I apologize in advance for the long post, but I had to get this out to the world because it's been eating me for several week. Did anyone else run into the problem with grandparents?

Our 3 year old daughter was visiting with grandparents several times a week and after a while we started to notice some signs of trouble. My parents were feeding her way too much candy and she would sometimes get just cookies for breakfast or candy with liquor for snack. My mom also started to yell at her the way she used to do at me. My parents would also scare our kid with homeless people that would come and take her away whenever she would not listen. The other problem was that every time she stayed over night, it would later disturb her bedtime when she would come back to us.

The biggest problem, however, was that my parents would not listen to me any time I tried to bring this up. Me and my husband use time-out technique and whenever we put our daughter in time out at their place, my parents would ask her to come out and tell her that she does not need to stay in time out any longer.

Me and my husband decided to keep our daughter at home for a week and asked my parents if we could all sit down and have a conversation about these issues. My parents flat out refused to talk to us, saying that they will not change their parenting techniques. They also said that they are the experts at child raising and we are not. They told us that by using time outs we are raising a zombie, and that our parenting techniques are not welcome at their house. They also said that there is nothing wrong with giving child candy and yelling at the child. We told them that if they don't want to change their technique they are always welcome to come and visit her at our house, but they said it's too inconvenient for them. They also said that we are using passive-aggressive methods of dealing with this whole issue. My dad was shocked that I would even dare to discuss parenting techniques with them. My husband went over one night to talk to them, but they opinion did not change at all from that conversation.

Me and my husband sat down and talked to each other and we agreed that we were overusing time-outs at times. The thing is, she behaves a lot better with us alone than she does at grandparent's house, so we really don't have to use time-outs much when we are away from their place. We did, however, agree to use time-outs less and use more of natural consequences and negotiation to discipline her.

It's been 3 weeks of her not going to their house. We were over for dinner once at their house but did not talk at all about the issue. My dad called me to tell me that my mom was feeling down and he would like to organize a family concert for her for the Women's Day. He asked me if I could read a poem and my daughter could do some dance to cheer my mom up. I refused saying that I don't really want to see or talk to my mom at this time. He was really offended about that.

The question that I have is: did we do anything wrong? Are we justified in talking to my parents about child-raising techniques? Should I do anything to fix this relationship at this time? I want to have a good relationship with my parents, but I want it to be open, and my opinion to be respected and valued. Thank you all.