access@mattered.com

I’m so sorry to hear that your MIL is not respecting your wishes. I would be just as concerned as you.

I have not experienced your exact same scenario, but what I do have is a lot of experience setting boundaries with emotionally immature parents. My parents are not very involved in mine and my baby’s lives as they haven’t proven themselves to be trustworthy. They aren’t willing to care for my baby in a healthy, consistent, and responsible way. The layers of emotional protection I’ve been giving my baby can so easily he taken away by people who don’t respect my wishes as a parent. What I did not expect upon becoming a parent is that I would have to parent my own parents. Lol.

If I was in that situation, I would cancel the trip or modify it to be shorter or closer to home. Depending on how involved your wife wants her mom to be, I would consider reducing contact and/or having a courageous conversation with your MIL to explain the impact of her behaviour. I’d be honest and tell her the truth about your feelings as they are valid and reasonable. If she doesn’t handle it well, then she is making the choice to cause upset in the relationship (not you).

It sounds like your MIL is not ready to be responsible with your child regardless of any boundaries you may want to set.

I hope things get better. Wishing you well, fellow Canadian.

Just read the question and response sent out today on counting kicks from a hospital bed after kick counting literally saved my baby’s life. I think this is a recirculation and is really disappointing. There has been a lot of recent research on kick counting as one of the few science supported interventions to prevent still birth. I’m a big fan of Emily Oster’s work but this article really reduces my trust, especially since n anticipation of a new book about pregnancy with complications. I really hope the new book doesn’t dismiss this intervention without a proper review of the literature.

This was my exact thought, too! Really wish the comments sections were still attached to specific articles; I found them to be so helpful when digging deeper like this.

Another request that comments on particular articles be reinstated; the discussions on various topics formed a significant value add to my subscription and the current format of “comment dump section just to give people somewhere to vent” is making me question continuing.

Regarding today’s post about second children having slightly lower earning potential/higher mental health struggles: it struck me as I took Sudafed for my fourth virus in two months that, even with the randomizing attempts, it’s possible that parents with two small children, in winter, getting sick themselves at higher rates, have fewer resources of time and energy to spend on engagement with their little babies that account for disparate outcomes later. Did any of the study variables account for that, or is it assumed that illness’ impacts on parents/parenting don’t matter much?

Like many others, I get out of the house :). Agree with trying to set up a text thread with friends for the last minute “hey – we’re about to go do X, join if you want”.

That said, regarding screentime, I feel like there is a general sense that it’s “bad” and should be a last resort. But, with my daughter, I found that it really depended on the circumstances and the show. I feel like Daniel Tiger was actively good for her, and I wish I’d started it early / had her watch it more. Especially for managing her emotions and learning social cues & structures, how to work with others, etc. I also enjoy watching Bluey together with her. Some families I know do pizza/popcorn/movie together every Friday night (for kids old enough to watch a full movie) as a family ritual.

And, if your kid has any second-language exposure, screentime can reinforce that (kids shows often have tons of language options). Not that it has too. But, it’s good to know it’s an option :).

“The level of activity our children would have in daycare or school” is not a perpetually sustainable grind for them. So my perspective is to let them enjoy their break from it, rather than to try to replicate it.

Beyond that, my approach differs depending on how long the break is – one day? three weeks? – how old the kid is, and why they’re out of school. We have a 5yo in kindergarten and a 2yo in 7 hrs/week of daycare.

If it’s a snow day, we’re spending as much time as possible outdoors enjoying the snow (we rarely get snow, so it’s a special occasion).

If it’s inclement weather that’s not safe to go out in, we often do book reading, screen time, free drawing with markers and stickers, Play-doh, and letting the kids figure out their own play. With the 5yo we also often do chores, cooking, and Beast Academy math games.

If it’s a sick day, we do unlimited screen time for our 5yo, or generous screen time and snuggles for our 2yo.

If it’s a long break, that’s when I do try to institute a routine. I keep a schedule on Google Sheets with a column for each family member and a row for every half hour of the day. I don’t follow it strictly, but it helps me remember what we could be doing when my executive function stalls, and it also helps me plan ahead of time whether and how possible activities might fit in around our basic routines, or vice versa.

Outdoor time and playdates are our top priorities for the kids when long breaks from school make these regularly possible again.

+1 to going places. We are incredibly lucky to have a great local community, so we rely on playgrounds and playdates all weekend. We get together with other daycare families on days with random closures. It does mean that my social circle is now mostly other parents in my neighborhood, but also my social life is the most active it’s been since college. When kiddo has been too sick for even the playground, we go for walks on busy streets so he can watch the trucks and traffic and/ or to parks where he is more likely to run around on his own and not spread diseases. My kid wants to be outside in all weather – literally gets excited when it rains, so we have all the outdoor gear for outside time to not be weather dependent. The $25 I spent on his full body rain suit might be the best money I ever spent.

Would be interested in knowing whether this guidance changes for those with infertility. My reproductive endocrinologist recommended an expensive prenatal with CoQ10 (theralogix).

Separately, the appeal of “designer” vitamins, like Ritual, for me, is the purported quality control. I generally stray away from supplements due to their lack of regulation, containing higher or lower doses than advertised, and inclusion of other, potentially harmful substances. Are these concerns founded?

On the vitamins post:

I have done loads of amateur reading on the vitamin topic and have convinced myself that some of the things you dismiss are important. I’m not saying I disagree with you (I again will emphasize I’m an amateur reading studies and summaries of studies, not going super in depth, though do have a strong biology / chemistry and statistics background). But I was frustrated with this post and the last vitamin post on how dismissive you are of others without really explaining your rationale. I am not someone who is good at just accepting “Emily Oster says” or anyone else says – I need to be convinced and I would guess this is true for the vast majority of your readership. Just waving your hands and saying “other vitamins aren’t important”… well it just provides zero value to me. What’s even the point of writing that sentence or this post in general? I can’t even dispute your points (there was much discussion and back in forth on some of your other vitamin posts that I learned from and found just as valuable as the post itself). This reads like a WebMD summary page on the topic.

This leads me to a broader point which is that I feel you’re overfocusing on building a platform and having frequent content to the point that I just increasing feel the actual content is not valuable. I used to read all of your posts and now have trickled down to reading only a few such as this one that pique my interest and then feeling disappointed that I just wasted my time.

Regarding prenatal vitamins – you mention vitamin A as a component but the WHO explicitly recommend that pregnant women NOT take vitamin A supplements except if specifically indicated because too much vitamin A can be harmful to foetal development. This is also something to flag in relation to fish oil supplements since one of the most commonly available – cod liver oil – is extremely high in vitamin A.

Same! I didn’t really care for using them – so hard to keep clean and one more thing to fumble around for in the dark and in public. Had to buy several – one by the bed, one for the nursing chair, one in the diaper bag plus a spare because I definitely dropped that sucker on the floor in at least one high-traffic public place.
I thought I was patient and would try to nurse without the shield every few days. Around 8 weeks I started to get discouraged because that still wasn’t working. But I kept trying and at around three months, we stopped needing them! (It was gradual – took about two weeks from when she started accepting it without a shield to when I didn’t need to have a shield on hand anymore.)

Everyone is mentioning how indestructible toddler toys are, because that’s the example that was given… But this is about more than broken toys. This is about shared expectations and conflict/conflict avoidance. If it’s not broken toys, it might be children hitting each other (which some people might view as just rough housing) or other behaviour that’s viewed as acceptable by one set of parents and not by another.

This needs a conversation about establishing shared expectations about how conflict will be handled more broadly. Do you get to step in when you see behaviour you feel is unacceptable, whether someone else does or not? What are the consequences for breaking boundaries? Will parents be responsible more broadly? I would do this both generally and specifically – establishing shared expectations for the group, and also speak directly to the parents who are repeatedly not taking responsibility for broken items. This isn’t about the toddlers – this is about the adults behaviour.

That’s frustrating because you’re essentially saying you have to parent your kid(s), her kid, and HER. The adult. I can relate in the sense that my mother in law tends to be very lax about telling the grandkids no to playing with things, but she doesn’t have mean intentions about it, we’ve just all kind of tacitly agreed that it’s an occasion to say “sorry, I know Grandma said it was okay, but it’s not. Go do something else.” But physically doing what she wants regardless of your repeated requests not to is a TOTALLY different thing. Have you considered talking to her privately and expressing how you feel and explaining what your boundaries are, like literally saying “we love spending time with you and investing in our relationship, but when you behave in this specific way I feel very hurt and disrespected, and I’m sure you don’t want to hurt me.” I say this because truthfully, it’s not ONLY that you’re feeling justified frustration with how she’s modeling a bad behavior for the kids in the room (disrespecting people’s wishes and boundaries) but also she is *actively disrespecting your wishes*. I might even say something (if it were me) like “if you were to invite us to your home, I might not parent my kid the same way you parent yours, but I would certainly not come to your house and like pull your underwear/expensive makeup/sex toys/personal diary out of your drawer and hand it to my kid, because it would make you feel like total crap.” Like, this is an adult who apparently didn’t learn how to respect the privacy and boundaries of other adults! No one wants to be the bad guy with their kid because it feels icky, but also … there’s being a bad guy to set a fair rule and also being a total jerk to your family and friends….

As far as addressing your kid’s feelings, they don’t care whether the other kid is corrected, or whether the parents apologize to you. What they care about is primarily that their feelings are heard, affirmed, and comforted by you, and to some extent whether they get the toy replaced/fixed and other toys not broken.

You can affirm and comfort your child regardless of what others do. You can replace or repair the toys regardless of whether the other parents offer to do that. You can hide the irreplaceable toys. What neither you nor the other parents can do is guarantee that their toddlers won’t be rough with toys in the future, although there are some steps, like the physical interventions I mentioned above, that either they (or you!) could do to somewhat reduce the chances of toys breaking in the future.

If toys are getting broken by toddlers, it was likely going to happen eventually anyway, if not by your current toddler then by another guest or future sibling. Most toddler toys are either pretty indestructible or pretty temporary/inexpensive. Hide the heirlooms and get used to the rest being temporary.

That said, it would be best for the parents to apologize and offer to replace the broken toys. I would not bring it up, though. The value of these toys is less than the value of your friendships. Rather, model what you’d like to see, by making a point to apologize and replace things that you or your kid breaks. You’re all new to parenting, so everyone in this group is looking to each other for role models of what’s normal and appropriate. If you do it, it will probably catch on.

Correcting toddlers’ behavior, though, is only marginally developmentally appropriate. Some general instruction like “don’t throw things indoors” is fine to try, but don’t get your hopes up for compliance. Specific physical interventions like “I see you want to hit the table with this toy, but I don’t want it to break, so I’m going to take it away and give you something else” are great parenting. But they require constant proximity and attention that may be more or less practical depending on the layout of the space and how deep into adult conversation the parents want to try to get in the meantime. I don’t know the specifics of your situation, but much “correction” that would be appropriate for a 4 year old is not appropriate or effective for a 1-2 year old. Things are going to get broken, and that’s the cost of doing business.