Four Days with My Mother-in-Law: A Mistake I Won’t Repeat
I made a big mistake—I left our eighteen-month-old son with my mother-in-law for just four days. I thought I had covered all bases by writing a comprehensive four-page guide, detailing every aspect of his care at home. It included everything—recipes for porridge and fruit compote, clothing rules, daily routines, hygiene, and, of course, sleep. I even specified which foods were absolutely forbidden, no matter how much he might plead with his eyes. I described the words he knows, what he likes to point at in pictures, and how he mimics cats and dogs. Laughing? Think I’m overreacting? Maybe. But my mother-in-law is quite the character, and I was prepared for a lot. Just not everything.
When giving her maternal instincts, it seems fate mixed anxiety with indifference, added a generous dose of chaos, and wrapped it with the phrase: “Bring him over; it’ll be lovely!” So, we did. We handed over our child and the manual. And apparently, this is what happened next: she opened my instructions—then promptly closed them. She waved them off: “We raised our four without any paperwork, and they turned out just fine!” And with that, she plunged into the familiar realm of grandmotherly logic.
Our son wandered around the house at will, with her trailing behind him with a litany of: “Oh, he’s going to fall! Oh, he’ll hurt himself! Oh, close the balcony door, or he might fly off! Move that—it’s sharp!” He was given whatever food they were eating. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner were all the same. Meals were served not on schedule but under the principle: “Better to eat than sleep. Eat up, sweetheart; you can rest later!”
He didn’t nap during the day at all. What was the point? Instead, he had a cartoon marathon until late in the evening. The routine I had meticulously established shifted by two hours. Nowadays, I become an entertainer every day, conducting three-hour “entertainment sessions” just to get him to sleep without a tantrum. If anyone needs a host for a children’s party, let me know—I’m experienced.
The conclusion is simple and unfortunate: my mother-in-law is a creature of cunning. She’ll never say “no,” but she’ll always do it her way. Instead of sleep, he’d get another plate of pasta, chaos instead of routine, and her constant fretting at every turn. “Let the poor thing eat more!”—and she’d keep piling it on.
That phrase has become a curse for me: NEVER again will I leave my child with my mother-in-law! Not for an hour, not for a day, and certainly not for four. Call me paranoid, an overly responsible mother, or simply difficult, but my child is not a guinea pig for grandmother’s experiments. He’s a little person who needs order, attention, and love, not constant overfeeding and “cartoons until midnight.”
What about you? Do you often entrust your kids to your mother-in-law? Does she respect your wishes, or does she operate under “I know best”?.
