TL;DR: My house, my rules… and in my house we don’t give neuroses to babies.
…
Another quick update before I have some tea and get ready for bed here. Perhaps a bit of a mini-rant, we’ll see.
My parents are polar opposites. My dad is very quiet and chill, my mom is… well, imagine a ball of pure stress… that imaginary ball of stress thinks my mom needs to calm down.
My mom overreacts to everything. A fire truck drives by with the siren on? She freaks out, because… something is wrong. Nothing that affects her, and statistically probably nothing major. But she gets upset. For years people have tried to reframe it for her as someone is getting the help they need, isn’t that wonderful? But nope. She only sees the negative.
She jumps to conclusions, as well… the most negative possible thing… even before she hears any information about a situation. For example
Me: “So I went to my doctor this week-”
My mom: “OH NO!!! ARE YOU SICK?? WHAT’S WRONG?? DO YOU HAVE… SOMETHING??? OHHHHH… YOUR UNCLE BLAHBLAH DIED FROM… THAT…”
Me: Uhh… no, I was getting a refill on my metformin-"
My mom: “OH NO!! DO YOU HAVE DIABETES??? THAT RUNS IN THE FAMILY!”
Me: “No, I take it for longevity reasons… and it’s all type 2 diabetes, that’s a different thing…”
and so on.
I say all that as preface, because I had to “parent” her tonight, and I wanted to set the stage. 
Like many toddlers, my daughter loves getting tossed up in the air (less than a foot) and caught. I launch her up from the floor like a rocket, release her and then catch her a half-second or so later. She’s giggling like crazy the whole time, we do this all the time… doing stuff like that is half the fun of being a dad. lol.
My mom saw this, and gasped, and then started freaking out. She said “That’s dangerous!! I thought you were going to drop her! What if she hit her head??”
The kiddo started picking up on this, and stopped giggling, and made a face like she was about to cry. I kissed her on the nose and started laughing, while saying to my mom that I would never let my daughter fall, and to give me some credit.
She replied that “Look, she’s starting to cry!” and I said, “she’s reacting to your stress, and that’s not something we’re going to teach her.” Then I spent the next few minutes playing with my daughter… chasing her around and singing a song that makes her laugh. She’s my kid, and I will teach her that playtime is fun, not something to be stressed out by. I don’t want her to learn a stress response at all, because it’s not logical or rational.
When she falls down, unless she’s actually hurt, we don’t make a big deal of it. “Aww, has somebody got a booboo? Here, I’ll kiss it better” is about the most response we have… and she’s fine in a couple of seconds unless, as I said, she’s actually hurt herself. Which is very rare.
Throughout dinner tonight, my mom was acting as if I’d said something absolutely devastating to her. I even told the story of where my wife and I had first learned about minimizing negative reactions to children so they don’t learn to negatively overreact. Her takeaway? She must have been a terrible parent if I do things “so differently”.
Or, we, as a society, have a slightly different take on child psychology now than 40 years ago…? Or the fact that we’re raising her with Montessori principles…? Or the fact that we’re a mixed-race household and we’ve blended elements from both parents cultures into our family values…? (nope, it’s obviously all about her 
)
My daughter is a very bright child who is chill and easygoing. Whether due in part or in full because of how we act around her and raise her. I’m not going to let anyone else, not even one of my own parents, do anything to derail that, or limit her in any way.
