u/Beadorie

I could really use some opinions from other moms.. My 3yo stays with my mom during the day while my husband and I are at work. She has four kids of her own, two 8yos and two 12yos. They’ve been out of school for the summer, so she has basically had five kids at home almost every weekday. I have kept him home anytime I can take a day off, maybe one or two times a month in the last 4 months, plus a couple other days when they went out of town and then when he was sick. Then every other Friday my MIL keeps him. We do compensate her for keeping him weekly but admittedly its not nearly as much as we would have to pay at a normal daycare.

Lately my son has been screaming a lot over toys or annoyances. One of my 8yo siblings has a history of taking toys from him when they play together. Now it seems like my son sometimes starts screaming as soon as he comes near whatever he’s playing with, like before my brother has even actually tried to take it. Obviously I know screaming isn’t an appropriate way for him to handle it and I want to work with him on that but.. I'm not there during the day and we don't have other kids at home. So this does not happen when he's home.

Today when I picked him up, my mom seemed really quiet and irritated. When I asked if she was okay, she told me she’s tired of him screaming constantly. I feel horrible and worried that she’s getting to the point where she doesn’t want to keep him anymore.. At the same time, I’m wondering how much of this is because she has been overwhelmed having all five kids there over the summer. I also wonder if some of the interactions leading up to the screaming are being missed because nobody notices there’s a problem until my son is already yelling. A lot of times my mom will be on her computer and not nessicarily paying full attention to the kids..which is okay like everyone gets distracted/needs a break. However, my brother has taken toys from him before and is sometimes overall ignoring my son's wishes (I've seen my brother try to force my son to hug him even after my son says no..which is an attention thing I think almost like jealousy) I feel like my son may have gotten into this defensive habit where he assumes it’s about to happen again.

Like..should I sort out the funds to put him in a drop off daycare temporarily just to give everyone a break and see how he does in a different environment? School is also about to start back, so things will probably be different in a few weeks too though... The rate for that would also be like 5x what we currently pay so it'd be cutting into our budget for other bills (workable but not permanently so).

I have a good relationship with my parents, and we dont really ever butt heads over much. I want to talk to her about all of this without making her feel like I’m blaming her or her kids, and without either of us getting upset. I also don’t want my son spending his days somewhere that feels tense or where everyone is frustrated with him. I just dont know what to do...is there something more i can do to help? He just turned 3..its not like we can sit down and have much of a conversation about it.

I (33F) recently made a friend group of other moms with kids my sons age (just turned 3). We had been doing Tuesday night dinners at one of their houses every week and its been great. It gets me and my son out of the house, he gets to socialize with other kids his age.

Well the friend that had been hosting is going through some stuff and hasn't been able to host anymore. This ended up with me and one of the other moms really hitting it off and talking a ton. We later found out she adopted my cousins daughter also which is an insane story. Anyway so they have come over a day out of the week for the last few weeks kind of randomly. My husband (40) is super quiet and kind of to himself and he likes to game after work. I was going to have them come over today because its going to be raining the rest of the week and he got all annoyed about it because apparently one of her kids kept asking him a lot of questions and he didn't like it (like about whatever game he was playing).

Now husband has stormed outside to let the dogs out talking about how hes the bad guy now because yeah it kind of upset me how irritated he sounded when I asked him if it was OK they come over and the kids can play outside for a while. Ive now let my friend know today isn't a good day but it just doesnt feel good at all. I dont know what im looking for here, im just sad and frustrated that it feels like I cant comfortably have a friend over without it upsetting him. Sorry if this was a bit of a ramble and thanks for reading if you did 😅