I come from a granola vegan home where food was considered almost sacred. I had fresh wholesome food made from scratch with ingredients mostly grown in our back yard.

My husband grew up eating PB&J, milkshakes and cookies for lunch, drinking coke instead of water. His mother shows her love by giving her children junk food.

Now, my mother in law takes care of my son. Fortunately, my husband is on the same page as me when it comes to what we should feed our son. She knows our food preference for my son, but I think the idea of spending time to prepare his food is beyond her. As my son gets older (now 19 months old), I am finding out that she is feeding him food I would not choose. He had PB&J for lunch for 3 days. She gives him dried fruit instead of fresh ones. She wants to start feeding him cold cereal with milk for lunch.

I think my only option is to prepare 2 snacks and a lunch for my son each day and instruct her that is the only thing she is allowed to feed my son. But at the same time, I feel like I am barely making it through working really long hours and being pregnant with my second child. Pregnancy insomnia is about to kill me, and I am not sure I want to commit to this kind of work. But it kills me to think that he is eating junk everyday. My mom worked 12+ hours everyday and still had time to prepare wholesome meals. Shouldn't I do the same?

People at work seem to think I am bit crazy and think that my idea of healthy and wholesome is a bit off. What do I do? Just bite my tongue and let it go? Bite the bullet and start preparing snacks and lunches? I am afraid this burden will fall on me as my husband thinks we should let it go, and feed him as healthy was we can when we are with him. We feed him breakfast and dinner. He is with grandma 3-4 days a week. Is my husband right? I feel like the older my son gets, more frustrated I feel about my lack of control. While I don't want to quit work (and financially can't), I can't help feeling like I would not have all these issues if I were a stay at home.

Wouldn't I have to prepare snacks and lunches for my son if he was going to daycare? So may be I should just pretend I am doing that and start preparing his food?

I am so tired...

I feel your pain. Everyone feeds my child junk, too. Your MIL's food choices are much more typical in this country than your mom's, so maybe that is why your colleagues think that your ideas are off. They are wrong, of course.

Now what to do about it. The problems as I see it are:

1. You have very little free time.
2. Even if you prepare food for him, she may still give him what she wants to because she believes that it is good for children and he may give her positive feedback because of the concentrated sugars.
3. This additional requirement may strain your relationship with your MIL further.

Only you can decide if you feel strongly enough about the issue to take on this additional burden. Personally, I gave up trying to control what other people feed my child, but I still feel ongoing resentment about it.

BTW, not all daycares require you to make the food. Some provide all the food and will respect your dietary restrictions as well. But later on, when your child starts school, you will have to make his lunch and snacks, unless you want him to have what the school offers (probably not!). Then again, he will end up eating things that you did not send. It is a difficult problem.

Dude, my MIL gave my 3yo SIX powdered doughnut holes in the course of 2 hours. I feel your pain.

For me, I just pick my battles. Fine, DD can have a happy meal, but I draw the line at giving a 3yo fries and coke, etc. If your MIL watches your son at your house, could you get rid of all of that stuff in your house and ask your MIL not to bring it in? Or, maybe instead of preparing it, could you leave (very nicely worded) instructions, ie "fresh apples are in the fridge. He likes it sliced with skins on." ?

Anyways, that's all I've got. If you figure something out, let me know!

My mother in law does not want want to prepare food or want to deal with whatever she sees as messy. I think she would rather give him dried fruit than to peel an apple. She brings stuff to our house. We do draw the line at some things (for example, no caffein...but really...is not even necessry to say? *sigh*), but as you all know, it is really trick with a MIL who watches your kid. Instead, my husband and I want to try the we-know-you-work-so-hard-and-we-want-to-make-it-easier-for-you angle.

Well, hubby and I decided that we will make snacks and lunches as much as we feel that we can. One of the objections of fresh fruit my MIL has that it is too messy. So we will find fruit that is less messy like blueberries, grapes, and such. He said it would be dumb to not make an effort at all because I feel like I couldn't do it everyday. I guess I have a tendency to see things in black and white.

I do think that my MIL will feed my son whatever I prepare for him as long as it is easy and not messy to feed him. My husband is saying we will do this together, so we'll see. I won't kill myself, but I really want him to eat well. My parents would probably spontaneously combust and cease to exist if they saw what my MIL is feeding my son. I guess I am my parents' daughter, after all.

But then if you want to cut the blueberries and the grapes in half to minimize the choking risk, they get messy again.

I don't think PB&J, dried fruit, cereal, and milk actually qualify as junk food (though cereal and milk are more of a breakfast thing). I would just be glad she is watching the kid for you. My 6 brothers and sisters and I grew up on cold cereal and milk for breakfast (with fried eggs and bacon on weekends), baloney, PB&J, or cheese sandwiches, fruit, and cookies for lunch, chocolate chip cookies and Kool-aid for snacks, and meat, potatoes, and a vegetable for dinner. We are all very healthy adults, ages 50-60 now.

Depends. 'Nothing-but' PB (no added sugar, preservatives, etc) on whole-grain bread is a far cry from Skippy on Wonder Bread. There are better and worse choices for cereal as well (eg plain puffed rice or wheat or a good choice of granola, also Kashi brand cereals don't have too much junk in them).

Who does the shopping? I think the locus of control is there - can you buy the healthy versions of things your MIL is willing to feed?

I agree, this is a tough one.

My toddler daughter eats the previous night's dinner leftovers for the next day's lunch, mostly. When she doesn't, we try to go for cut up veggies with eg hummus dip. We have so far successfully convinced her that PB&J is essentially a dessert (which isn't that inaccurate!). But... yeah. It's a constant balancing act.

Btw, our costco has organic apple slices pre-cut up in snack-sized bags. The only preservative on them seems to be lemon juice. So, environmentally it's a bit of a disaster, but it solves the "easiness" issue... bananas are pretty easy, too....

No, she doesn't feed skippy on wonderbread. We bought organic peanut butter with just peanut as the ingredient and such. Like I said, many people do think that I am a bit nuts. I am just used to eating food that is prepared from scratch. My granola parents have brainwashed me into thinking anything that comes out of a package is no good. As they always say, if it didn't start looking like the way God put it on this earth before you started cooking, you are eating poison. It doesn't help that my husband has horrible eating habits. It took years before he would not eat sugary cereal after our healthy meal. It also took years before he stopped eating fastfood. Also took a very long time before he felt satiated without meat at the table. He still craves sugary desserts after each meal.

I am going to do the best I can and know that even if I don't match what my parents did, my son will probably turn out just fine. That being said, I think I will cook something health for him to eat before he wakes up from his nap!

I wish I could get my kid to eat PB&J. Anything other than mac and cheese is a victory in our house ...