I'm sorry about your FIL too, please don't beat yourself up over it though - you were doing something in the best interest of your child.

I think our MIL's are related... mine thinks that white bread spread with jam is a perfectly acceptable lunch. ugh. Even when I wasn't eating LC, I knew this was a nutritional zero.

My kids can't have dairy, but when I'm there, she always asks if they can have a tiny bit of ice cream, or butter on noodles... etc. I feel like nothing I say gets through.

She is old fashioned, but is also convined that switching from butter to margarine helped lower her cholesterol (gag). I just wish she would listen and follow my wishes too... my kids can't have dairy due to allergies, eczema, digestive issues, headaches, etc... it's not like I'm trying to be mean and I get the impression that is what they think I'm trying to do - with hold food to be mean.

My FIL is no help - if she asks if they can have ice cream for dessert and I say no, he gives me this joking look that makes me want to smack him up side the head! (I love him, but I hate that he'll do this in front of the kids... back me up, dude!!!!)

My kids don't eat low carb, but I do keep their sugar intake very low and feed them lots of veggies and fruit. They are super picky too which doesn't help matters!

Anyway - I feel your pain. If it's anything like me, just stay consistent... or bring your own food over for them? We spend a lot of time at our in-laws too.

Of course, my MIL sees that I'm on a "diet" and all she thinks I eat is salad - but thankfully, she makes me one when I'm there, so I can't complain! LOL!

Yeah, what Diedmde said. It seems that this is about her inability to respect you as the authority when it comes to your kids. She is undermining you on a regular basis, and that's worse IMO than the ice cream per se.

She has the head knowledge about diet it would appear, but just won't apply it to her own life. I suspect that may be the underlying reason why she feels the urge to ruin everybody else's diet, misery loves company and this way she will feel justified in her own bad choices. My dh does this too. But regardless....

it sounds like you're in a tough spot because she is doing you a favor by giving you a break with the kids, and you don't want to give that up. I sympathize with needing a break now and then. It is time to ask yourself right now, which is more important to you, your relationship with your kids or getting a breather? What will be the long term outcome if things continue as they are now? Would you be able to look back on this in 5 or 10 years and say you made the right decision?

I have a lot of regrets with some of the things I did early on with my kids. It's never easy. Hindsight can be 20/20 as they say. If I had to do it all over again I would have arranged for some other way to get time to myself every Saturday than letting my dh take the boys to pancakes and waffles every Saturday at a restaurant. It was a big mistake, and that's not even the half of it.

Be creative, brainstorm other ways you can have somebody, anybody else, watch your kids now and then. Money is an issue? What about finding a mom's coop in your area. You can take turns watching each other's kids, etc. Things like that...what about your church, have you called and asked if they have any resources you could avail yourself of?

Your MIL is not the ONLY babysitter you can rely on in the world.

My mother and grandmother will quietly give the kids all kinds of junk when they have them too, despite the fact we have been on sugar free treats for years. I have requested time and again that they give the kids fruit/veggie/cheese or a sugar free alternative for snacks, but they still pull out the big guns... donuts, cake, pie, ice cream sundaes, shakes, chocolate candy by the pound.

I have always let my kids have a couple of sugary snacks a week, but tried to keep them days apart and a reasonable size. What would summer be without corn on the cob, soft-serve ice cream when on a car trip, or the occassional candy splurge. I'm not trying to make them diet nazi's, but teach them there are alternatives and it pays to be vigiliant.

Now that the whole family is LC, it will get that much harder. Even though I tried to keep the kids to a limited amount of full sugar foods, we all continued to climb the weight scale, so its obvious its a carb thing. I explained to the grandparents that we were now eating a 'food in its own wrapper' and no flour and no sugar. I'm not sure my mother is as supportive as she claims to be, as she gave my daughter pizza the other night, in addition to candy and ice cream. She only had her for three full days, and the child got junk every day - although a lot less than she used to give her. This is a woman suffering through the effects of diabetes herself.. sheesh.

Its a small victory, so I'll take it. I'm hoping when the extended family sees our little core get thinner and healthier as time goes on that they will adhere closer to the plan I set forth. If there are positive results, they should want to help, right??? LOL

On the other hand, I wish I had made the LC decision years earlier, and brought them up eating this way. It would be a lot easier than starting them as teens, when we are already fighting the effects of obesity.

This is very interesting. I don't have children yet and probably won't for a good long while still but I already worry about how I'll be able to manage that. Mostly, it's because I really want children but I don't want them to go through the same bad experiences as me, growing up big. I feel I need to resolve this before I even consider getting pregnant.

I'm fairly certain my parents would be supportive of healthy eating as they have seen the change in me as I went LC. I can only hope I have supporting in-laws someday too. However, what I worry most at is how to feed kids a healthy diet within the LC WOL. How do you get a child to make good choice? I mean, is it possible for a child to chose not to have ice-cream when granny offers it? Do you trust your kids to make good choices food wise or do you have to prod them?

The thing is, for the first few years, children have no real say in what they eat. They only get access to the food in the house, or that adults give them., By the time they have pocket money and know how to spend it, they should have a better grasp that sweets are an occasional treat, not a food group.

Unless there is a health issue (one of mine had a dairy allergy which severely limited junk food), you'll never stop Granny offering ice-cream. But you can always talk her into offering fruit as well, and keeping the portions of ice-cream small.

This thread is three years old. I wonder how the OP is faring?

I am pretty fortunate in this area, BUT honestly, I am not so strict right now with my kids. they make pretty good choices on their own ~ which I LOVE< and they are rarely out of my care. So the few times they are, I realize it is a 'treat' for them.