Quote:
Originally Posted by mamaUK  TusilLeaf, I hope i didn't/haven't upset you writing this. You're my friend, and the last thing I want to do is upset you  |
Ohh, no no no no no! you'd have to do a lot to upset me, ha.
It is about respect for me, and I totally agree with you. Completely.
See, things are changing slowly, reaaaaaaaaaaally slowly. I remember my daughters 2nd christmas (she was around 16 months old) when I remember asking my mother for one of those lovely little wooden pianos for my daughter. It was 40 bucks and it was so lovely. She goes grinning around, ear to ear for weeks about this "piano" she got for her. She wouldn't show it to me, wouldn't let me see it, but said I would " LOVE it".
Christmas rolls around and there is is MASSIVE box sitting under her tree. I asked her "wheres the little piano?"
"Oh, just you wait till you see it, Krissy. You'll love it"
So M unwraps this box and lo and behold there is her piano!
Except for that it is a MASSIVE plastic desk with a musical clock and I was flabbergasted. Where was the piano Mum? So she flips up the desk and there are 4 plastic keys. 4 PLASTIC KEYS!!! She spent near $100 on this big piece of crap. You should have seen her face when she saw my face! When she asked me what I thought of it and I politely told her that it wasn't what I had asked for or what we wanted for M she told me "well it's not for you, so don't be rude about it". Now, you have to understand my mother to get what she said. She was embarrassed and upset that I didn't think what she thought was the bees knees was great. When she gets embarrassed she gets snarky and laughs.
What it all boils down to is that they honestly see what my husband and I do as a phase or something we do just to be different. My mother knows that I am a good parent and so is my husband. She knows it. But she just seriously doesn't understand my reasoning behind it. She thinks it's crazy to not want plastic. Why not? It's so sanitary!!! You can bleach it! I am the only one in the bunch that breastfed, cloth diapered, co slept, doesn't spank, homeschools. I am so far from the norm in this family that I had to step back and realize where they were coming from. With my family, when you do something so totally out of the norm, they think it is because you think what they did as parents was wrong. Well, in some things I do think it is wrong. It has taken me 5 years to explain that I just have a different philosophy of parenting! I would get from my mother, "but I never did anything wrong to you. You came out great". Well how do you explain to your mother, who did the best job she knew how to, that well I didn't agree with a lot of your techniques? It's hard to do that and not just absolutely make her think she is a crap mother. You know?
So the process is slow. It's painful at times and yes there has been progress. My mother used to leave me in tears over breastfeeding my kid. Tears. Why aren't you giving her water, she eats to much, omg she isn't eating enough. I had you on a beautiful soy formula and you ate every 4 hours and that is what my most wonderful doctor told me. Why aren't you potty training at 10m? You were dry by the time you were a year(I really think that is an old school English thing because all the family was like that). You shouldn't hold her so much, here give me the baby. Don't let her manipulate you with her cries(a 4 week old), don't jump to her ever cry, as she runs over to my squeaking sleeping baby. But now? When I informed her I was homeschooling M, didn't get a peep. Nothing. She was concerned(and why wouldn't she be? She adores her grandbaby.) but asked me what I planned on doing and she said "well, you're a good mum. I trust you". That was BIG. So big I might even forget a few of the crappy things she has said. When I talked about making cloth diapers for whenever we have another baby she wanted to help. She helped make my daughters banner for her bithday and she went in with us on her wooden fairy castle.
I think, at the heart of it with my mother(the in laws are a whole nother ball game and my dad lives miles away) is that she grew up with nothing, and she had a rather unhappy marriage with my father who would berate her for spending. When this baby came along, she was so sad from divorce and stuff that she buried herself in this little life. And she now didn't have to answer to anyone, so she bought her whatever she wanted. My mother just adores M and no one is better than Nanny to M. While it does annoy me with the "stuff", I remember being my daughters age and how much my Nanny meant to me(I still have that relationship with my Nan. No one is as special as her. OK now I am getting teary eyed thinking about Nan being so far away in England).
Wow, that was long and probably boring. But I just wanted to explain why it is hard to not just put that foot down and severe a relationship based on a plastic toy. Plus, I think this is a huge big lesson for me in how I communicate with people and how I let my emotions take over and try to control things.
) and said the sort of thing we would like for our girls, and how generous they were but also that we felt we had to talk about the present situation because we didn't want them to waste their money and things that weren't welcome in our home. That seemed to really, really help. We also showed them the Myriad catalogue (where i do most of the girls shopping!) and this really helped too because we have many a time browsed it with family members and they can see the beautiful quality of the toys. 
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