Since my second grandchild was born, my grandkids have been staying with me after school. I make sure they have everything they need and feed them nutritious meals every day. But my daughter-in-law is a bit out of hand when it comes to the kids. She controls every meal they have and gives me strict rules that they have to follow. It is like she is treating me like I have never raised a child before, and it is a little insulting. But what she did today really takes the cake.
She stormed into my house holding a burger and yelled, “How DARE you feed them junk food?” I smirked because I was expecting something like this to happen. She froze when I gave her the menu list and ingredients she had handed me when our agreement started.
I ticked off all the ingredients I used to make the burgers to prove that I followed her instructions, even though it is a nuisance for me to do so. I told her, “I made them burgers because that’s what they wanted. You should be glad they didn’t go buy themselves junk food.”
She was stunned into silence, so I told her that she was so controlling that her kids were too scared to admit that they wanted to try something their friends always spoke of. There is a lot of food they reject because they don’t know how she will feel about it. She left without saying another word, and I can see that my words really hurt her.
Things got worse when she messaged me this evening saying that she thinks it would be better if she put some distance between me and my grandkids because she feels I am a bad influence. I was shocked. I didn’t think she would go this far over something as simple as a burger. But she seems to think I crossed a line. I refuse to let my daughter-in-law treat me as her personal chef and a mindless servant. She wasn’t ready for my wake-up call, but someone had to tell her the truth about the environment she is creating for those children.
