Hi everyone!I am having a big MIL issue. For background purposes, my husband and I are an interracial couple, 'm white and he's black. We have a 5 year old daughter.My daughter goes to a school where she wears uniforms all day so when we take vacations I always allow her the freedom to pick out a couple of new outfits of her choice, anything she wants and that speaks to her. Over the last couple months she's become OBSESSED with animals, we've gone to Cincinnati to see Fiona the hippo and we live in DC so we're at the zoo weekly, recently she's become really interested in monkeys and therefore has picked out tops with monkeys on it. A couple of weekends ago she stayed at my MIL's house while we were out of town for a bridal market, when I went to pick her up my MIL was visibly angry with us and my daughter seemed sad. I asked if she was ok and my MIL went in on us for buying her shirts with monkeys on them because it has a racist connotation. She explained to me that she told my daughter "monkey" is a bad term and if she uses it she's not being nice. Now, when we go to the zoo she won't go near the monkey exhibit because they're "mean" and last night we had a call from her teacher to tell us our daughter is telling her classmates that "monkeys are bad and they hurt peoples feelings."I feel terrible, because my daughter is very sad that she can't wear some of her favorite clothes (even though my husband try and convince her too.) But, this isn't the first time this has happened with my MIL, she told my daughter she was disappointed that Ariel was her favorite princess instead of Tiana, and that my daughter should only like Tiana because she looks like her. So now my daughter won't play with her Little Mermaid toys if she's around and when we went to Disney my MIL wouldn't let her ride Splash Mountain because of "Song of the South" and vocalized her disappointed if she would get overly excited for a princess other than Tiana.My husband and I don't know how to address this. I feel like its not ok for me to address it directly because I can't entirely grasp how she feels, but I also want my daughter to love the things she loves and if she like monkeys and the Little Mermaid (which we've established is because I have red hair and she thinks I'm Ariel) then she should love them.Has anyone else had a similar situation? via /r/Parenting https://ift.tt/2rYMGk6
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