My brother and sister-in-law have a new baby who is a few months old. My sister-in-law won’t let anyone carry her Baby, though Grandparents on both sides of the family were allowed one-time detention. At family occasions, as soon as the baby lets out the slightest cry, her mother takes her away to a room as far away from everyone else as possible. They usually leave shortly afterwards.
No one tells her anything to avoid confrontation and the “new mom” factor, however Allow only the child Contact with her parents It seems will build problems Later. It’s really hard right now for everyone, including my brother. The natural tendency is to handle a very young child. It’s a short time and they are like this. Everyone has already been excluded -There is a feeling of ownership and that we are all off limits. Even in the photos, she is holding the baby away from everyone else. It feels extreme. Is it so? How can I? Be supportive without feeding this extremism (if it exists)?
Eleanor says: There could be many different reasons why she made this choice. It could be about illness. Many parents limit visits or cuddling in the first few months; It only takes a relative to forget that they have a cold or a cold sore. It could be about overstimulation. Maybe you don’t want to deal with the potential consequences of overwhelming your baby with multiple faces, noises, and smells. It could be anxiety. Maybe all-day parenting, books, and her postpartum imagination remind her of everything that could go wrong. There may be medical things we don’t know, and emotional things we don’t know. It could just be her preference. This decision may be completely neurotic, or completely rational.
The only thing we know for sure is that this is the decision you (and your brother) made.
You might think “I wish she didn’t do this when it costs us something so beautiful.” You might be thinking, “I wish people wouldn’t expect me to do what’s nice for them when it means making myself or my child less comfortable.”
Which one of you should accommodate the other? The natural answer: It should be about what is best for the child.
She writes that there may be problems for the child later if nothing changes. maybe. Maybe not. I don’t know. Maybe the baby will develop a complex by holding it too tightly. Or perhaps a relative with the flu kisses the baby. Maybe she has a very anxious grip on the baby and would be a better mother if she loosened her grip. Or maybe she’s trying to teach herself and her child that you don’t have to do what your family wants. I really don’t know who is right, because we don’t know the full logic.
But how we react to a parent’s decision is not just about who is right. There are all kinds of ways things might be better for a child if their parents did things differently. Less screen time, less indulgence, see that side of the family more, and teach them this way instead. Many of us think parenting will cause problems, and sometimes we’re wrong. At all times, it is not our child.
You may be wrong about what is best for the child. But parents are allowed to get things wrong. They are especially allowed to make mistakes out of caution.
If you become an anxious mother in ways that you think are extreme, it is still helpful to keep in mind the distinction between emotional truths that would be nice for someone to know and emotional truths that we should be the ones to point out. There will be doctors and day care centers in this child’s life who can help compensate for any problems. What might she and her baby need that they can only get from your family?
What I’m really hearing is that you’re feeling hurt because you’ve been excluded and treated like a threat. Maybe your relationship with her is the thing you should try to change, not who can carry the baby. What’s going on between you that makes you want to share more than she’s willing to give? If your answer is, “She’s very worried,” she probably sensed that you thought so. Anxious people do not respond well to being told they are wrong; It responds to a feeling of security. Building a closer relationship can be as simple as trying to figure out what she wants most at this moment and trying to give her that, rather than helping in ways you think are right.