My DH has a niece in her early twenties who has had a rough time, lots of difficult family things happening to her since she was about 10 and she now suffers from depression and is in medication. Wether this is a result of her depression I don't know but she is very self-centred, ungrateful and lazy. My DH says she has always been like this. She us married and has an 8 month old DD and for the first time in many years they came to stay with us for 3 days. They live hundreds and hundreds of miles away so this is only the 2nd time that we've met her dd.
That is just a very brief background so you can kind of get a picture, but while she was here both my husband and I noticed quite a few things about the way she parents that really worried us. Taken individually they're not so bad but as a list it looks bad to us. I'm no parenting expert and have pretty much muddled our way through with books and advice for our dd but these are some of the things they did (their dd is 8 months):
took her to pub with my dh and whilst there they both gave her alcohol, not even just a dab on the finger but a drink from a pint glass. My DH told them off!
Put her to bed each night in their bed on her own under a big thick duvet even though she is very wiggly and there was a perfectly good cot in their room
Proudly told us about the many, many times when they've dropped her on her head, left on bed and she's fallen off etc etc only taking her to A&E once
Only feeding her yoghurt in addition to formula although whilst here I've being showing niece how to wean
Laughing about how they've been giving her honey and low fat food until the HV told them last week not to
NEVER interacting with dd, just plonking her on the floor and ignoring her. Niece says she usually leaves her on floor in one room and gets on with things in other rooms. Says dd only cries for a few mins then looks after herself.
Dd very rarely gets a nappy change
I know that some of you might think I'm worrying about nothing but there just seems to be no love there, no kindness. The baby is extremely quiet, I hardly heard her cry and yet niece shouts at her a lot, especially when they were in a different room to us. They only have his family nearby and from what I can make out they don't offer any support. DH niece has no friends and her own family do not keep in any kind of regular contact. She came to visit us even though she thinks we don't like her and we made such an effort to disprove this, so hopefully she'll keep in touch but they really are too far away for us to make much of a difference. I really feel they need support and some basic education in childcare. I've sent them a couple of books but I don't think they even read them. My DH is really upset by the whole thing and would have kept baby here if given the chance! Like I said, we're no experts so do you think we're overreacting?
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WWYD? My DH niece is not parenting well.
15 replies
Chocolateporridge · 26/12/2012 08:45
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