Hi Guys so the story with me is I live with my wife and mother & father in law. My wife has a 3yo daughter from another marriage and I'm looking for some advice on this matter.The 3yo frequently wakes up in the early hours of the night and cries for attention, my wife usually responds by going in her room and calming her down, but sometimes the mother in-law responds first. I'm generally unwelcome in the room with her as she really just wants her mom or grandma.Recently there was a rough night where the 3yo woke up for the 3rd or 4th time and the situation escalated to all three of them (wife, mother in-law and 3yo) in the same room. The 3yo is awake and crying about something they believe is trivial and both of the adults have their way of dealing with this, but the mother in-law always wins out. The solution she had come to was to pull the 3yo out of bed, throw her pillow and blanket on the floor, put the 3yo on the ground and spank her as punishment, telling her that she no-longer gets a bed. This has been the 'solution' a number of times and typically ends with tears and putting the 3yo back in bed after a moment, I guess just to scare her into settling down?I'll be brutally honest here and declare that at no point do I ever believe it reasonable or necessary to cause physical harm to a child. Usually I don't step in but my concern for the young girl made me feel terrible, so I went to the room to try and calm things down. This was obviously a bad idea. My wife wanted me to leave, the mother in-law was still yelling at the child and eventually stormed out, cussing me out as she left because it's not my place to be there. Everyone knows and treats me as her dad (except the mother in-law) and we just want to be our own family with plans for me to legally become the father in the future. We're getting our own place soon but the issues I'm facing now are a concern for me in the future regardless.
