ASK THE EXPERT:Your parenting questions answered
Q: I am very worried about my granddaughter, who is 18 months old and lives abroad with her parents, my son and his partner. My granddaughter is not getting much food, in my view. Her mother has a notion that the baby is allergic to dairy, wheat, Soya and sugar but as she hasn’t been tested, how can they tell? I spent a miserable weekend with them last week. I thought my granddaughter looked pale and undernourished. When her mum went to the shops, I cooked a tasty bowl of rice, eggs and mozzarella and she gobbled it up. Poor lamb!
The mother doesn’t take kindly to suggestions, but I want my granddaughter to have a good healthy start in life and where better to begin than with a good diet? What can I do? I am prepared to do battle with my son over this issue. What is he thinking, allowing this behaviour for his little daughter? I know that I cannot sit on their doorstep breathing down their neck, but how can I get across the message that a few dried dates is not a breakfast for an 18-month-old child.
The only consolation I have is that my granddaughter is still being breastfed, but she likes to eat as I proved, and is not getting any substantial food. The mother does not cook for my son either, but that is his business; I am only concerned about the little one. I swing between fear and rage. Please, please help!
A:I hear the concern you have for your granddaughter. It can't be easy to sit on the sidelines, so to speak, and feel powerless to actively influence her upbringing. However, because your role is that of grandmother and not mother, sit on the sidelines you must.
Grandmothers are wonderfully important people in a growing child’s life. But you must remember not to over-extend your responsibility to the point that you are trying to make the decisions that will shape her life.
Her parents are her parents. Unless you are invited to share in the responsibility of raising her then you cannot impose your parenting style and beliefs on your son and his partner. The decisions they make in relation to their daughter, unless deliberately neglectful or harmful, are solely their prerogative.
At the moment, you seem really worried about some of those parenting decisions, but you also seem ready to provoke a significant conflict in your desire to express those concerns and to try to bring about change. I would be pretty sure that open conflict will not bring about a change in your granddaughter’s diet, but it might alienate you entirely and reduce further your influence on her.
By being overtly critical and undermining you will bring up their defensiveness and might provoke a bitter rejection of you and your (potentially valid) opinions. Indeed, your son’s partner’s unwillingness to take on board your “suggestions” to date may be because she feels implicitly, or explicitly, criticised by you.
I would worry, for example, that if you fight about your granddaughter’s diet, and undermine her parents’ decisions by secretly feeding her foodstuffs that they don’t allow her, you run the risk of being pushed further away by them. This could mean that you could lose contact with your son and your granddaughter.
So, I think you need to try to build a positive alliance and relationship with your son’s partner. Think back to your own relationship with your mother-in-law. Was it positive or did you feel like you lived in her critical shadow? Either way, there will be learning for you about how you can choose to develop your relationship with your “daughter-in-law”. Repeat the positives and try to avoid any negatives.
If you choose to adopt a genuinely curious approach to trying to understand their (her) parenting choices, you will not threaten them. If they don’t feel threatened by you then they will be more open to your views and opinions, even if those views are in opposition to their own. Always speak from the position of your real love for your granddaughter, not any dislike of her mother. Then your words may be heard and not rejected.
I think that if you can clarify and resolve your relationships with your son and his partner then you may reach the position you desire, which is to be a positive support for your granddaughter as she grows up.
Q
We have a young school-going boy who is a healthy and active child. In the past year or so he has resorted to playing with his penis when alone in bed. We have not made an issue of this but recently we have found him asleep with his pyjama pants down. Our reaction has been to put his pants back on and say nothing of it.
However, he has been asked to do sleepovers with school pals. This has made us aware that it might be embarrassing for him if he were to repeat his actions in another house. Have you any suggestions about how to deal with this without making him too self-conscious?
A
The good news is that it is a very normal and natural thing for boys (and girls) to touch and play with their genitals. Indeed, as a parent, the only thing you need to worry about is where this happens. The fact that your son seems to confine his play with his penis to his bed seems very appropriate.
On the basis of what you describe, I don’t think you need to worry too much about doing anything. If he has the awareness to wait till he goes to bed, he will also, probably, have the awareness not to do it in the company of friends on a sleepover. It is good for him to have self-awareness and this doesn’t always translate into a negative self-consciousness.
If you do choose to raise the issue with him then raise it only at the time when you are aware he has definitely been “fiddling”. If you want to promote any message it should be that playing with your private parts is okay, as long as that touching occurs in private. Be sure your tone is calm and warm and that you don’t accidentally give off any disapproving facial expressions or gestures. This will avoid any potential for him to believe that there is something inherently bad or wrong with his behaviour.
David Coleman is a clinical psychologist, author and broadcaster.
Readers’ queries are welcome and will be answered through the column, but David regrets he cannot enter into individual correspondence. Questions should be e-mailed to healthsupplement@ irishtimes.com