DaBreeze21

I got an email from my MIL this morning - it is a free e-letter called Family events. Today's main article was titled:

Managing the Media Monster in Your Home

You can guess the content I'm sure! I'm not sure if I should not respond and all or send her some links to some things I've read about not limiting kids.

Thoughts would be appreciated!

Susan

Sandra Dodd

-=-I'm not sure if I should not respond and all or send her some links to some things I've read about not limiting kids.-=-


I think just don't respond.
You could tell her, if she asks someday, that you did read it. That's probably all she would want, is to know you were aware.

"I know..." is sometimes the best response, or "Thanks."

Sandra

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

plaidpanties666

Do you think she'll Expect a response? If so, you could write something like "we don't seem to have that "monster" around here, but thanks for thinking of me!"

If she's the sort who likes counter-arguements (my dad is like that) as a kind of intellectual exercise, you could send her a link to the book "Everything Bad is Good for You".

Otherwise I wouldn't respond at all - sometimes the best way to keep the peace is to avoid "starting something".

---Meredith

DaBreeze21

Thanks for the responses. I had similar thoughts. A couple of things I'm not sure of/nuances to this situation. First, I'm not really sure if she expects a response. Although, she did send an article about a different topic in the mail and when my husband and I didn't mention it, she ended up texting my husband to ask about it (if we read it? if we got it? not sure...)

Also, I'm pretty sure that a lot of this has been spurred by a family incident from around the holidays - I'll try to keep it short but give enough information to give an idea of the situation. We were with my husband's family for about 4 days surrounding Christmas and overall things went well. On the last day there was a blow up between him and his older sister though. A few days after we got home we sent an email to the whole family addressing the blow up and thoughts and feelings we have about how our parenting/life decisions don't seem to be received well all the time.

Anyways, there was a lot of fallout from that communication and things are not really "resolved". A positive for me is that I have had a lot of communication with his family. However, my husband is not really communicating with either his parents or sisters and doesn't really feel there is an issue even though they do.

well this isn't so short! I guess what I am saying, is that I think this is partly why his mom is sending things like this so I'm not sure what the best response is yet. Mike already wrote a one-liner back which I'm not sure was the greatest - something to the extent that we only "consume healthy media" in our house.

Finally, the biggest issue right now is that I am going to a training in a few weeks and it will be my daughter's and my first separation (that is more than a few hours) ever (she will be 4 years old and 8 months the day I leave). Mike's Mom is coming for about 4 or the 5+ days to keep them company. I'm worried that if we don't address some things before (like TV watching) it will be more stressful than helpful for everyone involved. She really is quite good about not trying to impose her ideas, so I'm wondering if a gentle communication or headsup that we're ok with Marisol watching what she wants when for the most part would be helpful...

I am going to post separately about some thoughts/feelings I am having about my training/separation from my daughter.

Thanks again!
Susan

--- In [email protected], "plaidpanties666" <plaidpanties666@...> wrote:
>
> Do you think she'll Expect a response? If so, you could write something like "we don't seem to have that "monster" around here, but thanks for thinking of me!"
> Otherwise I wouldn't respond at all - sometimes the best way to keep the peace is to avoid "starting something".
>