My Weekend, Part 2

Read the other one first. It just seemed like a really huge post to do all at once.

First of all, I don't expect everywhere we go to be childproofed. I also don't expect other people to watch my kid for me. I do expect though that our parenting be respected, and that my ILs use the methods we do to instruct our child in the proper behavior, and that if we are at my ILs (N is their first grandchild), and I say, "Please remove your medications from the end table. That's just at N's height, and he will try to take them. I'd also remove anything you don't want him to play with. He's such an explorer right now." that they might move said medications from the end table, and remove the ceramic thingy that MIL has such an attachment to, or at least let me know that she's leaving it out. She says, "Oh it's fine, he can crawl all over, I'll keep an eye on him." So she follows him around for a bit, and when he crawls over to the end table and picks up the ceramic thingy, she goes over to him, and smacks at his hands to get him to drop it. She didn't smack hard (I probably would have smacked her if she had, out of N's line of sight, of course), but she was slapping at his hands. I was out of my seat (across the room) at the first one, and I took him out of her arms, and sat back down with him telling him that was not a toy for him and replacing it with one of his. And she wonders why we don't just run off and leave the baby with them. B wasn't in the room, but I made sure he heard about it that night. As a general rule, MIL is so sensitive that anything I might say that remotely suggests that she do things differently (such as a 'we don't do things that way') is met with near tears, total contrition, 8 million apologies, and constant references with plenty of overdramatic self-flagellation to said incident for the next month. Therefore, B's job is to inform MIL when something needs to be different. B has already informed MIL that this is not acceptable and that it will change. Now.

B has come to an understanding, too. N is 11 months old. He has hit a stage where he will reach out to go to someone, but if they get too close, he pushes them away. He likes to look at faces, not be in them. B was holding him and saying good night to MIL when N reached out for her. She got very close to his face and he pushed her back. The angle at which he was sitting caused it to seem like a hit. B tapped his hand (definitely not hard enough to make a sound), and said that wasn't nice. Argh! We decided long ago that this was not how we were going to train our babies to be gentle. The kid doesn't have the concept of gentle yet. We're working with him, but he doesn't get it quite yet. He will, but it's certainly not going to happen as a result of a hand-smack, regardless of how gentle it seems to be. So I took N and put him to bed. I went out and pulled B aside and explained said, "I thought we agreed that hand-slapping is inappropriate and not what we wanted to do to our children." B replied that yes, but it seemed ok in this case, and it was done now, and Oh Well. I was really fighting myself to not get screaming angry with him, but I stayed calm and said, "It seems to me that your reaction was inappropriate. We are trying to teach Ian that hitting and violence are NOT an okay way to solve problems. I don't think your reaction communicated that to him. I am of the opinion it would have been better if you'd taken his hand and showed him how to pat your mom gently. Your reaction did not sit well with me." B looked properly ashamed of himself, and said "Something to consider." He went over and kissed N extra gently before he went to bed himself, and based on his reaction, I feel pretty secure in my feeling he will not do it again.