We recently had an incident with my 2yr old toddler and my father in law. We were celebrating my daughter’s birthday at a petting farm and my father in law was very excited. My father in law is a very unique individual, my husband and his family are “aware” of it sort of. He has very child-like behaviors and gets excited about children type activities. (Our brother in law assesses autistic children and said that he is definitely on the spectrum, but that wasn’t a thing in the 50’s) No one knows for sure, it’s just how he is and is harmless for the most part. At her birthday he was very excited to show my daughter hamsters, but she did not want to go with him. She kept saying “NO, LET GO!” She dropped to the floor bawling and was trying to pull away. He kept pulling back on her arm to make her come. I had to ask him twice and then finally yell and pull him off of her and said “LET GO OF HER!” Basically he wouldn’t take no for an answer and could only think about doing what he wanted to do and was yanking on her arm while she was twisting away.
I feel 100% confident in my actions to get him off of her and stop him from yanking on her arm. Radial fractures, dislocations, etc are common injuries due to that. (I did it to my 2 yr old cousin when I was 5, trying to get him to come with me).
So, onto the mother in law. I don’t want to be stereotypical, BUT she is the stereotypical boomer mother, that likes to control and gets easily offended, but also has a lot to comment on… my husband parents babysit our daughter twice a week right now. His mother can’t drive and has never drove, so it’s always a group thing whenever they come over. I had a talk with them yesterday morning before I left for work about what happened.
All I wanted to say was, that’s not how we deal with a toddler throwing a tantrum or not doing what you want them to do. We don’t yank on their arm to get them to do something. My main issue was that my father in law would not take no for an answer and kept pulling. That’s when my mother in law got very upset and said I was accusing them of yanking on her and they don’t do stuff like that. (Yet that’s exactly what happened) She was playing the victim and I was the mean daughter in law. She got very upset and started yelling in my house, and I started to match her tone. Her reaction was very childlike and inappropriate. I didn not want to leave my daughter with them after my mother in law acted like that, but I had to go to work, so I shut it down and left.
Like I said before I’m confident in my actions to get my father in law off my daughter because he does not stop doing inappropriate things when asked, it honestly seems like he can’t comprehend almost, but I’m wondering how I could have approached this better when communicating the issue? Especially with someone like my mother in law who reacts the way she did.
TL;DR: My father in law would not stop yanking/pulling on my crying 2yr olds arm, I had to yell and forcefully remove him from her. When I brought up the situation the next day my mother in law started yelling and playing victim, so we got in a yelling fight. How to approach the situation better with that type of reaction/behavior?