My SIL (our husbands are brothers) and I both have daughters a few weeks apart (they’ll be 2 y/o soon). We were talking about how our girls act in different situations, just for fun and to see how their personalities differ or are alike. They are definitely different in the sense that her daughter won’t take no for an answer, where mine will throw her little tantrum but I can distract her with something else and she’ll move past it. My SIL proudly said she was the same way as a kid so she’s happy that she’s like that and it’ll benefit when she’s older. Ok, no big deal. Then she was telling me how her daughter will steal a toy from her brother’s (3.5) hand and go throw it in the garbage and laugh when he cries. Now I’ve worked in two preschools and babysat for numerous families and I never met a kid that young thats so calculating and gets so much joy from being mean, but i guess all kids are different. So then we got into the discussion that again, my SIL is happy that she’s like this because she would rather her be the mean girl in school than to be weak and dependent and cry all the time. She bragged about how she was the mean girl in school and did all this bad stuff and got other girls to follow her. This set me off, as someone who has been bullied horribly and has a brother who tried to commit suicide from bullying. Anyway, she went on to say how my childhood was so perfect and I was overprotected and that I’m still under my parents wing (all they do is babysit my daughter, don’t provide any financial support or anything) and how I’m too overprotective of my daughter and up her ass all the time. I know she went through some traumatic stuff as a child that she doesn’t really talk about. And I feel like she used being mean as a shield to not have to deal with her problems. The problem is she’s raising her kids to be the same. So my question is, knowing how she parents, would you let your child play with hers? Maybe it would be fine, but I know a quarrel between the girls is bound to come up since they are little, and I just don’t want her daughter being mean to mine and my SIL not stepping in. But then she has me thinking, I can’t protect my daughter from everything and she needs to learn that kids will be mean to her and she’ll have to deal with it. Am I being too overprotective to not want our girls to play?