DEAR JANE: I want to ban my mother-in-law from ever caring for my child again after she did something terrible – my husband insists I’m irrational

Dear Jane,

I would like your advice on how to stop my mother-in-law from ever babysitting my child again after the last time ended in disaster due to her crazy behavior.

My MIL and I never had a great relationship, but when I gave birth to my daughter three years ago, I really tried to hug her however I could.

My husband desperately wanted her to feel accepted as a grandmother, and I wanted to support that goal. So we invited her to visit, took our daughter to see her regularly, and little by little things became easier.

But when my daughter turned two, my mother-in-law kept asking if she could take her away for a few hours. That then turned into requests for overnight stays, all of which made me feel very uncomfortable.

She’s not the most responsible person – she’s basically the walking embodiment of the phrase ‘if her head wasn’t screwed on…’ – and it made me very nervous to think of our daughter being left completely in her care.

So we tried to take it easy. I left my daughter in her grandmother’s room while I did some chores, and then I took a nap while my mother-in-law babysat, and finally this past week we agreed to leave our daughter with her. for a few hours while my husband and I went to dinner.

It was the worst decision I ever made.

After trying and failing to call my mother-in-law during dinner, I insisted we go home early – only to find her dead asleep with the TV on, her headphones in her ears, and my daughter screaming her head off in the other. room with her foot trapped in her crib.

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When we finally managed to wake her up, she insisted that she had only been asleep for a few minutes, that the TV was ‘broken’ and had turned up the volume on its own – and that she could still hear my daughter even with her headphones in .

I only saw red. I yelled at her to get out of my house and then immediately told my husband that there was no way his mother would ever care for our daughter again. He tried to calm me down, said it might have all been a misunderstanding, but after I raced my child to the ER to have her foot x-rayed, only to discover it was broken, that set the things stuck in my mind.

Days later, I am still crystal clear about one thing: that woman will never be left alone with my daughter again.

My husband begs me to reconsider and says that forbidding his mother to see our child would destroy his relationship with her.

Is it bad to say I don’t care? Because I don’t.

How can I get him on the same page as me?

By,

Monster-in-Law misery

Dear monster-in-law misery,

I can assure you that you are absolutely right in your instinct not to leave your daughter alone with your mother-in-law now.

As far as I know, you are not banning her from spending time with your daughter, just stating that she has proven so far that she is not responsible enough to take care of your daughter alone. Which she clearly isn’t.

Allowing her to spend time with your daughter while you or your husband are present, or a babysitter, will give you peace of mind until she proves she is capable of caring for a child on her own, or your daughter has a reaches an age where she can no longer do that. requires the same amount of monitoring.

There is no reason why the presence of a parent or childminder should destroy your husband’s relationship with his mother.

Most mothers have very good instincts. Problems only arise when we ignore them, as you have discovered.

This boundary is not forever unless and until you feel your mother-in-law may be responsible.