Dear Snarky,
I’m furious at my mother-in-law! My husband and I have a five-year-old daughter who’s starting kindergarten in the fall. We have enrolled her in kindergarten at the public school close to our home. Unbeknownst to us and without our permission to ever do this my MIL took our daughter for a fancy private school kindergarten interview.
I found this out days later when my daughter asked me if she was dumb and told me she felt dumb and then started crying. As she’s crying out comes the story that grandma took her to a school where she had to talked to a stranger. And afterwards grandma got mad and told her that she didn’t get into the school but to never tell us that she ever went to the school.
It didn’t take long for me to figure out what happened because my MIL had been pressuring us to try and get our daughter into this school. My husband and I immediately confronted my MIL and she played the “I was only doing what I thought was best for my granddaughter” card.
Now, I’m ready to go no contact because I don’t feel like I can trust her around my daughter and the fact that she didn’t care about how upsetting this was for our child just makes it worse.
Do you think I’m overreacting because going no contact will be extremely hard since we live in the same town?
Signed, Mad Mama Bear
Dear Mama Bear,
Your mother-in-law sounds horrendous. She put her own wants and needs above what you and your husband have in place for your child. She’s also sneaky and extremely untrustworthy. But that’s not the worst part. The worst part is she didn’t show one iota of concern for how this could affect her granddaughter.
Was your MIL’s master plan to never tell you about this and to just keep on sneaking around doing what she thinks is best like a mad woman? And then there’s the rather huge issue of instructing a five-year-old to keep information from her parents.
At this point and for the immediate future I don’t think you have an option except to tell grandma that you’ll be taking a time out from her involvement in your child’s life. It will absolutely not be easy to do this but what choice do you have?
I’m literally shuddering thinking about what else this woman has pulled that your daughter hasn’t told you about yet or was too young to absorb. The most fundamental job you have as a parent is to keep your child safe and if that means keeping your mother-in-law at a distance then so be it. Good luck and stay strong.
🤨If you have a question, problem, dilemma for Dear Snarky please write to me at snarkyinthesuburbs@gmail.com.
***
Brace for some exciting news friends. My newest book Killer Dance Mom is available for presale!!! 🎉 It’s my first Snarky mystery and I’m hoping you’ll love it. Here’s the link to order and a teaser. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C4FZTK5B
Wynn Butler is a newbie dance mom and honestly, she hasn’t exactly been receiving rave reviews for her skills. Blinging out costumes and being your child’s glam team are not exactly her strong suits. But at her daughter’s first national competition Wynn is ready to prove herself.
What she hadn’t planned for is being forced to share a hotel room with her least favorite person in the whole world – Jacardia Monroe, a mom who’s had two tours of duty at a spray tan detox clinic.
As Wynn attempts to survive the roommate from hell and cheer on her daughter, she stumbles onto a murder. Stuffed in a dance bag backstage is Kingston Reeves, a renowned competition judge. Sitting right next to that dance bag is Jacardia.
When both women became “persons of interest” in the case, Wynn decides it’s time to do some serious snooping to see who at the competition had a motive to kill the dance judge. Rallying her best friends to help her, Wynn discovers a wide swath of suspects from the Instagram/influencer mom who brings a professional camera crew to follow her at competitions, to a crazed former ballerina turned combative dance mom and then there’s the glitter gang . . . a cadre of mothers who are addicted to rhinestoning costumes and perhaps even murder.
As Wynn gets closer to finding out who the killer is she might be one step-ball-change away from death.
Snarky in the Suburbs 