-)

My granddad killed my mum's and aunt's rabbits and made the fam eat it"

Ye my husband's father would do this ... he likes kids, but he was brought up in a rough farming family, he'd see it as normal. No intent to be cruel, it's just the way of nature/farming in his mind.

Maybe SIL was annoyed? It's possible. I am biit dense sometimes. But wouldn't she have said something? No. Quite possibly not. A lot of people go quiet when given advice, specially (to their minds) way - out advice.

British people very often don't say what they mean. It's a guesswork culture. In a way it saves face, in another way people end up getting things wrong because other people don't communicate clearly. Germanic cultures are much, much more direct and straightforward. (If i ask my husband 'does my bum look big in this, he'll answer Yes/No". Ask an english person and you'll get a lot of beating round the bush, no direct yes/no; that's seen as offensive).

Do not, really do not, underestimate how massive the difference is.

horatio, don't assume that because your school in a different country were incapable of doing anything about bullying that the same applies in the UK. I don't know what Switzerland is like, but coming from Sweden I was surprised to find how much power teachers do actually have in this country- despite the constant moaning in the press. My Swedish teachers would have been clueless in the face of sustained bullying, dc's British teachers were not. I have developed an increasing respect for something that at first seemed like petty strictness.