What would you do? Read description.

My mom has been providing childcare for my daughter since she was 6 months old. She’s now 2.5. She comes to our house and watches her from 9:00 to 3-4ish while my husband and I work...sometimes we work in the home & sometimes in an office. We pay my mom but it’s SUPER reasonable compared to daycare.

My relationship with my mom has become strained in the past 5 years when I started to realize she was a somewhat toxic person for me to be around. She’s very negative and complains a lot, and I also harbor some anger because of the way she raised me. She didn’t do anything intentionally bad and she has always loved the heck out of her kids, but she’s a bit of a narcissist. My feelings often didn’t matter and if I ever called her out for something, she would immediately take it as a personal attack because she thinks she’s perfect and doesn’t do anything wrong...ever. Also whenever I tried to talk about something, she’d find a way to make the conversation about her so I developed some deep self worth issues and I often feel like what I have to say isn’t important. I question whether I’m good enough, smart enough, funny enough, etc. I also grew up believing I had to be a “good girl” which has led to other issues.

My mom and I are civil with each other but it’s a very surface level relationship most of the time. My mom LOVES my daughter and enjoys spending time with her. She talks to my daughter a lot, reads to her, sings, dances, and plays...lots imaginative play. My daughter has a very rich vocabulary and she is sharp for her age. My husband and I do all those things with her too so I’m sure all her caregivers have had an influence.

I guess I’m wondering what you would do in my situation. I always feel my anger and bitterness come up when my mom is here and I am super focused on the way she interacts with my daughter. I’ve given her parenting pointers over the past couple of years and she has definitely gotten better with some things but she still does/says many things that I don’t prefer. These things are triggers for me because they caused a lot of my issues growing up and I don’t want my daughter to develop the same issues. At the same time, like I said, my mom clearly loves the heck out of my daughter and they do have fun together. Daycare would be SO MUCH more expensive for us which would be doable but hard (and daycare providers of course wouldn’t care for our daughter exactly as we’d like either). I am trying to heal myself too and I feel like that is difficult when my mom is here several days a week because I’m constantly triggered, and I always feel negative energy around her. I feel this way even when my mom is perfectly happy and pleasant.

What would you do?