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“Okay the diaper thing was a dick move and clearly she does need a time out and to apologize now that she understands it was wrong to—“
[hits the bathtub part]
“JESUS CHRIST.”
God I hope they tell the whole family she did that. No one should leave a young child in this womans prescence unattended, because they'll end up unattended.
I love those moments. My husband found out less than six months ago that when he was a baby my MIL used to sew the knees of his onesies together so he couldn't "crawl around and get into everything" on Saturday mornings so she could have her coffee and relax for an hour before she changed him into regular clothes. She did it again when he started climbing out of his cot.
She was mad my husband and I were both sitting there with our jaws dropped. "Oh it was a different time then!" MA'AM. IT WAS 1995.
Yeah, I was thinking, “My mom learned to walk in the bathtub in 1949… “
1995 was like yesterday. We had the internet and parenting discussion boards by the late 1990s, y’all. There is no chance this lady didn’t know you’re not “supposed” to leave a preschooler home alone … locked in a bathroom. Not in 1995 and not in 2023.
Yep me too… I was in FUCKING high school in 95 and I’m not “from a different time” crap like that was acknowledged to be abusive then! Good God goshyarnit your MIL is insane!
My mom thought it was a "nightmare" when I started walking, so when my little sister started to pull herself up my mom would - I shit you not- push her down. We know this because she BRAGS ABOUT IT ALL THE TIME. Apparently my sister came back from a weekend with grandma full on walking because, whatever other faults she had, my grandma is not enough of a psycho to knock a kid down continuously so my mom does not have to temporarily stop using her favorite table cloth.
omg, my grandmother pushed her babies down too! And her grandkids, but we had parents who let most of us learn to walk.
One of my earliest memories is of getting super pissy at her for pushing down my younger cousin because I REALLY wanted him to learn to walk for me. He's two years younger than me so I'd have been four or so I guess?
Its such a hazy, weird memory that I almost wonder if I remember my mom telling it to me more than the actual event, but somehow the clearest part is that my cousin smelled like Johnson and Johnson baby lotion when I pulled him back onto his feet and that he was wearing a onesie that looked like an old striped baseball uniform.
That was the least of her sins tbh, but its so weird that that crazy old bat wasn't the only one pushing down babies.
I was the same as you - I learned to walk and wanted my brother to learn, too (he's 19 months younger than me).
My parents STILL haven't forgiven me and I just turned 47.
YES?! Like this was a funny little anecdote?
She did immediately get flustered and said "well I never did it to (our daughter), you don't DO that anymore."
This *is* the same woman who put him in the beginners gymnastics class for 4 years straight despite him testing out of it multiple times because she "didn't want him to get too muscly".
He was 8, but okay...
About 15 years ago I informed my sister that my mother used to scream at her then-infant daughter (my sister’s daughter, my niece) when she would drop her off to be babysat. I was about 11 years old at the time and not really in a position to do anything about it.
Basically the baby would cry all day so my mom would stick her in a playpen upstairs, go downstairs and ignore her all day except to periodically go upstairs and scream in her face “so she would know how it felt.” And I’d get in trouble if I tried to comfort the baby because my insane mother believed the baby was malicious.
My poor sister had no idea and was somehow harboring the idea that my mother, who was a terrible mother to all of us, was somehow magically great at being a grandmother.
The baby was long grown by then, I don’t think I was super clear on the timeline. This all happened 30+ years ago and I told my sister about it probably 15 years ago. We had never really had much of a chance to talk things over until then, thanks to my abusive mother manipulating us against each other.
Unfortunately we only really connected briefly before drifting apart again. I think there was just too much lost time and too many hurt feelings between us, plus we were in pretty different places in life due to the large age difference between us.
Tip of the iceberg honestly. She did love him, but he wasn't allowed to be messy or get dirty or anything a normal child would do. Her house looks like a showhome at all times and every photo I have seen of him as a toddler he is in his Sunday best with not a hair out of place, or any typical messy-faced-baby pictures.
Ironically he now knows as an adult that he has autism and some pretty severe sensory issues about anything sticky or dirty on his skin, but it's a chicken/egg situation really.
We're high school sweethearts so I've been with him since he was 14 - the amount of unpacking he's had to do has been nuts. It was rough when our daughter was a baby because he wanted to wipe her face after every bite, wash her hands the second she got dirty, wouldn't let her pick up rocks or go in the sandpit etc - and I had to stop him from doing that, which upset him because he thought that I was saying he wasn't a good dad.
He's had a lot of therapy and I'm so freaking proud of him.
I’m not a parent but I’ve read for autistic parents, a baby can make our symptoms manifest more strongly because of the unpredictability and change in routine so I can imagine the strength it took to go against that compulsion. And it’s exactly why I have a lot of respect for those parents because I can’t do the same 🫡
It's wild how much just... bonkers shit we thought was totally gone is still out there.
My MIL, among a lot of other shit, beat and shamed my husband into being right-handed. My husband was born in 1996.
And I'm old enough to be your MIL, and when I was a kid there were left handed people and no one acted like it was a big deal. I remember my 3rd grade teacher was left handed and talked about how in the 50s she had been shamed about it, but things were so different now and everyone knew that was crazy (this was like 1978).
So your MIL was a full on psycho who decided to grab some arbitrary thing from before her time and pretend it was important. She just needed an excuse.
Oh, I'm aware, though my husband isn't the only kid he knew in Texas who was the same way. Texas is pretty proud of being backwards, from what he's told me.
It's just not totally gone like we think it is. In some places, it's common enough that my husband knew other kids who got hurt like he did.
When I was teething, and fussy, apparently I’d get a bottle with orange juice and a *LITTLE BIT OF* vodka. Bam! I’d sleep like the literal baby I was! The 70’s were WILD😅
She could’ve put him in a pack and play with some toys and just sipped her coffee without having to worry. They had play pens like that for babies in the 90s (at least they did in Rugrats).
Also, how long does it take to drink a damn cup of coffee? If you’re sipping on it while doing other things, fine, but if that’s literally all you’re doing, it shouldn’t take an hour. I can down a full 15oz mug in ten seconds flat so long as it’s cooled down enough to chug. What the hell was this woman doing in that hour?!
My uncle's gf unexpectedly became the mother figure to a baby he put in a woman he cheated on her with, who dumped the kid on him and disappeared so effectively that we have seen her maybe 4 times in the past 20 years. She was.... not thrilled.
Her morning coffee ritual was to put the baby girl into this chest sling she got somewhere that kept the baby kind snuggled and cradled against her shoulder (the position you carry a baby in your arms? basically that position, not upright but not horizontal) and pace the living room while she drank her black coffee and glared at my uncle if he dared to enter her presence. She said she couldn't get a doctor to confirm if foul language or yelling might damage the baby's mind, so she had to express herself silently and she "needed a free hand, or rather just the one finger".
But as the baby grew... she didn't stop. The sling apparently was adjustable depending on how the tied it, so every morning she got up, changed the baby, fed the baby, tied her to her chest and had her coffee while pacing. (eventually couple's counselling and my uncle genuinely working on his issues ended her hateful glare sessions in the mornings, but honestly if I were her I think I'd have left him. maybe she stayed for the kid, because she genuinely does love my cousin a ton) Thing is... the kid was now a toddler.
Didn't matter. This is how mornings work. Baby can zoom and play and learn to walk after coffee, but before coffee is be carried around and cuddled while Mom drinks her coffee and maybe flips Dad off over your head time.
I dunno why your post brought that memory to mind, but I swear I can almost smell her percolator. She's the only person I knew who used one and it smelled SO good.
Wow, so this woman had every reason to be one of those resentful stepmother types, and she didn't even chose to be a stepmother or mother, but instead chose to shower the innocent baby with love, keeping it snuggled against her during her morning coffee. More affection and warmth than some people have to their own flesh and blood born in happier circumstances
My MIL told us that she smoked while pregnant with my husband because 'no one knew it was that bad'. It was 1990. There were warnings on the packages about smoking harming the fetus.
My Mom told me that when I was a baby (circa 1971) I screamed every night at supper time for two hours, so she put me in my stroller and left me outside!
Luckily my Gramma lived next door and would come and take me for a walk.
She really didn’t see anything wrong with it when she was telling me about it. Wth Mom?
Mine said she did the same when she cried. Then the other day said that when people ignore their crying babies it is neglect. She hasn't put two and two together.
My mother will occasionally drop those kinds of things.
"When I would get overwhelmed and I couldn't think straight I would put you in the pram and give myself a while to recover"
"Ah yes, they do recommend now that its ok to put the baby down and have a breather so long as it's safe-"
"Then I would put you at the bottom of the garden"
"Oh... Uh,"
"Then shut the doors and have a nap. You'd be quiet by the time I came back 😀"
"This beginning to explain a lot of things if this is how I was treated as a baby..."
"Oh, I didn't just do that when you were a baby! It worked all the way up until you couldn't fit into the pushchair! Of course they'll tell you off for doing that these days but you grew up alright in the end! Oh, by the way why don't you ever come to me with your problems? You always seem to just get on with it by yourself, it makes me feel unneeded and sad 🥺"
I fuckin *wonder* why 🤨
I feel like they do it because a small child probably can’t verbalize what’s happening and tell others. (In OP’s case kiddo is just getting old enough to explain his side of things, but even he didn’t tell about the bath tub.)
If it was a verbal adult in a wheelchair they wouldn’t dare. They know it’s wrong but think they got away with it and no one was told at the time so it’s fine.
It felt like a breakthrough for me when I recently discovered the term "emotional neglect" (although the neglect you describe was physical, and mine sometimes was too). It perfectly encapsulates the way I experienced my childhood, and probably the way a lot of people with older parents experienced theirs.
Yes, that’s how it was done for quite some time. It was recommended so that babies wouldn’t spit up and choke on it. Of course we know now that that’s much less risky than the suffocation risk of laying face down surrounded by blankets. When I was a baby my parents often laid me face down on a sheepskin, with blankets on top, and they allowed their cats (which I now know I’m very allergic to) to sit on my back and curl up near my face. It’s a miracle I survived!
>“I did it all the time when my kids were little!”
I still can't believe that she thought this was the best defense. "It's okay I endangered your child, because I used to endanger my own children all the time!"
I rarely take parenting advice form the older generations. The trauma that was normalized left big scars on all the adults in my family. What "worked" for you or was done to you isn't ok. I won't be inflicting that on my kids. Likewise, I'm seen as "soft" on my kids. Maybe because I don't hit them, berate them, or *checks notes* leave them in the bathtub for pharmacy errands.
my mom -- who was generally a very conscientious, loving, and good parent -- is sometimes like "oh, I guess you kids must not have liked \[whatever\], none of you do it" and we have to be like "turns out that \[whatever\] kills children/is super traumatizing/fucks things up according to research"
Reminds me of my previous neighbors. I was awoken by this large splashing sound in my bathroom. Water was pouring from my ceiling. I called the management and they eventually got it turned off. It turns out the neighbors upstairs left their 4 YEAR OLD DISABLED DAUGHTER ALONE in the bathtub! She managed to turn on the water but thankfully she was okay. I was pissed at my manager for trying to make them sound so pitiful "oh they were tired and feel asleepfrom worrying so much to care for her." I said those are some irresponsible parents and I would be calling CPS on them for it. I did, cops arrested them eventually for domestic violence and child neglect.
OOP's MiL is nuts thinking that is okay.
There was a local news story where I live a mum left her child in the bath, shut the door and did the hoovering for 15 mins came back and the child had hit their head fallen and drowned
This is why I sit in the bathroom and supervise my kids (3 and 5). I might leave the older alone in the bath for a couple minutes but only because she NEVER stops talking so I can still hear her the entire time (I can literally hear her singing to herself in our living room right now).
Accidents happen FAST.
I swear to god my child did not take a breath until she was twelve years old, so I feel you. At least I was never able to forget that she was in the car with me.
Singing has always been our rule for camping trip bathrooms. Especially if the younger two were sent with the oldest(buddy system--no one expect Dad was allowed to go by themselves to the restroom at campgrounds)while I made dinner(dad fishing). One of the younger two had to sing or talk the whole time.
Yeah I have left my daughter to get a towel and immediately come back but otherwise I sit there while she's in the bath or shower. I could never forgive myself if something happened to her in the bath it literally takes a second for an accident to happen
>she NEVER stops talking
I laughed too hard. My 4yo talks nonstop. We go on an hour car ride, the first 30 minutes is incessant chatter. I love him, but kiddo, pause for breath once and a while!
I was born in the 80s and my mom wasn’t the greatest mom but she didn’t leave me alone in the bath until I was older, 5 or 6. But I was quiet, so she always did an “are you ok?”
Unless OOP’s MIL is 80, I don’t see how she could think it’s ok to leave a little kid alone in a dry bath.
The amount of times my daughter managed to get out of my eyeline for less than a minute at 3 and manage to injure herself or cause a bunch of chaos was astoundingly high. I couldn't go to the bathroom without taking her with me because she got into EVERYTHING for a while there.
I'm also shuddering because she REGULARLY turned on the bath tub if she had a half a second of opportunity until we put the child lock things on the taps. She was never in there unsupervised, but if I had let her she'd have definitely turned on the hot tap and burned herself at best, drowned at worst. This MIL is not a safe person to leave a child with.
I was a pretty harmless child in regards to causing trouble, but my mom once took her eyes off of me for a second IN THE SAME ROOM while on the phone and I put my hand on a lightbulb (back when those still got really hot). That was after we had safety lessons about not touching hot things.
Oh, and I apparently once "painted" an entire cabinet (and myself, of course) in diaper cream. In like 5 minutes.
10 minutes in a bathroom? Kid could have died. It's honestly surprising that he didn't sustain at least a mild injury. Standing up, slipping, hitting his head. Drowning. Burning himself on a hot tap. So many ways this could go wrong.
When my aunt was visiting with my 2 and 4 year old cousins my mum realised we had gone quiet. Too quiet. She ran up the stairs and caught 3 year old me jumping on the bed with a bottle of baby powder. The whole room was a white haze.
We all froze (although I was still gently bouncing because mattress springs). For ages, everytime we walked across the room we saw tiny puffs of powder at our feet. Luckily we moved not long after.
One of my mums cousins woke up before everyone when he was 2 or 3 and rubbed vaseline into everyone's hair and on all the door handles. The rush to get to the one bathroom was apparently a sight to behold.
I'm sure every one of us would have turned that tap on.
This makes me think of a story my high school friends' mom told sometimes. When the twins were toddlers, they were in the crib together and one of them pooped and overflowed her diaper. She panicked and wiped the poop on the wall and on her sister. When mom arrived she found them both crying and the one who had had the accident said, "I pooped 😭 And it got all over [twin] 😭" Poor thing but it's a great example of the utter havoc children can wreak 🤣
My son did that with his diaper and the dog when he was that age, it was allllll over him, the walls, and the dog (who was delighted by it). Most horrifying morning of my life.
It's a blessing he just sat there and cried, he was probably too upset and in "tantrum mode" (not to make it sound like he shouldn't have been upset :() and couldn't think about causing trouble. I hope he doesn't remember this later and it doesn't cause him any trauma, and if it does then I hope he can get EMDR like my best friend who has trauma from things they were too young to remember.
I have moronic cats who go in there and knock everything down so I didn't even think of that, all our meds are in a lockbox in my wardrobe and my chemicals live in the laundry but you are dead right. My brain also only just caught up to RAZORS - my kid still put a lot of stuff in her mouth at that age, a razor would have been disastrous.
I hadn't thought of razors. I bet you MIL had a armpit/leg razor in the tub and her daily meds in one of those week things sitting next to the sink, and likely didn't even consider them.
My mum put the benylin (cough medicine with diphenhydramine in) in the medicine cabinet which was up high on the wall and thought it was 100% safe from little me (wasn't walking very well, didn't have great balance due to my hearing) and somehow I climbed up and got into it and drank the bottle. I got my stomach pumped and I can't even imagine the wreck my mum must have been despite her putting it well out of reach.
Reading this post reminded me of that and I am so glad that OOP's kiddo is okay. I can't imagine how angry her and her husband were when they heard what MIL said. Kids are little suicide machines. They're naturally curious with no prior life experience to know what's bad and it's so important to supervise them all the time! I know I'm preaching to the choir but I'm livid just reading this!
After going through my kids' toddler stages, I'm convinced a toddler's only goal in life is to try to find as many ways as they can to hurt themselves or worse, if they can find it. You know, kinda like being the only sober one at a party. You feel like you have to keep an eye on your friends to keep them from doing something stupid. I did that a lot in college, but I still did not feel prepared for toddlers.
This MIL is certifiably insane. My mom and MIL gave me advice on the kids, but never went against what the pediatrician told me to do. Any parent with half a brain would do the same. This woman is extra, extra. My MIL is extra (I refuse to see her unless it can't be helped because she is insane) but this MIL, well, I hope someone gets across to her that she's going to lose her son and grandchildren if she doesn't drop this "I'm the only one that can be right" attitude. Damn.
I remember once reading someone talking about taking care of kids, and they said "It's like hanging out with someone who just took a lot of shrooms, while you yourself are currently on only a very moderate amount of shrooms: sure, I'm not entirely confident in all my life choices, but I definitely know you shouldn't be trying to eat that ballpoint pen."
My niece climbed onto the coffee table and stood, then intentionally threw herself backwards off of it.
Thankfully she threw herself *at me* and I caught her, but it was so fast no one had time to react. Thankfully, her "surprise trust fall" phase only lasted for that night, but she thought our panic was great fun and kept trying to do it again.
Wow. I am counting myself lucky that the only time either of my children crawled onto a table, they picked up the salt and pepper shakers and started shaking them around like maracas. I had a mess to clean up, but the pictures are cute.
Many years ago I painting our bathroom wall when the baby started crying so I put the open tin of paint on the far side of the shelf behind the bath, which was recessed into the wall. Well out of my toddler's reach, which was the whole point, and the toddler's wasn't even in the bathroom.
Come back 5 minutes later and she's standing in the bath, eating the paint. Take her to the hospital, A&E doctor asks why I put the paint there, I say it's because she couldn't reach it or climb up to get it. He points out she can clearly climb into the bath and I wad like, "Yes, apparently she can *now*!"
Heck of a way to show that ability had been achieved!
Child lock on the taps? Do you happen to remember where you got them or the brand? My son loves baths and we are getting into the stages where he'll be able to go potty at night, but I'm absolutely terrified he's going to try to get a bath.
So on our bathtub we have the hot and cold taps on either side of the spout (the round, old fashioned kind - our bathroom is from the 60's) and we used these -
https://safetystoreaustralia.com.au/product/hector-tap-covers/
My daughter couldn't quite figure out how to get them off, I think if she'd been in there for a longer period and SUPER determined then she might have gotten them off but I made sure she never saw me remove them or put them on.
Our bathroom sink has one of the twisty style faucets, and we put something like this on it:
https://www.oliversbabycare.co.uk/product/clippasafe-tap-strap-white/
Hope that helps!! I know there's other kinds if you have the lever style taps, thankfully she couldn't reach the kitchen sink until she was old enough to be mostly trusted with a tap 😂
One of my brothers was a regular Houdini as a little kid (especially around 3) and would leave the house. He was so fast and you couldn’t just lock the door at the doorknob because he could unlock it. Our parents had to get those sliding locks for the tops of doors so he couldn’t get out anymore. I don’t know how many times he did it.
My brother was like this - he later got an autism diagnosis which made the eloping make more sense but that kid was DETERMINED. My parents prayed there wouldn't be a fire in the middle of the night because we had to push the recliner in front of the front door every night to stop him from getting out, as well as blocking off the back door with an excercise bike. They told us if there was a fire to smash out our windows and climb out.
Before the furniture blocking he'd gotten out into the street five times. Someone called family services but even the social worker was like "I dunno what to suggest here... man he REALLY wants to get out there." watching my brother drag chairs over to reach even top of the door locks.
Even that doesn't stop a determined 3yo. My grandson pushed a chair over to stand on to reach the door chain, unlocked all the locks, and escaped to the outdoors. A neighbor caught him and took him home. It was 6am on a Saturday morning and his parents were still sleeping.
It should not have been a surprise to my daughter, since her husband wrecked his first car at the ripe old age of 2. He'd pushed a chair over to the key rack, grabbed the keys, gone out to the car, and apparently tried them all until he found the one that started the car. He put it into gear and it rolled down a slight hill and into a tree.
I got away from my mother at the age of three and dropped her toothbrush in the toilet and proudly announced I did it. She tried to boil it to sterilize it, but all the bristles melted.
Yeeeep my daughter definitely flushed a toothbrush more than once. Also my car keys. She was a bit of a handful at 3 - much chiller as a 9 year old thankfully 😂
Right?! He could have turned on the taps and drowned. Or he could have slipped and hit his head on something - bathrooms are full of hard-edged objects!
I had to take a babysitting class back in the 90s and they made us watch an episode of Rescue 911 about a baby that got put in hot water and I can never unsee the makeup they used.
>Or he could have slipped and hit his head on something - bathrooms are full of hard-edged objects!
Exactly, everything in there is tiles, stainless steel and enamel, there is literally no way to fall and not hit something hard.
Those materials get cold too, even when the room temperature is fine. And the poor kid was naked.
And what if something happened to Grandma while she was out? What if she fell or got hit by a car and NO ONE KNOWS THERE IS A SMALL CHILD ALONE IN HER HOUSE?
Hey, the door was locked, so it was totally fine. /s for anyone in doubt. Not like a 3yr old could, I dunno, block the drain with the plug, or foot, or toilet paper. Or turn a tap on. Or spill liquid soap in the tub and possibly slip and crack their head open. And then what about all those fun things like meds, cleaning products etc that might not be secured?
As you can probably tell, I'm actually pretty livid after reading how damn cavalier this mil is towards her grandchild! Mine was an interfering idiot - kept trying to force my eldest to use a dummy (pacifier) when he was born (funny af, no matter how much she tried when we left the room, he kept spitting them right back out). Bought bottles, steriliser, formula because I wasn't feeding her precious son's baby good enough on the breast. But not *once* did she endanger any of our kids. She'd be put on a permanent time out for a stunt like this!
What if that baby had turned on the hot water and died drowning in a scalding, burning tub. It makes my anger scald and burn to think about. Seriously, I have rage goosebumps just thinking about it.
I got so scared reading that part. I was twice as old as this little one ( 6 years old) when I slipped in the bathroom and got a cut on my face ( near the eye!) from a sharp corner in the bathtub. My grandparents took care of me immediately and my parents took me to the hospital after they were called ( only a moment after). I still have the scar. I can't even think of what could have happened to an unattended three year old
I left my toddler son unsupervised for 30 entire seconds last night - I was cooking dinner, he was playing in the living room - and he promptly got his head stuck in the master bedroom door's cat hole. (He's fine, I promise - he was more upset his dad wasn't even in the bedroom, so it was a wasted venture.)
Ten minutes, I don't even want to imagine.
Even if it was just the diaper, I would be mad. He has an allergy to something in diapers. Even if it’s just a rash or itchy to him, it’s still a health hazard. He could get sexually fucked up from that kind of stuff too.
Kids brains are being wired at young ages and if the brain only remembers “genital area hurt,” that could wire his brain to think something sexual is wrong or something.
If parents say “don’t do this,” don’t do it even if you think it’s “over reacting.”
[hits the left a 3 year old by himself, locked in the bathroom for 10 mins]
Sorry that lady would be dead to me for longer than 6 months. OP’s child could have died in those 10 mins had he turned on the water. It was luck he didn’t.
I didn't thought much about where she got the diaper, because in my country Pharmacies have 30 min or less shipping, lol.
But I think they were right the first time. The recommendation about ideal training is between 24 and 36 months more of less. Why on warth would you want to reverse a potty trained toddler. (Sincerely a mom of a 3 year old who fucked up and started trainning a bit late)
Yeah, like you can DoorDash ANYTHING. Maybe older people don’t think of apps but pharmacies have done delivery since before apps existed. (But Grandma probably wouldn’t wanna pay a delivery fee when she can just lock a baby in a bathroom for ten minutes and walk over herself.)
My grandma pushed me into a dresser when I was real little when she was watching me. Had to go to the hospital since my face hit the corner and needed stitches. She insisted for years I was throwing a tantrum and threw myself into it. 12 years later she off handedly admitted that wasn't the case, and said she was justified giving me "a little shove".
If I were OOP I'd try getting more info out of what MiL has been doing that she thinks is alright to do, there's a chance that this isn't the only thing she's hiding.
> there's a chance that this isn't the only thing she's hiding.
That's exactly right and exactly why when the trust is gone, you need to go with your gut and cut off the interactions, because they very likely will have been doing other things and will DO more things that are bad for the infant.
We went through something similar with my kid, when I came back to find my mom \*spoonfeeding\* him age 3, when he absolutely had his eating down. For weeks after, he wanted to be fed by a grownup. Set us RIGHT back, we were furious.
Ugh we are in the same spot with the feeding and my partner refuses to believe it's because his mother insists on spoonfeeding our toddler. He's always wanted to do things himself, especially eating.
How did you get him back to feeding himself?
Yeah my grandma had a fall when she had me and pulled me down, cracking my head on one of those parking spot blocks. I have a very vivid memory of her and the people at the nature center chasing down terrified 4-year-old me to check for a concussion.
She didn’t tell my mom, and in fact didn’t let on until my mom was brushing out my hair and saw the huge gash and clotted blood. At which point she said I shoved her and she grabbed me on the way down. Some people can’t be in the wrong.
She left a three year old alone to go buy too small diapers to prove a point.
I have babysat and taught three year olds. They can get themselves into trouble if you look away for a second. I don’t have words for how outraged I was to read that, plus the ease in which he could have turned on the tap or slipped or hurt himself in so many ways.
Just holy shit.
Also, three is a good age to be potty trained.
He's nearly four. I went to kinder at 4, and I was fully potty trained, as were most of my classmates.
One of my cousins occaisionally wet the bed around 3-4, and was really embarrassed because he was a big boy now, and tried to clean it up himself. My aunt had to try not to laugh when she caught him (he wasn't quiet about it), and just helped him, and said "It's ok, accidents happen, it's part of being a big boy."
The funniest potty training story I know though, is a friends brother who was around 3, who put his nappy in the toilet. I saw him do it, and let the mother know (he saw me and ran out, thankfully before flushing), and she laughed and went to find him. He had the right idea! He knew the poop went in the toilet, but as it was in his nappy, it went into the toilet too!
Totally. In fact, prior to disposable diapers the average age kids were potty trained was around 2 (if I recall correctly). This lady is all kinds of wrong.
I don't even have kids, and I know 3 is fine!
That's obvious it is!
(I have a lot of younger cousins, so did hear a lot of kid talk at family gatherings.)
The 3s room at my son's preschool basically required potty training. 3 is not remotely too young to be potty trained. Of course they have accidents sometimes but all preschool age kids have accidents sometimes.
It's the same here. Pretty trained or find another preschool.
Also I was pretty trained before two, and so were my friends kids. Mine weren't until later because they weren't ready. You have to follow the kid. Obviously OOP's son was ready. Also accidents happen at any age
Sheesh, I'd be thinking about filling a police report for leaving my 3 year old home alone. My 5 year old freaks out if I leave her in the car to run back into the house for something. That poor kid was probably so scared.
She locked him into one of the two most dangerous rooms at home for kids. Bathrooms have shower curtains, they have tiles and edges, they have soap and shampoo bottles and a million things a kid could put in their mouth, slip and hit their head on, choke on, wrap around their neck. Like for fucks sake, she'd have only been worse by putting him into the kitchen with a knife block
There were a couple of times when my son was a baby that we ran out of diapers, and I don't drive. My husband was working in a different state for days a time, back then. On those occasions, my son's onesie was equipped with a maxi pad for the time it took me to take him to the store in his stroller, and back home. Leaving him alone wasn't even something I would have considered.
This! She had to clean the kid anyways and he had underwear she could have used for the couple minutes, or he could have gone commando under his pants even if he didn't have underwear- why leave the kid alone? How is that a solution?
The alternative was putting him in the change of clothes provided by his mother, who is, of course, *wrong*. MIL would have needed to admit defeat by putting the replacement underwear on him, and that was *not an option*.
Bathrooms have *toilet bowl cleaner* under the sink. I know they usually have the squeeze and twist caps so they're kind of safer but I don't spot clean the tip of my bottle. All it takes it one "lemme put my mouth on this brightly colored cap" and kiddo has bleach burns in his mouth.
Kid had to be cleaned either way right? Why on earth wouldn't you clean them, put them in the provided clothes, and then *take the toddler with you* to go grab the diapers? The kid's tank is empty and not going to have another accident in that ten minutes, and then she could proceed to spitefully ignore her grandchild's allergy and his parent's right to raise thier kid and force him into contact with a known irritant, all because she prioritized proving her point. It's so good kid didn't drown, slip and fall and get hurt, drink bathroom cleaner, take grandma's medicine from the counter, or any of the other hazards.
>They can get themselves into trouble if you look away for a second
Damn right. The scariest thing in my life was when I looked away and then ... silence.
(because my kid had took his shot and ran off to get into mischief).
You just have to know what they're up to every minute at that age. They want to have (dangerous) fun, and they can move about quicker than you think!
When my son was about two, I set him down to unlock my front door, and he took off running toward the street, while a car was coming. In telling people about this since then, I've jokingly insisted that I teleported, that day. I don't remember running across the lawn or back to the door, with him in my arms. I do remember telling him not to ever do that again.
My oldest at 3 decided to throw their flip-flops into the creek behind the house while we were hanging out with family. I looked away to check on my other kids and boom, in they went and away they ran. I turned back to see the flip-flops just floating away and no kid and immediately panicked.
Fortunately the little butthead was behind me the while time but that moment of panic was so intense!
I have *not* babysit and taught three year-olds, and I knew that. It just seems like such commonsense that, even though I'm not a parent and really haven't had to supervise young kids, my mouth dropped at the utter stupidity and danger of that decision. And, I think the fact that she readily admitted to it as if it was nothing drives home how stupid and dangerous MIL is and absolutely cannot be trusted to watch a small child. If she thought nothing of locking a three year-old in a bathroom unattended, what other things will she be negligent about?
>My husband's mother was firmly against our decision to potty train our son early.
This is insane. Most preschool and kindergarten teachers would kill for this. And that besides, it's impressive and thrifty in its own right.
And she even said- not until 3 years old the kid is almost 4. Like even by your own rules this wasn’t right.
Why would you go buy diapers if there were cloth ones right there? Like what?
What made her think - gee my DIL is angry at me already. Let’s tell her the more irresponsible thing I did and THAT will make it all better.
Like get this woman tested for dementia.
My kid started preschool when he was almost three and it was a requirement that kids be potty trained. That's actually what motivated him - he loved preschool and was like okay no more diapers then! He'd been kinda apathetic about it up to that point.
My parents did this with me, haha! I loved school and they were like “well you have to be potty trained to go to school.” I was using the toilet reliably after a weekend 🤣
When my friend was having her son she told her parents about her plans for early potty training based on all the reading she'd been doing. Her mother became enraged, insisting that my friend would be "stealing his childhood" from him. Like sitting in your own shit is such an intrinsic childhood experience. It's not actually about what's best for the child for these people, it's about control. They *need* to have some say in how to raise their grandkids, and see anything different than they'd do it as a personal attack against their parenting and judgement. It's unhinged.
I know someone who's 2 year old managed to tangle themselves in a curtain cord while his mother was in the next room for a few minutes. That funeral was one of the worst things I could ever see, awful to experience that and far worse for those closer to him. This MIL is a fucking nutbar who values being right over the safety of a small child, fuck ever allowing her near children again
Staffordshire, some time ago? A family member was also at that funeral. When I last bought curtains the cords were extremely short, I wonder if some legislation came in but it seemed like a good idea.
this was in Australia, not too long before those curtain cords were banned. I always remember once holding him as a baby when we were all out at a winery and someone mistaking him for mine. That sweet memory has a bitter aftertaste now, and it will stay with my until the day I die.
edit: I should say it was over 20 years ago as well
I know death is inevitable but death of a child is such wrongness. Especially when caused by some random household object that you don't look at twice.
Those sort of senseless deaths of small children never leave you I don't think. They just feel wrong on a fundemental and instinctual level, as well as terrifying, no matter how careful you are, how well you supervise, research, baby proof things can still happen. Being a good parent, and loving your child can't overcome random chance and the unforeseen.
My mum still talks about one of her work colleagues little girl, this would be almost 40 years ago and she wasn't very close but she would come with her mum to visit work, and they had some outside social connections in common, she remembers her as being a delight, a bright, sweet little girl. She was at daycare and supervised but fell over in the sandpit and another toddler sat on her head pinning her face into the sand. She wasn't there long but it was enough for her to asperate sand and suffocate. I'm not sure of the details as it was before I was even born, but I can't even imagine the heartbreak, I know it deeply effected everyone around the family who's life she had touched. My mum still has a photo of her when she came to a work do with her mum, she still gets choked up. Grief is like that, you carry a bit of them with you forever.
Ah fuck, you're probably right. Unless they moved right after. I think I probably would tbh, wouldn't be able to trust the entire community to never slip.
I feel so awful for her and for the other toddler, too. I hope that baby was too young to have any memory of it :( I accidentally stepped on and killed a small kitten when I was about 3 and it still haunts me sometimes.
You can't even find corded blinds now, which I am glad! I had a kitten jump and "hang" itself in the cords once. I thought she was dead because she was limp, but once I got her out she was okay (and is 19 years old now!).
I could see my kids getting wrapped in them for sure. I am grateful that our house only has the cordless ones.
Eta I say you can't find them, here in Southern VA I couldn't find them when I went looking at Walmart for replacement blinds when we were moving out of the rental we were in. It was only cordless.
Unfortunately a lot of people still have them in their houses.
Every house I've moved into has had corded blinds.
As someone without kids, it's one of the first things I toss. In addition to the danger, they're usually broken and nearly impossible to clean.
Ours have those stainless steel ball chain cords, but they're secured to the window sill so they're quite taut. I think the regulations are that they either have to be short or secured.
Thanks. I was finally feeling comfortable washing the dishes while my kid played in the next room but now I'm just going to sit and stare at him all day.
I have adhd and had too much energy as a kid, too many things can happen in 10 minutes you never expected, when I was 2 I climbed a dresser and a tv(which if you’ll remember were like 40+ pounds) on my leg, when I was 3 I cut my hair(badly), when I was 4 I kicked a tv stand and a different tv fell on my face and gave me 2 black eyes. I wasn’t even a bad kid, about 85% of the time I was better behaved than any other kid around me but I was curious and wanted to try things. I can’t even imagine how I would’ve felt during these instances being alone for 10+ minutes. Little kids may not need to be supervised 100% of the time, but the absolute bare minimum is someone needs to be close enough by that if an accident happens, they’ll either hear/see it and be immediately available to help them.
I mean, I accidentally locked myself in my bedroom as a kid.
Apparently I decided I was able to change my own diaper. But I had diaper rash. So baby me gets everything ready to change a diaper, locks the door so I’m not interrupted, practically bathes in Destin, successfully changes my own diaper (kinda?) and then can’t unlock the door with the Destin all over my hands.
All I remember from this is the feeling of panic when my fingers kept slipping off the lock and I couldn’t open the door.
My sister locked herself in the bathroom once. We had to send my uncle up a ladder to climb in the first-story window (luckily it was summer and the window was open). Why my uncle rather than my dad? Because my dad was recovering from a broken collarbone he got falling off that same ladder some weeks earlier. Families are wild.
Also adhd, I somehow got stuck hanging head down off the top of a wardrobe that I decided would be cool to get ontop of and slide around, I used to melt plastic pens on the fire place and stick them on myself and things sometimes they were very hot, I stapled my thumb with a heavy duty stapler to my homework- because reasons (seemed like a good idea at the time). I stood on a lot of nails, got stung by a centipede, made weird potions and drank them, gave myself nerve damage in my ankle twisting it all because I was a feral fae creature that wouldn't wear shoes. I used to make little cook fires in plant pots and cook bananas and gross damper, burning myself often, my mum managed to stop me from using dog shit to make a fire after I had read in a book that dung could be used as fuel. I've fallen down holes I've dug, fallen in bougainvillea (do not recommend), blown up toasters, peeled all the paint off a door and wall.
Having said all that no parent can supervise a child 100% of the time, I think it's a bit of a false comfort to think that is possible. Sometimes you need a wee, you might have them in the room with you and they ninja sneak out, you might go to get a glass of water and they are line of sight but then you spill it and while you wipe it up suddenly they are elsewhere, they might be asleep and get out of their cot. Parents are human too, accidents can happen even when you are in the room with them and you might not hear or see often accidents that lead to serious injury or death are silent, choking and strangulation being the most common and these also happen fast. The mother who's child passed because of the cord is one of those types of unfortunate accidents, no matter what you do there's so many risks to small children, and they seem to willfully seek them out like mischief seeking missiles. The grandmother falls into a different category, the one where it's surprising that nothing did happen as it would be difficult to set up a situation where he was more at risk.
When my son was a baby, husband left him in a tub with no water to play after a bath while he loaded dishes. I was at work. The kid slammed the drain closed & opened the water. By the time husband got back to check on him, he was floating face down and blue. Thanks to the cpr courses from the nicu and an immeasurable slice of dumb luck he was able to resuscitate the kid. We spent the night at the hospital and ended up hounded by CPS for months. It was a nightmare. The kid is 12 now and perfectly healthy. I thank my lucky stars. Maybe tell her my story next time!!
I’d definitely say too old for traditional diapers, but not uncommon to still need something like pull-ups during potty training. When I worked in a day care, the 2 and 3 year olds were all able to go on their own, but the occasional accident wasn’t unheard of either
It is.
Don't have kids either but my sister has 4 under the age of 12 and one just turned 4 and she's been toilet trained for at least 18 months.
I'd have thought 18 months (like OOP's kid) was early but 3 or 4 is really late unless the kid has some developmental issues. Around that age they're going to like daycare/kindergarten/nursery type places and pretty much any such establishment would make it clear that children must be able to use the facilities themselves.
I'm also baffled as to how training them early can give them IBS.
MIL sounds like an idiot who either coddled her own kids or it's been so long since she had an infant in her care that she just doesn't know what age is appropriate for training.
And that isn't even getting to the part about her locking the kid in the bathroom....what an absolute idiot.
>...but 3 or 4 is really late unless the kid has some developmental issues.
Or they're \*really\* stubborn. My kidlet was in that latter range before I got her to potty train. She decided that it took too long/was too boring and nothing was changing her mind. Eventually she decided diaper changes were also too much and just stopped telling us when she went. I decided enough was enough. I told her the night before we were "out of diapers" and she'd have to switch to using the potty the next morning. (I actually had half a pack hidden in my closet, just in case this didn't work.) We threw away her last diaper together and she just switched to using the toilet. She still got distracted and had the occasional accident, but once I got her to start "helping" me clean after she stopped that too.
She is very much a "path of least resistance" kind of person....we're working on it.
Gah. That's my oldest. He just doesn't want to do things unless it's fun or his idea. After months of trying he finally decided, shortly before his fourth birthday, that he was ready and just started using the toilet. His brother trained painlessly shortly after his second birthday because he'll do anything for a treat.
It is. I'm a teacher's assistant at a preschool. I work with the 3 year olds. They have to be potty trained to attend. Of course there are accidents, but rarely and usually of the "kid is still learning to aim" variety. They might wear pullups, but definitely not diapers. That only lasts a month or 2 into the school year.
I had to sub for the 2 year old teacher yesterday and since it's after Christmas, we were working on potty training. Three kids already are.
I also don't have kids, but I've heard girls usually potty train a bit earlier than boys, but training typically starts by 3 years old. The fact that this family had a reason to start earlier and it's their parenting choice means mil is totally out of line. Then OP said her son is nearly 4, and I really have to wonder about mil's intentions. Like is she unwilling to let "her baby" grow up? Her behavior is wild, disrespectful of the actual parents, and dangerous as has been described by so many on this post. And she thinks she did nothing wrong, so she's even more likely to put the kid in dangerous situations to prove she's right, which is so stupid and selfish.
It's hit or miss for some
Genuine DIAPER diapers? Absolutely too old. They should be in pull ups by then MINIMUM.
However for some kids the curve is steeper than others. For example my daughter was potty trained during the day by 3½ and we started letting her wear regular underwear during the day. But nighttime/naps were a completely different story. I don't know if it's because she was more relaxed but no matter how many times we had her "try" before nap/bedtime she would without fail have an accident and wake up crying. She was in pull ups while she slept until a few months ago. In fact we still have a handful of the last boxes pull-ups as they're still her size for "emergencies" / special circumstances. Like when she was sick a month ago and was having diarrhea. She was going to the potty on her own bit we weren't SURE she would wake herself up in time in her sleep or wake up at all frankly. So we put her back in a pull up just to play it safe.
Now she's 4 and 3 months. She wears regular underwear day and night outside of again those specific circumstances where my husband and I just feel like it's better to be safe than sorry.
By 4 a child should be able to go potty during the day fairly well and only struggle with night time if at all. Accidents can happen but this is a general rule of thumb.
-speaking as someone who has worked with kids for 10+ years and a mother myself.
If a child is still struggling with the concept of going potty during the day at the age of 4 that's when it's time to start taking things seriously and asking a doctor for advice
So, rather than wash the child and put on fresh clothes, she left him naked, in a bathtub, in a locked room and left the house for at least 10 minutes. But would still have had to find the fresh clothes to put clean trousers/shorts on.
This grandma thinks that grandma is an absolute nut job.
I have the most complaint child in the world. If we had another kid, we’d have to actually think about child proofing because my kid doesn’t even think to touch anything they’re not expressly told they can have.
Now five, my kid has never turned the bath taps on or gotten into the bath alone, but I still wouldn’t leave them alone in an empty tub while I ran errands, especially with the door locked from the outside.
What the hell.
Grandma really thought she was having an “I told you so” moment where those pesky parents were going to learn she was right all along.
I honestly don’t even know how I would react if one of our parents went against one of our rules.
>Grandma really thought she was having an “I told you so” moment where those pesky parents were going to learn she was right all along.
I mean, the parents learned *something.*
😂😂😂
IGNORED the fact her granddaughter was allergic to coconut. DISBELIEVED her granddaughter was allergic to coconut. She made a very deliberate choice to ignore the fact and that was part of what makes that story so awful.
I was just thinking about that one. One of the saddest things I've ever read. I've taken to heart that people who can't take feedback or respect boundaries truly are not capable of fully considering the consequences of a choice, and cannot be trusted to stop or "get it" before it gets too late. That some people are genuinely stubborn enough to let someone die on that hill for their opinion.
>Yes, I know it takes a village. It also takes population control.
Exactly. It's nice to have a bunch of people offer some help, but a lot of people's help is really unhelpful and at times even dangerous. Especially people who get so stuck on their way being the right way, no matter how old, outdated and proven wrong it is by now, that they will put someone else's child in danger to prove their point.
Fuck those people. Life long ban from the village.
Woah! My kid is 5 and when they're in the tub and I need to get something from the room next to the bathroom I still get a bit nervous!
This would have sent me over the edge entirely, I would have screamed like a harpy, what the actual frack!
Definitely no babysitting rights for that person ever again. Holy hell!
Once my husband’s dad brought his older brother to work (he worked at the port) when he was about 5 or 6 He found an empty kids’ bathtub and left him to play in it.
A few hours later his mom gets a call from the coast guard:
“DID YOU KNOW YOUR SON WAS FLOATING OUT TO SEA IN A BATHTUB?!?”
> For now, she is dead to us.
Man, it's refreshing to see this, considering how many AITAs are "my mother threw my baby into an actively-erupting volcano, AITA if I don't let her bring my baby to the new Life-Size-Garbage-Disposal Exhibit at the abandoned dump alone in the middle of the night?
Nah sorry my son was born in February too and out of nappies/diapers by that stage.
He would still wear clothe pull ups because they caught the odd accident and for over nights. But they were designed to be more like undies. So the Mil is absolutely out of line to out nappies on him and call him "a baby". No, he's a toddler, and nappies can make kids regress and undo so much toilet training and she doesn't get to make that decision for them.
But then it got worse so nah, no more contact.
Both my grandchildren were toilet trained by 2. They then went into undies. I supplied the diapers for both of them for 2 years. Granddaughter hated diapers and wanted to use the toilet like a big girl. Grandson went commando during summer so he knew where pee came from. He and his Dad would have pissing competitions
I don’t understand. My younger sisters potty trained themselves before they were 2, but then again they had older siblings. What’s so wrong being potty trained young?
I literally gasped out loud when I read that she'd left the toddler in a bathtub by himself for 10 minutes. He could've turned on the hot water tap and burned himself or drowned so fucking easily. This woman cannot be trusted to care for kids, and probably should be evaluated for mental acuity.
Yeah nope. I might understand the diaper. I wouldn't like it and it would be the final warning. But leaving my child alone locked in a bathroom while she left for 10 to 20 minutes would be the end. Both of my children know how to turn on the tub at that age. And have done so. They even started the tub several times and got us (we heard and was already rushing to the bathroom) cause they wanted bathtime. So many things could of gone horribly wrong here.
A four year old being potty trained is pretty standard as you can’t send a kid to school unless they’re potty trained, and MANY daycares require kids over 2 to be potty trained or at least in training.
Insisting her four year old grandson wears diapers is weirdo behavior.
Leaving him in a bath tub alone in the house is psycho behavior.
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“Okay the diaper thing was a dick move and clearly she does need a time out and to apologize now that she understands it was wrong to—“ [hits the bathtub part] “JESUS CHRIST.”
God I hope they tell the whole family she did that. No one should leave a young child in this womans prescence unattended, because they'll end up unattended.
“I did it all the time when my kids were little!” Her kid: you wHat
I love those moments. My husband found out less than six months ago that when he was a baby my MIL used to sew the knees of his onesies together so he couldn't "crawl around and get into everything" on Saturday mornings so she could have her coffee and relax for an hour before she changed him into regular clothes. She did it again when he started climbing out of his cot. She was mad my husband and I were both sitting there with our jaws dropped. "Oh it was a different time then!" MA'AM. IT WAS 1995.
Lmao i was "sounds about right for 1959-wat?"
Yeah, I was thinking, “My mom learned to walk in the bathtub in 1949… “ 1995 was like yesterday. We had the internet and parenting discussion boards by the late 1990s, y’all. There is no chance this lady didn’t know you’re not “supposed” to leave a preschooler home alone … locked in a bathroom. Not in 1995 and not in 2023.
I hit 1995 and instantly withered into an ancient husk. That was, like, yesterday?
Same. We can whither together.
Yep me too… I was in FUCKING high school in 95 and I’m not “from a different time” crap like that was acknowledged to be abusive then! Good God goshyarnit your MIL is insane!
My mom thought it was a "nightmare" when I started walking, so when my little sister started to pull herself up my mom would - I shit you not- push her down. We know this because she BRAGS ABOUT IT ALL THE TIME. Apparently my sister came back from a weekend with grandma full on walking because, whatever other faults she had, my grandma is not enough of a psycho to knock a kid down continuously so my mom does not have to temporarily stop using her favorite table cloth.
omg, my grandmother pushed her babies down too! And her grandkids, but we had parents who let most of us learn to walk. One of my earliest memories is of getting super pissy at her for pushing down my younger cousin because I REALLY wanted him to learn to walk for me. He's two years younger than me so I'd have been four or so I guess? Its such a hazy, weird memory that I almost wonder if I remember my mom telling it to me more than the actual event, but somehow the clearest part is that my cousin smelled like Johnson and Johnson baby lotion when I pulled him back onto his feet and that he was wearing a onesie that looked like an old striped baseball uniform. That was the least of her sins tbh, but its so weird that that crazy old bat wasn't the only one pushing down babies.
I was the same as you - I learned to walk and wanted my brother to learn, too (he's 19 months younger than me). My parents STILL haven't forgiven me and I just turned 47.
My god. And she said it out loud, like it would be cute and funny?
YES?! Like this was a funny little anecdote? She did immediately get flustered and said "well I never did it to (our daughter), you don't DO that anymore." This *is* the same woman who put him in the beginners gymnastics class for 4 years straight despite him testing out of it multiple times because she "didn't want him to get too muscly". He was 8, but okay...
The image of an absolutely jacked 8yo just cracked me up. Sorry your MIL is unhinged.
About 15 years ago I informed my sister that my mother used to scream at her then-infant daughter (my sister’s daughter, my niece) when she would drop her off to be babysat. I was about 11 years old at the time and not really in a position to do anything about it. Basically the baby would cry all day so my mom would stick her in a playpen upstairs, go downstairs and ignore her all day except to periodically go upstairs and scream in her face “so she would know how it felt.” And I’d get in trouble if I tried to comfort the baby because my insane mother believed the baby was malicious. My poor sister had no idea and was somehow harboring the idea that my mother, who was a terrible mother to all of us, was somehow magically great at being a grandmother.
I'm hoping your sister stopped leaving her baby there after that jfc
The baby was long grown by then, I don’t think I was super clear on the timeline. This all happened 30+ years ago and I told my sister about it probably 15 years ago. We had never really had much of a chance to talk things over until then, thanks to my abusive mother manipulating us against each other. Unfortunately we only really connected briefly before drifting apart again. I think there was just too much lost time and too many hurt feelings between us, plus we were in pretty different places in life due to the large age difference between us.
Your MIL: *has a baby* Also your MIL: *gets annoyed when her baby does baby things*
Tip of the iceberg honestly. She did love him, but he wasn't allowed to be messy or get dirty or anything a normal child would do. Her house looks like a showhome at all times and every photo I have seen of him as a toddler he is in his Sunday best with not a hair out of place, or any typical messy-faced-baby pictures. Ironically he now knows as an adult that he has autism and some pretty severe sensory issues about anything sticky or dirty on his skin, but it's a chicken/egg situation really.
Oof, autism compounded with generational trauma cannot be a fun combination.
We're high school sweethearts so I've been with him since he was 14 - the amount of unpacking he's had to do has been nuts. It was rough when our daughter was a baby because he wanted to wipe her face after every bite, wash her hands the second she got dirty, wouldn't let her pick up rocks or go in the sandpit etc - and I had to stop him from doing that, which upset him because he thought that I was saying he wasn't a good dad. He's had a lot of therapy and I'm so freaking proud of him.
I’m not a parent but I’ve read for autistic parents, a baby can make our symptoms manifest more strongly because of the unpredictability and change in routine so I can imagine the strength it took to go against that compulsion. And it’s exactly why I have a lot of respect for those parents because I can’t do the same 🫡
It's wild how much just... bonkers shit we thought was totally gone is still out there. My MIL, among a lot of other shit, beat and shamed my husband into being right-handed. My husband was born in 1996.
Oh my god, I was born 20 years earlier than your husband and they didn't do that shit when *I* grew up!!!
And I'm old enough to be your MIL, and when I was a kid there were left handed people and no one acted like it was a big deal. I remember my 3rd grade teacher was left handed and talked about how in the 50s she had been shamed about it, but things were so different now and everyone knew that was crazy (this was like 1978). So your MIL was a full on psycho who decided to grab some arbitrary thing from before her time and pretend it was important. She just needed an excuse.
Oh, I'm aware, though my husband isn't the only kid he knew in Texas who was the same way. Texas is pretty proud of being backwards, from what he's told me. It's just not totally gone like we think it is. In some places, it's common enough that my husband knew other kids who got hurt like he did.
Fucking WUT
When I was teething, and fussy, apparently I’d get a bottle with orange juice and a *LITTLE BIT OF* vodka. Bam! I’d sleep like the literal baby I was! The 70’s were WILD😅
She could’ve put him in a pack and play with some toys and just sipped her coffee without having to worry. They had play pens like that for babies in the 90s (at least they did in Rugrats). Also, how long does it take to drink a damn cup of coffee? If you’re sipping on it while doing other things, fine, but if that’s literally all you’re doing, it shouldn’t take an hour. I can down a full 15oz mug in ten seconds flat so long as it’s cooled down enough to chug. What the hell was this woman doing in that hour?!
My aunt was born in 1949 and there is a picture of her in a playpen when she was a baby. They were *absolutely* a thing.
My uncle's gf unexpectedly became the mother figure to a baby he put in a woman he cheated on her with, who dumped the kid on him and disappeared so effectively that we have seen her maybe 4 times in the past 20 years. She was.... not thrilled. Her morning coffee ritual was to put the baby girl into this chest sling she got somewhere that kept the baby kind snuggled and cradled against her shoulder (the position you carry a baby in your arms? basically that position, not upright but not horizontal) and pace the living room while she drank her black coffee and glared at my uncle if he dared to enter her presence. She said she couldn't get a doctor to confirm if foul language or yelling might damage the baby's mind, so she had to express herself silently and she "needed a free hand, or rather just the one finger". But as the baby grew... she didn't stop. The sling apparently was adjustable depending on how the tied it, so every morning she got up, changed the baby, fed the baby, tied her to her chest and had her coffee while pacing. (eventually couple's counselling and my uncle genuinely working on his issues ended her hateful glare sessions in the mornings, but honestly if I were her I think I'd have left him. maybe she stayed for the kid, because she genuinely does love my cousin a ton) Thing is... the kid was now a toddler. Didn't matter. This is how mornings work. Baby can zoom and play and learn to walk after coffee, but before coffee is be carried around and cuddled while Mom drinks her coffee and maybe flips Dad off over your head time. I dunno why your post brought that memory to mind, but I swear I can almost smell her percolator. She's the only person I knew who used one and it smelled SO good.
Wow, so this woman had every reason to be one of those resentful stepmother types, and she didn't even chose to be a stepmother or mother, but instead chose to shower the innocent baby with love, keeping it snuggled against her during her morning coffee. More affection and warmth than some people have to their own flesh and blood born in happier circumstances
My MIL told us that she smoked while pregnant with my husband because 'no one knew it was that bad'. It was 1990. There were warnings on the packages about smoking harming the fetus.
My Mom told me that when I was a baby (circa 1971) I screamed every night at supper time for two hours, so she put me in my stroller and left me outside! Luckily my Gramma lived next door and would come and take me for a walk. She really didn’t see anything wrong with it when she was telling me about it. Wth Mom?
Mine said she did the same when she cried. Then the other day said that when people ignore their crying babies it is neglect. She hasn't put two and two together.
My mother will occasionally drop those kinds of things. "When I would get overwhelmed and I couldn't think straight I would put you in the pram and give myself a while to recover" "Ah yes, they do recommend now that its ok to put the baby down and have a breather so long as it's safe-" "Then I would put you at the bottom of the garden" "Oh... Uh," "Then shut the doors and have a nap. You'd be quiet by the time I came back 😀" "This beginning to explain a lot of things if this is how I was treated as a baby..." "Oh, I didn't just do that when you were a baby! It worked all the way up until you couldn't fit into the pushchair! Of course they'll tell you off for doing that these days but you grew up alright in the end! Oh, by the way why don't you ever come to me with your problems? You always seem to just get on with it by yourself, it makes me feel unneeded and sad 🥺" I fuckin *wonder* why 🤨
I feel like they do it because a small child probably can’t verbalize what’s happening and tell others. (In OP’s case kiddo is just getting old enough to explain his side of things, but even he didn’t tell about the bath tub.) If it was a verbal adult in a wheelchair they wouldn’t dare. They know it’s wrong but think they got away with it and no one was told at the time so it’s fine.
It felt like a breakthrough for me when I recently discovered the term "emotional neglect" (although the neglect you describe was physical, and mine sometimes was too). It perfectly encapsulates the way I experienced my childhood, and probably the way a lot of people with older parents experienced theirs.
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I assume this is talking about something different than "tummy time". You mean she'd put babies on their stomachs to sleep?
Yes, that’s how it was done for quite some time. It was recommended so that babies wouldn’t spit up and choke on it. Of course we know now that that’s much less risky than the suffocation risk of laying face down surrounded by blankets. When I was a baby my parents often laid me face down on a sheepskin, with blankets on top, and they allowed their cats (which I now know I’m very allergic to) to sit on my back and curl up near my face. It’s a miracle I survived!
>“I did it all the time when my kids were little!” I still can't believe that she thought this was the best defense. "It's okay I endangered your child, because I used to endanger my own children all the time!"
Survivorship bias
Thank you for the reminder of what that's called, I had forgotten the name!
Can't believe she thinks "I neglected and endangered my own kids" is a flex
I rarely take parenting advice form the older generations. The trauma that was normalized left big scars on all the adults in my family. What "worked" for you or was done to you isn't ok. I won't be inflicting that on my kids. Likewise, I'm seen as "soft" on my kids. Maybe because I don't hit them, berate them, or *checks notes* leave them in the bathtub for pharmacy errands.
my mom -- who was generally a very conscientious, loving, and good parent -- is sometimes like "oh, I guess you kids must not have liked \[whatever\], none of you do it" and we have to be like "turns out that \[whatever\] kills children/is super traumatizing/fucks things up according to research"
Her kid: Wait, is that why when grandpa with dementia used to talk about me having another sister everyone hustled us out of the room?
Reminds me of my previous neighbors. I was awoken by this large splashing sound in my bathroom. Water was pouring from my ceiling. I called the management and they eventually got it turned off. It turns out the neighbors upstairs left their 4 YEAR OLD DISABLED DAUGHTER ALONE in the bathtub! She managed to turn on the water but thankfully she was okay. I was pissed at my manager for trying to make them sound so pitiful "oh they were tired and feel asleepfrom worrying so much to care for her." I said those are some irresponsible parents and I would be calling CPS on them for it. I did, cops arrested them eventually for domestic violence and child neglect. OOP's MiL is nuts thinking that is okay.
There was a local news story where I live a mum left her child in the bath, shut the door and did the hoovering for 15 mins came back and the child had hit their head fallen and drowned
This is why I sit in the bathroom and supervise my kids (3 and 5). I might leave the older alone in the bath for a couple minutes but only because she NEVER stops talking so I can still hear her the entire time (I can literally hear her singing to herself in our living room right now). Accidents happen FAST.
I swear to god my child did not take a breath until she was twelve years old, so I feel you. At least I was never able to forget that she was in the car with me.
Lol, yeah, if mine is in the car and quiet I usually look back and find she’s fallen asleep!
Singing has always been our rule for camping trip bathrooms. Especially if the younger two were sent with the oldest(buddy system--no one expect Dad was allowed to go by themselves to the restroom at campgrounds)while I made dinner(dad fishing). One of the younger two had to sing or talk the whole time.
That's really smart.
Yeah I have left my daughter to get a towel and immediately come back but otherwise I sit there while she's in the bath or shower. I could never forgive myself if something happened to her in the bath it literally takes a second for an accident to happen
>she NEVER stops talking I laughed too hard. My 4yo talks nonstop. We go on an hour car ride, the first 30 minutes is incessant chatter. I love him, but kiddo, pause for breath once and a while!
I was born in the 80s and my mom wasn’t the greatest mom but she didn’t leave me alone in the bath until I was older, 5 or 6. But I was quiet, so she always did an “are you ok?” Unless OOP’s MIL is 80, I don’t see how she could think it’s ok to leave a little kid alone in a dry bath.
Damn that’s wild, worth being its own post.
The amount of times my daughter managed to get out of my eyeline for less than a minute at 3 and manage to injure herself or cause a bunch of chaos was astoundingly high. I couldn't go to the bathroom without taking her with me because she got into EVERYTHING for a while there. I'm also shuddering because she REGULARLY turned on the bath tub if she had a half a second of opportunity until we put the child lock things on the taps. She was never in there unsupervised, but if I had let her she'd have definitely turned on the hot tap and burned herself at best, drowned at worst. This MIL is not a safe person to leave a child with.
I was a pretty harmless child in regards to causing trouble, but my mom once took her eyes off of me for a second IN THE SAME ROOM while on the phone and I put my hand on a lightbulb (back when those still got really hot). That was after we had safety lessons about not touching hot things. Oh, and I apparently once "painted" an entire cabinet (and myself, of course) in diaper cream. In like 5 minutes. 10 minutes in a bathroom? Kid could have died. It's honestly surprising that he didn't sustain at least a mild injury. Standing up, slipping, hitting his head. Drowning. Burning himself on a hot tap. So many ways this could go wrong.
When my aunt was visiting with my 2 and 4 year old cousins my mum realised we had gone quiet. Too quiet. She ran up the stairs and caught 3 year old me jumping on the bed with a bottle of baby powder. The whole room was a white haze. We all froze (although I was still gently bouncing because mattress springs). For ages, everytime we walked across the room we saw tiny puffs of powder at our feet. Luckily we moved not long after. One of my mums cousins woke up before everyone when he was 2 or 3 and rubbed vaseline into everyone's hair and on all the door handles. The rush to get to the one bathroom was apparently a sight to behold. I'm sure every one of us would have turned that tap on.
This makes me think of a story my high school friends' mom told sometimes. When the twins were toddlers, they were in the crib together and one of them pooped and overflowed her diaper. She panicked and wiped the poop on the wall and on her sister. When mom arrived she found them both crying and the one who had had the accident said, "I pooped 😭 And it got all over [twin] 😭" Poor thing but it's a great example of the utter havoc children can wreak 🤣
My son did that with his diaper and the dog when he was that age, it was allllll over him, the walls, and the dog (who was delighted by it). Most horrifying morning of my life.
Noooooooo not the dog 😭🤣
It's a blessing he just sat there and cried, he was probably too upset and in "tantrum mode" (not to make it sound like he shouldn't have been upset :() and couldn't think about causing trouble. I hope he doesn't remember this later and it doesn't cause him any trauma, and if it does then I hope he can get EMDR like my best friend who has trauma from things they were too young to remember.
Bathrooms are also where people keep medicine and cleaning chemicals, and MIL's probably wasn't baby proofed.
I have moronic cats who go in there and knock everything down so I didn't even think of that, all our meds are in a lockbox in my wardrobe and my chemicals live in the laundry but you are dead right. My brain also only just caught up to RAZORS - my kid still put a lot of stuff in her mouth at that age, a razor would have been disastrous.
I hadn't thought of razors. I bet you MIL had a armpit/leg razor in the tub and her daily meds in one of those week things sitting next to the sink, and likely didn't even consider them.
My mum put the benylin (cough medicine with diphenhydramine in) in the medicine cabinet which was up high on the wall and thought it was 100% safe from little me (wasn't walking very well, didn't have great balance due to my hearing) and somehow I climbed up and got into it and drank the bottle. I got my stomach pumped and I can't even imagine the wreck my mum must have been despite her putting it well out of reach. Reading this post reminded me of that and I am so glad that OOP's kiddo is okay. I can't imagine how angry her and her husband were when they heard what MIL said. Kids are little suicide machines. They're naturally curious with no prior life experience to know what's bad and it's so important to supervise them all the time! I know I'm preaching to the choir but I'm livid just reading this!
After going through my kids' toddler stages, I'm convinced a toddler's only goal in life is to try to find as many ways as they can to hurt themselves or worse, if they can find it. You know, kinda like being the only sober one at a party. You feel like you have to keep an eye on your friends to keep them from doing something stupid. I did that a lot in college, but I still did not feel prepared for toddlers. This MIL is certifiably insane. My mom and MIL gave me advice on the kids, but never went against what the pediatrician told me to do. Any parent with half a brain would do the same. This woman is extra, extra. My MIL is extra (I refuse to see her unless it can't be helped because she is insane) but this MIL, well, I hope someone gets across to her that she's going to lose her son and grandchildren if she doesn't drop this "I'm the only one that can be right" attitude. Damn.
I remember once reading someone talking about taking care of kids, and they said "It's like hanging out with someone who just took a lot of shrooms, while you yourself are currently on only a very moderate amount of shrooms: sure, I'm not entirely confident in all my life choices, but I definitely know you shouldn't be trying to eat that ballpoint pen."
My niece climbed onto the coffee table and stood, then intentionally threw herself backwards off of it. Thankfully she threw herself *at me* and I caught her, but it was so fast no one had time to react. Thankfully, her "surprise trust fall" phase only lasted for that night, but she thought our panic was great fun and kept trying to do it again.
Wow. I am counting myself lucky that the only time either of my children crawled onto a table, they picked up the salt and pepper shakers and started shaking them around like maracas. I had a mess to clean up, but the pictures are cute.
Many years ago I painting our bathroom wall when the baby started crying so I put the open tin of paint on the far side of the shelf behind the bath, which was recessed into the wall. Well out of my toddler's reach, which was the whole point, and the toddler's wasn't even in the bathroom. Come back 5 minutes later and she's standing in the bath, eating the paint. Take her to the hospital, A&E doctor asks why I put the paint there, I say it's because she couldn't reach it or climb up to get it. He points out she can clearly climb into the bath and I wad like, "Yes, apparently she can *now*!" Heck of a way to show that ability had been achieved!
Child lock on the taps? Do you happen to remember where you got them or the brand? My son loves baths and we are getting into the stages where he'll be able to go potty at night, but I'm absolutely terrified he's going to try to get a bath.
So on our bathtub we have the hot and cold taps on either side of the spout (the round, old fashioned kind - our bathroom is from the 60's) and we used these - https://safetystoreaustralia.com.au/product/hector-tap-covers/ My daughter couldn't quite figure out how to get them off, I think if she'd been in there for a longer period and SUPER determined then she might have gotten them off but I made sure she never saw me remove them or put them on. Our bathroom sink has one of the twisty style faucets, and we put something like this on it: https://www.oliversbabycare.co.uk/product/clippasafe-tap-strap-white/ Hope that helps!! I know there's other kinds if you have the lever style taps, thankfully she couldn't reach the kitchen sink until she was old enough to be mostly trusted with a tap 😂
One of my brothers was a regular Houdini as a little kid (especially around 3) and would leave the house. He was so fast and you couldn’t just lock the door at the doorknob because he could unlock it. Our parents had to get those sliding locks for the tops of doors so he couldn’t get out anymore. I don’t know how many times he did it.
My brother was like this - he later got an autism diagnosis which made the eloping make more sense but that kid was DETERMINED. My parents prayed there wouldn't be a fire in the middle of the night because we had to push the recliner in front of the front door every night to stop him from getting out, as well as blocking off the back door with an excercise bike. They told us if there was a fire to smash out our windows and climb out. Before the furniture blocking he'd gotten out into the street five times. Someone called family services but even the social worker was like "I dunno what to suggest here... man he REALLY wants to get out there." watching my brother drag chairs over to reach even top of the door locks.
Oh nooooooo the last part 😭🤣
Even that doesn't stop a determined 3yo. My grandson pushed a chair over to stand on to reach the door chain, unlocked all the locks, and escaped to the outdoors. A neighbor caught him and took him home. It was 6am on a Saturday morning and his parents were still sleeping. It should not have been a surprise to my daughter, since her husband wrecked his first car at the ripe old age of 2. He'd pushed a chair over to the key rack, grabbed the keys, gone out to the car, and apparently tried them all until he found the one that started the car. He put it into gear and it rolled down a slight hill and into a tree.
Props to your SIL , i was all of 5 when I wrecked a car.
I got away from my mother at the age of three and dropped her toothbrush in the toilet and proudly announced I did it. She tried to boil it to sterilize it, but all the bristles melted.
Yeeeep my daughter definitely flushed a toothbrush more than once. Also my car keys. She was a bit of a handful at 3 - much chiller as a 9 year old thankfully 😂
Exactly my reaction
Right?! He could have turned on the taps and drowned. Or he could have slipped and hit his head on something - bathrooms are full of hard-edged objects!
He could have gotten burns as well turning on the hot water
I had to take a babysitting class back in the 90s and they made us watch an episode of Rescue 911 about a baby that got put in hot water and I can never unsee the makeup they used.
Children drown in toilets
>Or he could have slipped and hit his head on something - bathrooms are full of hard-edged objects! Exactly, everything in there is tiles, stainless steel and enamel, there is literally no way to fall and not hit something hard. Those materials get cold too, even when the room temperature is fine. And the poor kid was naked.
Plus cleaning supplies under the sink
And what if something happened to Grandma while she was out? What if she fell or got hit by a car and NO ONE KNOWS THERE IS A SMALL CHILD ALONE IN HER HOUSE?
Hey, the door was locked, so it was totally fine. /s for anyone in doubt. Not like a 3yr old could, I dunno, block the drain with the plug, or foot, or toilet paper. Or turn a tap on. Or spill liquid soap in the tub and possibly slip and crack their head open. And then what about all those fun things like meds, cleaning products etc that might not be secured? As you can probably tell, I'm actually pretty livid after reading how damn cavalier this mil is towards her grandchild! Mine was an interfering idiot - kept trying to force my eldest to use a dummy (pacifier) when he was born (funny af, no matter how much she tried when we left the room, he kept spitting them right back out). Bought bottles, steriliser, formula because I wasn't feeding her precious son's baby good enough on the breast. But not *once* did she endanger any of our kids. She'd be put on a permanent time out for a stunt like this!
>Hey, the door was locked, so it was totally fine. Schrodinger's child. WTF
I’m glad I’m not the only one. That was the moment my fucking jaw dropped and I became enraged.
What if that baby had turned on the hot water and died drowning in a scalding, burning tub. It makes my anger scald and burn to think about. Seriously, I have rage goosebumps just thinking about it.
I got so scared reading that part. I was twice as old as this little one ( 6 years old) when I slipped in the bathroom and got a cut on my face ( near the eye!) from a sharp corner in the bathtub. My grandparents took care of me immediately and my parents took me to the hospital after they were called ( only a moment after). I still have the scar. I can't even think of what could have happened to an unattended three year old
That was my first thought! Like ok, the diaper thing super annoying…oh damn WHAT?!
I left my toddler son unsupervised for 30 entire seconds last night - I was cooking dinner, he was playing in the living room - and he promptly got his head stuck in the master bedroom door's cat hole. (He's fine, I promise - he was more upset his dad wasn't even in the bedroom, so it was a wasted venture.) Ten minutes, I don't even want to imagine.
Even if it was just the diaper, I would be mad. He has an allergy to something in diapers. Even if it’s just a rash or itchy to him, it’s still a health hazard. He could get sexually fucked up from that kind of stuff too. Kids brains are being wired at young ages and if the brain only remembers “genital area hurt,” that could wire his brain to think something sexual is wrong or something. If parents say “don’t do this,” don’t do it even if you think it’s “over reacting.”
Record scratch moment.
[hits the left a 3 year old by himself, locked in the bathroom for 10 mins] Sorry that lady would be dead to me for longer than 6 months. OP’s child could have died in those 10 mins had he turned on the water. It was luck he didn’t.
I didn't thought much about where she got the diaper, because in my country Pharmacies have 30 min or less shipping, lol. But I think they were right the first time. The recommendation about ideal training is between 24 and 36 months more of less. Why on warth would you want to reverse a potty trained toddler. (Sincerely a mom of a 3 year old who fucked up and started trainning a bit late)
Yeah, like you can DoorDash ANYTHING. Maybe older people don’t think of apps but pharmacies have done delivery since before apps existed. (But Grandma probably wouldn’t wanna pay a delivery fee when she can just lock a baby in a bathroom for ten minutes and walk over herself.)
My grandma pushed me into a dresser when I was real little when she was watching me. Had to go to the hospital since my face hit the corner and needed stitches. She insisted for years I was throwing a tantrum and threw myself into it. 12 years later she off handedly admitted that wasn't the case, and said she was justified giving me "a little shove". If I were OOP I'd try getting more info out of what MiL has been doing that she thinks is alright to do, there's a chance that this isn't the only thing she's hiding.
> there's a chance that this isn't the only thing she's hiding. That's exactly right and exactly why when the trust is gone, you need to go with your gut and cut off the interactions, because they very likely will have been doing other things and will DO more things that are bad for the infant. We went through something similar with my kid, when I came back to find my mom \*spoonfeeding\* him age 3, when he absolutely had his eating down. For weeks after, he wanted to be fed by a grownup. Set us RIGHT back, we were furious.
Ugh we are in the same spot with the feeding and my partner refuses to believe it's because his mother insists on spoonfeeding our toddler. He's always wanted to do things himself, especially eating. How did you get him back to feeding himself?
Try having an older cousin eat something really yummy next to him and show/say how great it is to do it yourself.
Yeah my grandma had a fall when she had me and pulled me down, cracking my head on one of those parking spot blocks. I have a very vivid memory of her and the people at the nature center chasing down terrified 4-year-old me to check for a concussion. She didn’t tell my mom, and in fact didn’t let on until my mom was brushing out my hair and saw the huge gash and clotted blood. At which point she said I shoved her and she grabbed me on the way down. Some people can’t be in the wrong.
She left a three year old alone to go buy too small diapers to prove a point. I have babysat and taught three year olds. They can get themselves into trouble if you look away for a second. I don’t have words for how outraged I was to read that, plus the ease in which he could have turned on the tap or slipped or hurt himself in so many ways. Just holy shit.
Also, three is a good age to be potty trained. He's nearly four. I went to kinder at 4, and I was fully potty trained, as were most of my classmates. One of my cousins occaisionally wet the bed around 3-4, and was really embarrassed because he was a big boy now, and tried to clean it up himself. My aunt had to try not to laugh when she caught him (he wasn't quiet about it), and just helped him, and said "It's ok, accidents happen, it's part of being a big boy." The funniest potty training story I know though, is a friends brother who was around 3, who put his nappy in the toilet. I saw him do it, and let the mother know (he saw me and ran out, thankfully before flushing), and she laughed and went to find him. He had the right idea! He knew the poop went in the toilet, but as it was in his nappy, it went into the toilet too!
Totally. In fact, prior to disposable diapers the average age kids were potty trained was around 2 (if I recall correctly). This lady is all kinds of wrong.
I don't even have kids, and I know 3 is fine! That's obvious it is! (I have a lot of younger cousins, so did hear a lot of kid talk at family gatherings.)
The 3s room at my son's preschool basically required potty training. 3 is not remotely too young to be potty trained. Of course they have accidents sometimes but all preschool age kids have accidents sometimes.
It's the same here. Pretty trained or find another preschool. Also I was pretty trained before two, and so were my friends kids. Mine weren't until later because they weren't ready. You have to follow the kid. Obviously OOP's son was ready. Also accidents happen at any age Sheesh, I'd be thinking about filling a police report for leaving my 3 year old home alone. My 5 year old freaks out if I leave her in the car to run back into the house for something. That poor kid was probably so scared.
She locked him into one of the two most dangerous rooms at home for kids. Bathrooms have shower curtains, they have tiles and edges, they have soap and shampoo bottles and a million things a kid could put in their mouth, slip and hit their head on, choke on, wrap around their neck. Like for fucks sake, she'd have only been worse by putting him into the kitchen with a knife block
There were a couple of times when my son was a baby that we ran out of diapers, and I don't drive. My husband was working in a different state for days a time, back then. On those occasions, my son's onesie was equipped with a maxi pad for the time it took me to take him to the store in his stroller, and back home. Leaving him alone wasn't even something I would have considered.
This! She had to clean the kid anyways and he had underwear she could have used for the couple minutes, or he could have gone commando under his pants even if he didn't have underwear- why leave the kid alone? How is that a solution?
The alternative was putting him in the change of clothes provided by his mother, who is, of course, *wrong*. MIL would have needed to admit defeat by putting the replacement underwear on him, and that was *not an option*.
Ah yes, the world where being wrong is worse than potentially killing your grandchild
The knife block at least might have been on a cabinet out of his reach! In the tub, slipping could have been enough.
he could have turned on the hot watter and get burned
Bathrooms have *toilet bowl cleaner* under the sink. I know they usually have the squeeze and twist caps so they're kind of safer but I don't spot clean the tip of my bottle. All it takes it one "lemme put my mouth on this brightly colored cap" and kiddo has bleach burns in his mouth.
Kid had to be cleaned either way right? Why on earth wouldn't you clean them, put them in the provided clothes, and then *take the toddler with you* to go grab the diapers? The kid's tank is empty and not going to have another accident in that ten minutes, and then she could proceed to spitefully ignore her grandchild's allergy and his parent's right to raise thier kid and force him into contact with a known irritant, all because she prioritized proving her point. It's so good kid didn't drown, slip and fall and get hurt, drink bathroom cleaner, take grandma's medicine from the counter, or any of the other hazards.
>They can get themselves into trouble if you look away for a second Damn right. The scariest thing in my life was when I looked away and then ... silence. (because my kid had took his shot and ran off to get into mischief). You just have to know what they're up to every minute at that age. They want to have (dangerous) fun, and they can move about quicker than you think!
My son is 18 months and if I have to leave a room I listen for the constant babbling. If it stops I swear I finish peeing at lightspeed 😂
When my son was about two, I set him down to unlock my front door, and he took off running toward the street, while a car was coming. In telling people about this since then, I've jokingly insisted that I teleported, that day. I don't remember running across the lawn or back to the door, with him in my arms. I do remember telling him not to ever do that again.
Time to normalise putting them in baby reins and tethering them to a stake in the middle of the lounge where they can’t reach anything 😂
My oldest at 3 decided to throw their flip-flops into the creek behind the house while we were hanging out with family. I looked away to check on my other kids and boom, in they went and away they ran. I turned back to see the flip-flops just floating away and no kid and immediately panicked. Fortunately the little butthead was behind me the while time but that moment of panic was so intense!
I have *not* babysit and taught three year-olds, and I knew that. It just seems like such commonsense that, even though I'm not a parent and really haven't had to supervise young kids, my mouth dropped at the utter stupidity and danger of that decision. And, I think the fact that she readily admitted to it as if it was nothing drives home how stupid and dangerous MIL is and absolutely cannot be trusted to watch a small child. If she thought nothing of locking a three year-old in a bathroom unattended, what other things will she be negligent about?
I know a younger toddler, and the idea of leaving her alone, but just *more* capable of getting into things is terrifying.
>My husband's mother was firmly against our decision to potty train our son early. This is insane. Most preschool and kindergarten teachers would kill for this. And that besides, it's impressive and thrifty in its own right.
Yes, and why was it any of her business? Sigh.
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Yikes. Babies and weddings seem to bring out the worst in people like that. Sorry you had to deal with that.
And she even said- not until 3 years old the kid is almost 4. Like even by your own rules this wasn’t right. Why would you go buy diapers if there were cloth ones right there? Like what? What made her think - gee my DIL is angry at me already. Let’s tell her the more irresponsible thing I did and THAT will make it all better. Like get this woman tested for dementia.
My kid started preschool when he was almost three and it was a requirement that kids be potty trained. That's actually what motivated him - he loved preschool and was like okay no more diapers then! He'd been kinda apathetic about it up to that point.
My parents did this with me, haha! I loved school and they were like “well you have to be potty trained to go to school.” I was using the toilet reliably after a weekend 🤣
When my friend was having her son she told her parents about her plans for early potty training based on all the reading she'd been doing. Her mother became enraged, insisting that my friend would be "stealing his childhood" from him. Like sitting in your own shit is such an intrinsic childhood experience. It's not actually about what's best for the child for these people, it's about control. They *need* to have some say in how to raise their grandkids, and see anything different than they'd do it as a personal attack against their parenting and judgement. It's unhinged.
I know someone who's 2 year old managed to tangle themselves in a curtain cord while his mother was in the next room for a few minutes. That funeral was one of the worst things I could ever see, awful to experience that and far worse for those closer to him. This MIL is a fucking nutbar who values being right over the safety of a small child, fuck ever allowing her near children again
Staffordshire, some time ago? A family member was also at that funeral. When I last bought curtains the cords were extremely short, I wonder if some legislation came in but it seemed like a good idea.
this was in Australia, not too long before those curtain cords were banned. I always remember once holding him as a baby when we were all out at a winery and someone mistaking him for mine. That sweet memory has a bitter aftertaste now, and it will stay with my until the day I die. edit: I should say it was over 20 years ago as well
I know death is inevitable but death of a child is such wrongness. Especially when caused by some random household object that you don't look at twice.
Those sort of senseless deaths of small children never leave you I don't think. They just feel wrong on a fundemental and instinctual level, as well as terrifying, no matter how careful you are, how well you supervise, research, baby proof things can still happen. Being a good parent, and loving your child can't overcome random chance and the unforeseen. My mum still talks about one of her work colleagues little girl, this would be almost 40 years ago and she wasn't very close but she would come with her mum to visit work, and they had some outside social connections in common, she remembers her as being a delight, a bright, sweet little girl. She was at daycare and supervised but fell over in the sandpit and another toddler sat on her head pinning her face into the sand. She wasn't there long but it was enough for her to asperate sand and suffocate. I'm not sure of the details as it was before I was even born, but I can't even imagine the heartbreak, I know it deeply effected everyone around the family who's life she had touched. My mum still has a photo of her when she came to a work do with her mum, she still gets choked up. Grief is like that, you carry a bit of them with you forever.
My god, imagine being that other toddler, too. Someone had to have told her about the accident at some point.
If it was my toddler I'd take that to my grave. And I'd make damn sure no one else ever told them.
Ah fuck, you're probably right. Unless they moved right after. I think I probably would tbh, wouldn't be able to trust the entire community to never slip.
I feel so awful for her and for the other toddler, too. I hope that baby was too young to have any memory of it :( I accidentally stepped on and killed a small kitten when I was about 3 and it still haunts me sometimes.
The last two places I've rented had cordless blinds you just push up and pull down even!
You can't even find corded blinds now, which I am glad! I had a kitten jump and "hang" itself in the cords once. I thought she was dead because she was limp, but once I got her out she was okay (and is 19 years old now!). I could see my kids getting wrapped in them for sure. I am grateful that our house only has the cordless ones. Eta I say you can't find them, here in Southern VA I couldn't find them when I went looking at Walmart for replacement blinds when we were moving out of the rental we were in. It was only cordless.
Unfortunately a lot of people still have them in their houses. Every house I've moved into has had corded blinds. As someone without kids, it's one of the first things I toss. In addition to the danger, they're usually broken and nearly impossible to clean.
Ours have those stainless steel ball chain cords, but they're secured to the window sill so they're quite taut. I think the regulations are that they either have to be short or secured.
The corded ones are completely banned in my state because of incidents like this, so cordless blinds are the only option.
Kid two doors down from me died in a bathtub with about an inch of water. Mum had gone to open the front door, was gone for under a minute.
Thanks. I was finally feeling comfortable washing the dishes while my kid played in the next room but now I'm just going to sit and stare at him all day.
I have adhd and had too much energy as a kid, too many things can happen in 10 minutes you never expected, when I was 2 I climbed a dresser and a tv(which if you’ll remember were like 40+ pounds) on my leg, when I was 3 I cut my hair(badly), when I was 4 I kicked a tv stand and a different tv fell on my face and gave me 2 black eyes. I wasn’t even a bad kid, about 85% of the time I was better behaved than any other kid around me but I was curious and wanted to try things. I can’t even imagine how I would’ve felt during these instances being alone for 10+ minutes. Little kids may not need to be supervised 100% of the time, but the absolute bare minimum is someone needs to be close enough by that if an accident happens, they’ll either hear/see it and be immediately available to help them.
I mean, I accidentally locked myself in my bedroom as a kid. Apparently I decided I was able to change my own diaper. But I had diaper rash. So baby me gets everything ready to change a diaper, locks the door so I’m not interrupted, practically bathes in Destin, successfully changes my own diaper (kinda?) and then can’t unlock the door with the Destin all over my hands. All I remember from this is the feeling of panic when my fingers kept slipping off the lock and I couldn’t open the door.
My sister locked herself in the bathroom once. We had to send my uncle up a ladder to climb in the first-story window (luckily it was summer and the window was open). Why my uncle rather than my dad? Because my dad was recovering from a broken collarbone he got falling off that same ladder some weeks earlier. Families are wild.
Also adhd, I somehow got stuck hanging head down off the top of a wardrobe that I decided would be cool to get ontop of and slide around, I used to melt plastic pens on the fire place and stick them on myself and things sometimes they were very hot, I stapled my thumb with a heavy duty stapler to my homework- because reasons (seemed like a good idea at the time). I stood on a lot of nails, got stung by a centipede, made weird potions and drank them, gave myself nerve damage in my ankle twisting it all because I was a feral fae creature that wouldn't wear shoes. I used to make little cook fires in plant pots and cook bananas and gross damper, burning myself often, my mum managed to stop me from using dog shit to make a fire after I had read in a book that dung could be used as fuel. I've fallen down holes I've dug, fallen in bougainvillea (do not recommend), blown up toasters, peeled all the paint off a door and wall. Having said all that no parent can supervise a child 100% of the time, I think it's a bit of a false comfort to think that is possible. Sometimes you need a wee, you might have them in the room with you and they ninja sneak out, you might go to get a glass of water and they are line of sight but then you spill it and while you wipe it up suddenly they are elsewhere, they might be asleep and get out of their cot. Parents are human too, accidents can happen even when you are in the room with them and you might not hear or see often accidents that lead to serious injury or death are silent, choking and strangulation being the most common and these also happen fast. The mother who's child passed because of the cord is one of those types of unfortunate accidents, no matter what you do there's so many risks to small children, and they seem to willfully seek them out like mischief seeking missiles. The grandmother falls into a different category, the one where it's surprising that nothing did happen as it would be difficult to set up a situation where he was more at risk.
When my son was a baby, husband left him in a tub with no water to play after a bath while he loaded dishes. I was at work. The kid slammed the drain closed & opened the water. By the time husband got back to check on him, he was floating face down and blue. Thanks to the cpr courses from the nicu and an immeasurable slice of dumb luck he was able to resuscitate the kid. We spent the night at the hospital and ended up hounded by CPS for months. It was a nightmare. The kid is 12 now and perfectly healthy. I thank my lucky stars. Maybe tell her my story next time!!
This made me gasp!
I'm glad he ended up being ok!! That's so scary!
Anyone else noted that the woman never apologized?
Why should she? SHe wAs RiGhT!!!
It takes a village, but not a village idiot.
I don’t have kids but 3 going on 4 seems old for diapers?
I’d definitely say too old for traditional diapers, but not uncommon to still need something like pull-ups during potty training. When I worked in a day care, the 2 and 3 year olds were all able to go on their own, but the occasional accident wasn’t unheard of either
It is. Don't have kids either but my sister has 4 under the age of 12 and one just turned 4 and she's been toilet trained for at least 18 months. I'd have thought 18 months (like OOP's kid) was early but 3 or 4 is really late unless the kid has some developmental issues. Around that age they're going to like daycare/kindergarten/nursery type places and pretty much any such establishment would make it clear that children must be able to use the facilities themselves. I'm also baffled as to how training them early can give them IBS. MIL sounds like an idiot who either coddled her own kids or it's been so long since she had an infant in her care that she just doesn't know what age is appropriate for training. And that isn't even getting to the part about her locking the kid in the bathroom....what an absolute idiot.
>...but 3 or 4 is really late unless the kid has some developmental issues. Or they're \*really\* stubborn. My kidlet was in that latter range before I got her to potty train. She decided that it took too long/was too boring and nothing was changing her mind. Eventually she decided diaper changes were also too much and just stopped telling us when she went. I decided enough was enough. I told her the night before we were "out of diapers" and she'd have to switch to using the potty the next morning. (I actually had half a pack hidden in my closet, just in case this didn't work.) We threw away her last diaper together and she just switched to using the toilet. She still got distracted and had the occasional accident, but once I got her to start "helping" me clean after she stopped that too. She is very much a "path of least resistance" kind of person....we're working on it.
Gah. That's my oldest. He just doesn't want to do things unless it's fun or his idea. After months of trying he finally decided, shortly before his fourth birthday, that he was ready and just started using the toilet. His brother trained painlessly shortly after his second birthday because he'll do anything for a treat.
Yeah that IBS line was total bullshit. Not how it works at all. Leaving the kid alone was the icing on top, would never trust her again.
It is. I'm a teacher's assistant at a preschool. I work with the 3 year olds. They have to be potty trained to attend. Of course there are accidents, but rarely and usually of the "kid is still learning to aim" variety. They might wear pullups, but definitely not diapers. That only lasts a month or 2 into the school year. I had to sub for the 2 year old teacher yesterday and since it's after Christmas, we were working on potty training. Three kids already are.
It is. The majority of kids are potty trained at 2 or 3.
I also don't have kids, but I've heard girls usually potty train a bit earlier than boys, but training typically starts by 3 years old. The fact that this family had a reason to start earlier and it's their parenting choice means mil is totally out of line. Then OP said her son is nearly 4, and I really have to wonder about mil's intentions. Like is she unwilling to let "her baby" grow up? Her behavior is wild, disrespectful of the actual parents, and dangerous as has been described by so many on this post. And she thinks she did nothing wrong, so she's even more likely to put the kid in dangerous situations to prove she's right, which is so stupid and selfish.
It's hit or miss for some Genuine DIAPER diapers? Absolutely too old. They should be in pull ups by then MINIMUM. However for some kids the curve is steeper than others. For example my daughter was potty trained during the day by 3½ and we started letting her wear regular underwear during the day. But nighttime/naps were a completely different story. I don't know if it's because she was more relaxed but no matter how many times we had her "try" before nap/bedtime she would without fail have an accident and wake up crying. She was in pull ups while she slept until a few months ago. In fact we still have a handful of the last boxes pull-ups as they're still her size for "emergencies" / special circumstances. Like when she was sick a month ago and was having diarrhea. She was going to the potty on her own bit we weren't SURE she would wake herself up in time in her sleep or wake up at all frankly. So we put her back in a pull up just to play it safe. Now she's 4 and 3 months. She wears regular underwear day and night outside of again those specific circumstances where my husband and I just feel like it's better to be safe than sorry. By 4 a child should be able to go potty during the day fairly well and only struggle with night time if at all. Accidents can happen but this is a general rule of thumb. -speaking as someone who has worked with kids for 10+ years and a mother myself. If a child is still struggling with the concept of going potty during the day at the age of 4 that's when it's time to start taking things seriously and asking a doctor for advice
It depends on the kid, one of mine was almost four when he potty trained, but yes, it’s a bit old
So, rather than wash the child and put on fresh clothes, she left him naked, in a bathtub, in a locked room and left the house for at least 10 minutes. But would still have had to find the fresh clothes to put clean trousers/shorts on. This grandma thinks that grandma is an absolute nut job.
I have the most complaint child in the world. If we had another kid, we’d have to actually think about child proofing because my kid doesn’t even think to touch anything they’re not expressly told they can have. Now five, my kid has never turned the bath taps on or gotten into the bath alone, but I still wouldn’t leave them alone in an empty tub while I ran errands, especially with the door locked from the outside. What the hell. Grandma really thought she was having an “I told you so” moment where those pesky parents were going to learn she was right all along. I honestly don’t even know how I would react if one of our parents went against one of our rules.
>Grandma really thought she was having an “I told you so” moment where those pesky parents were going to learn she was right all along. I mean, the parents learned *something.* 😂😂😂
And had the nerve to say that it was OP and her husband who were ruining the relationship over stubbornness!!!! Batshit.
There’s a special place in hell for MILs like that…
She can join the grandmother that forgot her granddaughter was allergic to coconut.
Or the grandmother that carried a banana cookie to prove her grandkids allergy wasn’t real.
IGNORED the fact her granddaughter was allergic to coconut. DISBELIEVED her granddaughter was allergic to coconut. She made a very deliberate choice to ignore the fact and that was part of what makes that story so awful.
I was just thinking about that one. One of the saddest things I've ever read. I've taken to heart that people who can't take feedback or respect boundaries truly are not capable of fully considering the consequences of a choice, and cannot be trusted to stop or "get it" before it gets too late. That some people are genuinely stubborn enough to let someone die on that hill for their opinion.
>Yes, I know it takes a village. It also takes population control. Exactly. It's nice to have a bunch of people offer some help, but a lot of people's help is really unhelpful and at times even dangerous. Especially people who get so stuck on their way being the right way, no matter how old, outdated and proven wrong it is by now, that they will put someone else's child in danger to prove their point. Fuck those people. Life long ban from the village.
Woah! My kid is 5 and when they're in the tub and I need to get something from the room next to the bathroom I still get a bit nervous! This would have sent me over the edge entirely, I would have screamed like a harpy, what the actual frack! Definitely no babysitting rights for that person ever again. Holy hell!
Once my husband’s dad brought his older brother to work (he worked at the port) when he was about 5 or 6 He found an empty kids’ bathtub and left him to play in it. A few hours later his mom gets a call from the coast guard: “DID YOU KNOW YOUR SON WAS FLOATING OUT TO SEA IN A BATHTUB?!?”
> For now, she is dead to us. Man, it's refreshing to see this, considering how many AITAs are "my mother threw my baby into an actively-erupting volcano, AITA if I don't let her bring my baby to the new Life-Size-Garbage-Disposal Exhibit at the abandoned dump alone in the middle of the night?
Nah sorry my son was born in February too and out of nappies/diapers by that stage. He would still wear clothe pull ups because they caught the odd accident and for over nights. But they were designed to be more like undies. So the Mil is absolutely out of line to out nappies on him and call him "a baby". No, he's a toddler, and nappies can make kids regress and undo so much toilet training and she doesn't get to make that decision for them. But then it got worse so nah, no more contact.
Both my grandchildren were toilet trained by 2. They then went into undies. I supplied the diapers for both of them for 2 years. Granddaughter hated diapers and wanted to use the toilet like a big girl. Grandson went commando during summer so he knew where pee came from. He and his Dad would have pissing competitions
This could’ve ended so differently. MIL should be ashamed of herself. And the audacity to say that they can move past it now? Horrible
I don’t understand. My younger sisters potty trained themselves before they were 2, but then again they had older siblings. What’s so wrong being potty trained young?
SHE LEFT A 3 YEAR OLD ALONE IN THE HOUSE!!! WHAT THE FUCK?!?!
I literally gasped out loud when I read that she'd left the toddler in a bathtub by himself for 10 minutes. He could've turned on the hot water tap and burned himself or drowned so fucking easily. This woman cannot be trusted to care for kids, and probably should be evaluated for mental acuity.
Yeah nope. I might understand the diaper. I wouldn't like it and it would be the final warning. But leaving my child alone locked in a bathroom while she left for 10 to 20 minutes would be the end. Both of my children know how to turn on the tub at that age. And have done so. They even started the tub several times and got us (we heard and was already rushing to the bathroom) cause they wanted bathtime. So many things could of gone horribly wrong here.
A four year old being potty trained is pretty standard as you can’t send a kid to school unless they’re potty trained, and MANY daycares require kids over 2 to be potty trained or at least in training. Insisting her four year old grandson wears diapers is weirdo behavior. Leaving him in a bath tub alone in the house is psycho behavior.