bottles, naps and my mother

Babybear70 · August 2013

Little background before I go on to the story/advice needing. My DS is watched 2 days a week by my mom, and 3 days a week by my MIL. So my DS is 14mo and has slowly been giving up his bottles on his own. While he is with me on the weekends, and at my MIL's house, he doesn't take a bottle during the day for naptimes. This was purely his doing, we did not take the bottles away. So, he only gets a bottle at night, which I'm slowly cutting down to get him off of it by 15 mo (per doctors recommendations). My mother is insistent that he should still have the bottles, and that he won't take a nap at her house without one. And what I'm trying to get her to understand is that how can he go 5 days a week without a naptime bottle, then all of a sudden NEED one at her house? It doesn't make any sense. And she tells me to just 'let him be a baby!', which would be fine....but he isn't a baby anymore. He loves to drink out of cups and sippy cups, bottles of water and everything else. He doesn't need a bottle to get his liquid intake, he does just fine with cups.

Then she says to me that he is going to get dehydrated if we don't find something that he really likes to drink besides just milk and water (he has trouble with shelf stable juices so it is either fresh or nothing which I'm fine with) since I won't allow her to give him a bottle. But yet he does just fine with lots of wet diapers the other 5 days a week.

Am I crazy to be insistent that she not give him a bottle when he goes without 5 days a week, or should I just give in so she stops b!tching at me about it?

DiveFrog · August 2013

Personally, I say fight one battle at a time. I would tell her she can give him milk or water at naptime but ONLY from a sippy cup/approved container. Once this is working for a period of a few weeks, then request that she stop the drink/nap connection all together.

And I wouldn't give in to the juice/alternative beverage at all. As pp mentioned they are just unnecessary sugar.

skibunny59 · August 2013

DiveFrog said:

Personally, I say fight one battle at a time. I would tell her she can give him milk or water at naptime but ONLY from a sippy cup/approved container. Once this is working for a period of a few weeks, then request that she stop the drink/nap connection all together.
And I wouldn't give in to the juice/alternative beverage at all. As pp mentioned they are just unnecessary sugar.

This is exactly what I would do.

GavinIsMyBabyBear · August 2013

I have a mother like yours. I have found that saying and sticking to no is the only thing that works. My mom got so bad one morning when I dropped him off I literally took all of the bottles out of the cabinet and took them to work with me. She couldn't use item if she didn't have em

MNmama7112 · August 2013

my son only drinks milk, and occasionally has water. i definitely don't think he needs anything else. they get fluids from food too...

as for the bottles, i'd just say something like "mom, i know you want him to stay a baby. i can relate. but he's trying to tell us he's ready to take a step forward. let's let him have a say on this one." maybe she's just having a hard time with him growing up fast? i don't know- sometimes just trying to meet someone where they're at and get at the root of it may help- i have a hard time believing this is really about juice and/or bottles. hope that makes sense!

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