to those of the 'suck it up it's Christmas' school of thought I think I'll share a recent day with my MIL (after all it's cathartic and I havn't posted here for a while
Earlier this year we had to spend a whole day with the extended family, (MIL, her daughters and their children) this was something we had previously resolved to avoid as much as possible because of her behaviour towards our children when they are with their cousins!
The settings are slightly false but the events are true.
The signs were not good, she had bought all the cousins new outfits lets pretend they were red which they wore, she then spent considerable time at top volume telling others on the tour we were on how wonderful the children wearing red were, they were her grandchildren and she was so proud of them, they were such clever children, such outdoor children (obviously coming from London ours live in some carbon monoxide fulled bubble and have never even seen a blade of grass
) blah blah blah this was all said in front of my children who were old enough to understand.
Then we went on our tour at no time did she speak to, walk with or interact with my children in any way until snacktime when she pulled out 4 large bars of chocolates (how did you guess we were with 4 cousins) these she proceeded to hand out to 3 cousins, one of mine asked for the 4th but she said no turned around walked over to cousin 4 and said x can have it sorry I havn't got enough.
On we went, one of our children wasn't feeling well so we were walking slowly with them the others were all in a big marquee, which we ended up walking around to try and find the door as we did this we heard MIL say 'go away x and don't come back there isn't room for you here' x is my child and we arrived to find him running out of the marquee in tears because of what he had been told.
A bit later we all sat down to have a snack and some biscuits were given to the children SIL ensured all of the children were offered a biscuit, there were 3 spare so 3 children were given an extra one, cousin walked up with no biscuit (he hadn't wanted one) and MIL snatches the biscuit out of 1 childs hand to give to cousin, yes you've guessed it the biscuit was snatched from my child not either of the two cousins who had one.
At this point I'd had enough and asked my husband if he had seen that and told him he had to say something since it was his Mother, so we talk about it fairly loudly. I think trying to see if she will say anything but she doesn't so in the end my husband says don't take the biscuit from x, which she scoffs at with much eyebrow raising and huffing and puffing then denies.
Unable to stop myself I say something along the line of 'really everyone saw you snatch a biscuit from a small child , please don't do that a grown adult should know better'. She starts shouting at me, the older children and cousins go into another room followed by aunt and MIL. I then hear aunt and MIL say to my child: 'x that's not what happened, go and tell your Mum your grandmother didn't snatch the biscuit, she didn't snatch the biscuit from you you know that'
I have really had it by this stage so walk in take my child by the hand and drag him outside saying to Aunt as we pass 'I saw what happened with my own eyes as did everyone else, please don't try and tell my children to lie' unsurprisingly MIL follows me out hurling abuse.
So that was a completely typical selection of a day with my MIL, all those things (apart from her verbally abusing me) have happened before and all of those things happened in 1 day, actually in public. I have worried about our relationship for some time and turned to various parenting forums for ideas, hence my 'decision' to say something this time, my children are getting older and there had recently been lots of comments along the lines of 'if you don't stand up fro your children who will.' On one someone listed the 'good' characteristics of grandparents: phone up to see how your children are, talk to them, babysit if able, give them little gifts just because etc etc. This made me realise that she is none of these to my children, it was also pointed out that as an adult I don't have to be in the company of people who abuse me nor is it healthy to.
When we got back home in the light of above I told my husband that clearly it is unacceptable to be treated like that and that I will not see his Mother again, she is not welcome in my home and I will not be organising for the children to go and see her (I get lumbered with all the organising) if he wishes to take them to see her i will not stop him, I will not go but that he needs to think about her behaviour, that it will not change and he needs to stand up for his children.
I do worry that I am depriving them of a lovely nuturing relationship with their grandmother, that it is in some way my fault, that I am causing a breakdown in his relationship with his parents etc etc.
Anyway we shall see, if I thought about it some more I'd probably realise that she has some kind of personality disorder there is clearly more going on. SIL denies that her Mother treats our children differently (her husband can see it), yet clearly had mine been bonkers enough to buy one set red outfits there is no way I would dress them in them for a day with their red outfitless cousins, my husabnd has failed to 'deal with' her behaviour in any way as an adult so that wont change, in fact the whole family admits privately that she has never been stood up to. Previously I could never keep up with whether she was talking to her own sister or not (funnily always the sisters fault).
I feel happier that I no longer have to see her apart from the nagging worry that I am the one depriving my children of a relationship with their grandmother.
I think her behaviour is extreme and I just wanted others to see that not all MIL should be put up with, I'd like to know what others would do should their MIL stand and scream abuse at them?
The OP should laugh about it and not taking it personnally.
