GRRR! SIL undermining DH and my parenting decision!

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TheRealJuliane said:
Well, of course she’s 16 and trying to have her own way. She understands why you don’t want her to see the movie, but she wants to try out her own decisions? You’re probably not going to like me after this, but I would give her a little more freedom to make that kind of decision. At 16, she’s 2 years away from college.
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What we did with our older 19yr old DD is what we are doing with 16yr old DD. We were very judicious about what #1 was exposed to as far as media goes, but when she went to college this past year, she was on her own.

So far, #1 has made great choices about what movies to watch, as far as I can tell.

On a different note,
She’s in Europe now for 6 weeks, where it is legal for her to drink alcohol at age 19, and she has been at the bars there and has drunk alcohol. Now, while I’m not jumping for joy at the pictures of her on Facebook at a bar with a cerveza in her hand, I am not worried* about her choices. Because, I think, we laid a great foundation for her before she left.

And that’s because, partly, I think we were very conservative about what she was exposed to in the media until she left for college.

*well, maybe just a little worried about having a 19yr old girl an ocean away on her own (with her college, but still on her own). :o Which is why I pray a decade of the DMC for her every day. Please join me in praying, mostly for her safety, but also for her to continue to hear God’s voice in her head!
 
Does SIL share your values? If she doesn’t, perhaps you and your husband could just have a conversation with her about your rules and ask her to respect your decisions. I know as an aunt, I am completely indulgent when it comes to my nieces, however, if I knew my sister and brother-in-law felt very strongly on something I would absolutely respect them.

Out of curiosity, what was the movie?
 
PRmerger said:
What we did with our older 19yr old DD is what we are doing with 16yr old DD. We were very judicious about what #1 was exposed to as far as media goes, but when she went to college this past year, she was on her own.

So far, #1 has made great choices about what movies to watch, as far as I can tell.

On a different note,
She’s in Europe now for 6 weeks, where it is legal for her to drink alcohol at age 19, and she has been at the bars there and has drunk alcohol. Now, while I’m not jumping for joy at the pictures of her on Facebook at a bar with a cerveza in her hand, I am not worried* about her choices. Because, I think, we laid a great foundation for her before she left.

And that’s because, partly, I think we were very conservative about what she was exposed to in the media until she left for college.

*well, maybe just a little worried about having a 19yr old girl an ocean away on her own (with her college, but still on her own). :o Which is why I pray a decade of the DMC for her every day. Please join me in praying, mostly for her safety, but also for her to continue to hear God’s voice in her head!
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I think you’re entitled to those feelings 🙂
 
CMB3884 said:
I think you’re entitled to those feelings 🙂
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PRmerger:
It was Snow White and the Huntsman, which according to the sites we went to, contains a lot of sensuality.
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I haven’t seen it, but I agree completely with your decision to let your teenage daughter not see it. It is your prerogative as a parent - without question.
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HouseArrest said:
Hopefully the next time she goes to see your SIL, there will not be an issue. Maybe she’ll nix the movie before the call.
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So this situation has generated a lot of discussion in my house. Mostly the reaction of my children has been, “Mom! You are over-reacting!”

(DH is very, very quiet anyway. He just stands his ground in a very, very quiet but strong way.)

One thing I’ve learned through this situation is a piece of fortuitous good news. 2 pieces of good news, actually. I was speaking to DD last night, after reading the posts here and wanted to emphasize that it was good that Aunt B hadn’t actually said, “Let’s go see the movie anyway.” 16 yr old responded, “I wouldn’t have gone anyway, if I knew you and Dad had said no!”

:extrahappy:

And that prompted my 14 yr old DD, who has been wanting a Facebook for months and months now (“Every single one of my friends has one!”) to say, “Yeah. My friends keep telling me, ‘Just get a secret Facebook account!’ and I keep telling my friends no, I won’t do that!”

:dancing:

Now, the next statements deflated me a bit, because they both said something to the effect of, “You’d find out, anyway.”

:o

Meaning, the primary motivation for their not wanting to be sneaky is because they knew they’d get caught. Not because it was the wrong thing to do.

But, hey, I’ll take the “I wouldn’t do it even if someone else told me to!” for whatever reason at this point!
 
PRmerger said:
Now, the next statements deflated me a bit, because they both said something to the effect of, “You’d find out, anyway.”

:o

Meaning, the primary motivation for their not wanting to be sneaky is because they knew they’d get caught. Not because it was the wrong thing to do.

But, hey, I’ll take the “I wouldn’t do it even if someone else told me to!” for whatever reason at this point!
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Just cut them and yourself some slack. It looks like they are able to make the right decisions, they have to grow a little bit more before they become aware of the real reason of why the make the right choices, right now they are probably just trying to be honest and they rationalize things.
 
TheRealJuliane said:
…I would think your husband needs to have a conversation with his sister…
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If he’s up for it, that would be good. As in “ahem, Sally, I hear from Becca that after Donna told her she was not to go see Movie A with you, you told her ‘I know this is sneaky, but why don’t you call your dad and ask him?’ Wanna explain where she would get the idea that you’d pick me for your end run around Donna? Who were you trying to get into trouble when the truth came out: Becca or me? Maybe you just wanted to make sure I didn’t let her come down to spend time with you again, or what? I’m just not too happy about this, and I think you can see why.”

Let that trouble-maker have a talk with her brother about whether she can be trusted to have more sense than a teenager or not. If he doesn’t want to, let it drop.
 
PRmerger said:
Now, the next statements deflated me a bit, because they both said something to the effect of, “You’d find out, anyway.”

:o

Meaning, the primary motivation for their not wanting to be sneaky is because they knew they’d get caught. Not because it was the wrong thing to do.

But, hey, I’ll take the “I wouldn’t do it even if someone else told me to!” for whatever reason at this point!
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They are children. You are their parent. You are suppose to be teaching them. It looks like you are doing a find job. It sounds like they are learning. 👍
 
I think what your SIL did was very out of line and inappropriate. However… I too am of the opinion that your DD is 16 and she only has 2 years left to learn to say no to peer pressure until she is out on her own in a sink or swim situation.

There is a fine line between teaching your children how to make good choices and and making their choices for them. At the end of the day, if an 18 year old goes away to school, the bottom line is parents have NO idea what is going on. I remember my mom insisting that I live in residence because she thought it was monitored some how. HA! Living is residence exposed me to much worse than the kids who had an appartment.

If the only reason they don’t do things behind your back is because ‘you will find out’ leads me to believe they have very little freedom and once they get it, they will go crazy.

I think you need to set a good example of boundaries and let DD see you assert yourself to SIL ‘I do not appreciate what you have done. If you can not apologize, DD can no longer go over’. But at the same time, I honestly think you need to give a bit more freedom. I think it would be better to say to your daughter, 'I trust you will make the right decision (because after all, if you couldn’t, why was she allow to visit Auntie in the first place) and if she does go to the movie behind your back and regrets it, show her some forgiveness. If she goes and she does not regret it tell her why these things are wrong. Show her consequences ‘since that is what you spend your allowance on, you no longer have one and you will need to get a job if you want money’. But at 16, I really don’t think parents should go out of their way to make sure their kids do not see a particular movie. Especially in view of the fact in a few months it will be on blue ray and she will see it at a friends house anyway

CM
 
cmscms said:
I think what your SIL did was very out of line and inappropriate. However… I too am of the opinion that your DD is 16 and she only has 2 years left to learn to say no to peer pressure until she is out on her own in a sink or swim situation.

There is a fine line between teaching your children how to make good choices and and making their choices for them. At the end of the day, if an 18 year old goes away to school, the bottom line is parents have NO idea what is going on. I remember my mom insisting that I live in residence because she thought it was monitored some how. HA! Living is residence exposed me to much worse than the kids who had an appartment.

If the only reason they don’t do things behind your back is because ‘you will find out’ leads me to believe they have very little freedom and once they get it, they will go crazy.

I think you need to set a good example of boundaries and let DD see you assert yourself to SIL ‘I do not appreciate what you have done. If you can not apologize, DD can no longer go over’. But at the same time, I honestly think you need to give a bit more freedom. I think it would be better to say to your daughter, 'I trust you will make the right decision (because after all, if you couldn’t, why was she allow to visit Auntie in the first place) and if she does go to the movie behind your back and regrets it, show her some forgiveness. If she goes and she does not regret it tell her why these things are wrong. Show her consequences ‘since that is what you spend your allowance on, you no longer have one and you will need to get a job if you want money’. But at 16, I really don’t think parents should go out of their way to make sure their kids do not see a particular movie. Especially in view of the fact in a few months it will be on blue ray and she will see it at a friends house anyway

CM
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I agree–I just put the age at when this happens to be 18, (or college age). Not 16.

As I said earlier, my 19yr old was raised with the same judicious exposure to media, and thus far has done very, very well in college, with all the freedom that goes with college and living in the dorm.
 
PRmerger said:
I agree–I just put the age at when this happens to be 18, (or college age). Not 16.

As I said earlier, my 19yr old was raised with the same judicious exposure to media, and thus far has done very, very well in college, with all the freedom that goes with college and living in the dorm.
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I respect your decision to put the age at 18. However, I do want to caution about comparing your kids. What works on one will not necessarily work on the other. Case in point, me and my brother were both raised in the same household. I am a practicing Catholic and he has no use for the religion. I think it will be a lot of unfair pressure on the younger ones to live up to the oldest’s example

CM
 
Oh boy… what I think you may also want to consider is that your SIL might be trying to be the “cool aunt”. Especially if she’s in her 40s, and feeling her age, she might want to connect with your daughter, in a way that reaffirms to her that she is still “young” and “hip”. I suffered from a “Cool Aunt” who often directly subverted what my mother was trying to do, so that I would like her more. Some examples include:

-buying me makeup when my mother had expressly forbidden me to wear it until I was 16.
-buying me knee high leather boots when my mother had a strict “no promiscuous clothing” rule.
-getting my mother to let me go visit her for a week, then giving me alcohol and letting me “party”.

I could go on, but the point is, it might not be that your SIL actually wants to subvert YOU so much as reaffirm herself. When I was 12, I thought my aunt was the coolest of cool aunts. I hated that after my week long visit with her, my mother wouldn’t let me go stay with her again. Now, I’m thankful she didn’t, because who knows what kinds of immoral things she’d have let me, or worse, encouraged me, to do in order to stave off the feeling of being old.

That’s my :twocents: do with it what you will.
 
PRmerger said:
It was Snow White and the Huntsman, which according to the sites we went to, contains a lot of sensuality.
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LOL, I saw Snow White and the Huntsman.

There was ONE very brief scene of “sensuality” (key word, sensuality, not sexuality… very mild stuff). It’s mainly just a fairy tale… I felt like I was watching Lord of the Rings.

I saw nothing in that movie that was too horrid for a 16 year old, but you’re the mom.
 
Debora123 said:
LOL, I saw Snow White and the Huntsman.

There was ONE very brief scene of “sensuality” (key word, sensuality, not sexuality… very mild stuff). It’s mainly just a fairy tale… I felt like I was watching Lord of the Rings.

I saw nothing in that movie that was too horrid for a 16 year old, but you’re the mom.
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Yeah. Like I said, I was wavering. In retrospect we probably would have let her see it. And I may let her see it with her besties.

Not the point though, of course.
 
PRmerger said:
So this situation has generated a lot of discussion in my house. Mostly the reaction of my children has been, “Mom! You are over-reacting!”

(DH is very, very quiet anyway. He just stands his ground in a very, very quiet but strong way.)

One thing I’ve learned through this situation is a piece of fortuitous good news. 2 pieces of good news, actually. I was speaking to DD last night, after reading the posts here and wanted to emphasize that it was good that Aunt B hadn’t actually said, “Let’s go see the movie anyway.” 16 yr old responded, “I wouldn’t have gone anyway, if I knew you and Dad had said no!”

:extrahappy:

And that prompted my 14 yr old DD, who has been wanting a Facebook for months and months now (“Every single one of my friends has one!”) to say, “Yeah. My friends keep telling me, ‘Just get a secret Facebook account!’ and I keep telling my friends no, I won’t do that!”

:dancing:

Now, the next statements deflated me a bit, because they both said something to the effect of, “You’d find out, anyway.”

:o

Meaning, the primary motivation for their not wanting to be sneaky is because they knew they’d get caught. Not because it was the wrong thing to do.

But, hey, I’ll take the “I wouldn’t do it even if someone else told me to!” for whatever reason at this point!
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Last week my kids said they can’t wait until they get older so they can see whatever movies they want. I explained to them that as soon as that day came, they would have to prevent themselves from seeing distasteful movies, in addition to identifying them. They were surprised at this. So I think that even the idea of internal motivation is new to them.

It’s a process - to move from external to internal motivation. They’ll get it.
 
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