Mother fires her own mother from babysitting her child after she goes behind her back and cancels free play classes because she knows better

An exchange that started innocently enough with a grandmother helping with the care of her child quickly became a generational rift as the grandmother, who thought she knew better, stopped taking the child to baby play classes behind the child's mother's back. She "fired" her mother and replaced her with another caregiver. Despite being upset with her mother, she couldn't help but wonder: Was she wrong for restricting her mother's access to her child?

Story Summary:

A mother returned to part-time work and relied on her own mother, the child's grandmother, for childcare, including taking her toddler daughter to a developmental class she loved. However, the grandmother disliked the class, insisting that they were messy and chaotic. When she suggested that alternatives would be better and the mother insisted that the child be taken to the classes, she secretly stopped attending, misleading the mother about their activities. 

When the mother realized what had been happening, she felt her trust had been broken and chose to hire a college student to watch her child instead. The grandmother became upset, arguing that she was being replaced and denied access to her granddaughter despite her "best" intentions.

_{The image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.}

_{The image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.}

Arguably, there are some baseline attributes that make for good parenting and care of a child, but beyond that, it is always going to be a matter of debate as to what a parent should do and be, as there are just too many variables to count. 

Generational divides, cultural rifts, and circumstantial issues are always going to come up between new parents and their own parents, the children's grandparents, who insist that “They did things better” back in their day. This can be frustrating for the new parents who are keenly aware of their parents' own flaws, but as long as it stays as annoying suggestions, it's innocent enough; it's when their parents start doing things behind their back, against their specific request, that it becomes a big problem.

And it's not a solved equation by any means, either, despite every parenting trend attempting to curb the shortcomings of their own parents' generation and not pass their own trauma onto their children, each change, along with the changing world around the parent and child, presents a new set of challenges and new variables that the parent will inevitably get “wrong” and their children will seek to solve when they have children of their own.

It's not even so much her doing something that was disadvantageous for the child as it is that she directly went against her daughter's wishes for her own child and, worse, did so behind her back. This is really the core of the issue here and is a major issue for the family to now overcome.