getting tired of my mother-in-law

she keeps trying to force me and my husband to cut our son’s hair. she’s asked three times, despite us both saying we will let him make the choice for himself when he is older. she also wanted us to start potty training him the day he turned a year old. my siblings have young children that still wet the bed and i believe it’s because they have forced them to potty train to earlier, the amount of fear they put in their kids and how often the kids were deemed and hit because the parents are frustrated. one relative even started having her toddler sleep on the floor because she was tired of her peeing on the mattress. she wasn’t ready, she was just under two years old. did any of them seek assistance or read how regression happens a lot when forced too early? no. anyway, my mother-in-law she has a horrible relationship with her son, mainly because she’s so forceful. doesn’t have a gentle parenting bone in her. she’s a 20 year military vet who has treated her kids like you’d expect — very harshly when it comes to letting them bloom with reason and backed by science. she prefers fear. but that’s not what were doing with our son. we chose gentle parenting because we both hated being beat with the belts. on top of that, she’s been insisting on us putting our son in swim lessons again despite us trying it and we saw how it was extremely traumatic for him and that he showed signs of not being ready for it. just because he loves water it doesn’t mean he is ready to learn how to swim. my marker for my son is not everyone else’s marker. i’m not forcing him to do a got damn thing he’s not ready to do. he has autonomy, he has the right to reject things, especially the things he fears. once i answer a question regarding my son, i don’t want to fucking answer it again. if i said no, it means no. i’m not forcing him to do anything he’s not ready to do. i have been with my son for everyday except three days of his 19-month-old life. i know him because i spend every waking moment with him. i remember my mom flat-ironing my hair and constantly being burned on the neck or ear. to this day i have a fear of anyone touching my hair. i get it, no one wants to see a black girl and her very curly aka “nappy” hair, so it needed to be straightened and publicly acceptable. similar to having my hair permed, i was burned so badly i had to be hospitalized. the scar is still on the top of my head and hair doesn’t grow there. i wish my mom would have waited for me to be ready. i was 10 years old. i didn’t need a damn perm. anyway, my son won’t have those traumas. and i wish a motherfucker would try to do any of those things behind me and my son’s back.