Spouse wants me to cut contact with my mom

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04/22/2024 11:10

Subject: Spouse wants me to cut contact with my mom

quote

Anonymous

Anonymous wrote:Your mother likely is mentally ill &/or has a personality disorder. Plan accordingly.

She is not going to follow safety rules with the kids and should never be left alone with them again imo.

The NAMI Family to Family course is free, online and would likely be very helpful & informative to you.

This.
And it would be good if you AND your DH would look into this course together, OP….if only for the sake of your relationship.
He doesn’t need to have any contact with your mom.
But you can choose to have contact with her and supervise any child visits with her from now on. DH can just be “busy” if he wants. That’s all.

Also—I am not excusing her behavior—-but there is an *explanation* for it that does not malice on her part, which is simply that she is from a generation that did not emphasize child safety or view “popping down to the store for a quick pack of cigarettes while the child is ‘safely’ in their crib as any sort of risk.” IMO it’s a seriously limited view of risk that fails to consider the helplessness of a child in case of some unlikely catastrophe like a fire or a break-in…and our generation (and probably most of hers at this point!) would look at this TODAY and be like “is she crazy?!?! How could she leave a baby alone?!?!”
Her rationale (and reasoning for why she is so casual about it and still probably doesn’t “get it”) is that the baby is fine—nothing happened—what’s the big deal??—right? But that’s only because her internal risk assessment mechanism told her that the risk of anything negative happening when a baby is asleep in his/her crib is so ridiculously teeny tiny as to be a non-consideration.
But your position is that if it’s even a small possibility, then the risk is too great and she should have known better.

You aren’t wrong.
You just did not align your expectations (not your fault if you were just thinking “obviously she wouldn’t LEAVE the house without the baby!! Duh!”)—but I di t think it’s worth cutting her out of your life completely.

And full disclaimer: I once made a split-second decision to leave my sleeping toddler in his crib to go fetch my kindergartener off the bus about a block away because I lost track of time and would have missed meeting the bus if I had taken the time to awaken toddler from his nap before running out the door to meet other DC. I was 100% wracked with guilt all the way to the bus and back—and I was very very lucky that toddler did not awaken before we returned (less than 10 minutes later). In my own self assessment, this was a terrible judgment call because no matter how I justify it, she was by himself. And even though Kindergartner would have been upset, there was no risk of safety as Kindergartner would have stayed on the bus.