Reader’s Question

In a past post on this topic you indicated: “Your 9-year-old daughter should not be taking a bath with her grandmother. Grandmother wants a team bath for her personal agenda, not for any positive outcome for your daughter.”

Please elaborate about what kind of “personal agenda” could be going on. What about my 6-year-old son (whom I’ll call ‘Alexander’) and my mother-in-law? Some of the things she says and does really creep me out. She says stuff to me like “I talked to Alexander today and he said he wants to sleep with me on the left side of him and his mom on the right.” Alexander has been really influenced by his grandmother. He cries if he can’t sleep with her. She makes it a game with him and his cousins by saying things like: “Who gets to sleep with Grandma tonight?”. She will also say odd things when she is with Alexander like: “Oh, look at that guy over there, he is so handsome”. Alexander has begun repeating such comments. Most of the time this woman is sarcastic. Sometimes she’s just annoying and other times subtly insulting. You can’t believe what I’ve had to put up with. Then, to top it off, she wants to take off her clothes and get in a bathtub with Alexander. Help me here. What’s going on?

Our Clinical Psychologist’s Reply

It’s impossible to say with certainty what’s going on. But the quote you gave from a prior post remains highly likely. Whatever is going on, your mother-in-law is most likely serving her own needs versus tending to the needs of the child.

People can have several different unhealthy “agendas” with children. Sometimes, they try to get emotional needs met through a child that they feel incapable of getting in their adult relationships. Sometimes, they derive vicarious satisfaction giving children things they felt deprived of as a child. Sometimes grandparents are in competition with parents for the love and affection of children. Unfortunately, some people even have unhealthy urges for physical or sexual contact with children (and not all child molesters or pedophiles are men).

There’s certainly no way to adequately assess your situation. So many agendas are possible. But you can be sure that fostering unhealthy dependency or currying love and favor in unhealthy ways never serves the interests of a child.

It sounds like you really need to explore these issues with your spouse and also with a counselor. You’ll also probably have to confront your mother-in-law directly and establish and enforce some boundaries. If you uncover an insidious “agenda” of some type, you might have to do even more to ensure your child’s emotional well-being.