[MayC]

I think it really depends.

If a child's safety is at risk, I would say something. For example, if her child is playing with sharp objects, if he/she is near a non-childproof window or if he/she is near a pool unsupervised.

However, I would NOT like it if someone was on my back for everything I do. For example, my inlaws (mother in law + sister in law). I took a lot of crap from them.... criticising me for not sending my child to a "free" school here, for not putting layers and layers of clothing on her when it's so hot, for breastfeeding my daughter, for my daughter's lack of interest in reciting chinese poems and for her inability to recognise her alphabets and numbers at the age of 2. In fact, my SIL who is a real hypocrite criticised me for sending my daughter to a private local school at a monthly fee of 2.4k a year ago, yet now she's sending her 3 year old son to New Zealand for 2 years on his own (with only his grandma) because her friend who is a doctor said that the English standard in the local school here is poor. In addition, after criticising me for breastfeeding my little girl, she went and did it herself. Now I'm being criticised because her son, at the age of 2, could recognise his abcs, 123s and could recite more than 10 Chinese poems and I haven't done the same with mine.

I mean and I truly mean this... everyone should mind their own business. We all have different ways of bringing up our children and we all have different values. Not two mothers are alike... and what makes a mother think that her ways are better than other mothers? I mean, even if you're good at one thing, it does not mean you're good at another.

Mothers should respect each other. After all, no mothers would purposely try to hurt or disadvantage their own children.

I believe that another mother's intervention should purely be at a "safety" level. If you see danger, then by all means don't just stand there. But when it comes to parenting, we all have our own right to do what we feel is good for our OWN children.

So sorry to sound so bitter.. I've just had some really aweful experience of this from my Chinese inlaws...