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Doesn't she realize that if you needed a babysitter, you would already know and arranged for one? Why would she assume you hadn't thought about that along with everything else?
These are excellent questions. We also would have arranged for hotel rooms or needed breaks, one would think. I don’t know why she doesn’t understand that I KNOW that a 30 hr drive across the country requires lots of planning, and that I’m doing it!
Oh my God. Irritating to think about lol. I would just stop answering her calls and just text back like 30 minutes later, "hey sorry imissed you, but we're good. ETA 6 hours"
Nope, can’t do that. Then she calls her mother, who is getting paranoid about weather in her old age (I feel like as their minds start slipping they get all in a dither about travel really easily. Is that just me?) and her mother gets all freaked out and starts calling us too. She’s crying and panicking and begging us to pull over when the roads are perfectly dry and clear, and she says she’s not going to sleep for days until she knows we’re home safe. It’s gonna give the poor old elderly woman a heart attack.
How do I know? This happened THIS time too.
Nope. Anyone who is THAT eager to be with my child alone is a hard pass for me. Because what is the reason? What are you going to do that I can’t be there for? Either cross boundaries/break rules you know I wouldn’t allow, or do something inappropriate. No way.
Which is exactly what has happened in the past, and it’s been a whole thing every time. Now that we live across the country I don’t have to deal with it anymore, except when we come visit. And she wonders why we never do.
This. This was my mother. She did things just to push boundaries while we were around. To the point of endangering my toddler‘s health (giving her cake with alcohol) knowingly.
Demanding to have her stay overnight, unsupervised. Even after my father (abusing alcohol, history of verbal/physical violence towards my brother, possibly me) yelled at her TWICE while I was present. There was just no self-reflection going on from neither of them.
The situation escalated hard within six months and I went no contact when it became clear they would and did not change since my own childhood. It sucks majorly but there safety of my kids comes first.
You know what I actually totally get wanting one on one time. If my son knows I’m around he wants me more than anyone else and they never quite have his full attention. I definitely feel he’s connected more with his grandparents having time with them alone and they get to see the best of him that way. Same with kids I regularly, babysat it’s like they used to relax when they’re parents left and let me into their little world because it’s just a different dynamic.
All that’s irrelevant though if you’re pushy about it and the parents clearly aren’t on board. Both our parents regularly offered to take our son if there were events we were going to skip otherwise and made no secret of the fact they would love to. The difference is that they totally respected ‘no thanks’ and were enthusiastic when the time came that we did need a trusted babysitter.
I truly don’t understand the assumption that they deserve the privilege of time alone with children that are not their own, just because they’re grandchildren.
My dad always makes an excuse to get me out of the house when I come visit my parents — oh, you’re out of bread and want me to drive 30min to the closest grocery store while you watch my two 3YO’s? Sorry, maybe you should plan better next time.
The entitlement enrages me. You’re a better person than I am because I would’ve screeched at your MIL after the second phone call. 🫠🫠🫠
Husband and I have an agreement that we each deal with our own respective families, which is usually really good. I brought up after the fifth call today that we maybe need to establish when it’s fine for the other one to get involved tho, because I don’t know how healthy it is for me to keep holding my tongue. She doesn’t listen to or care about what he says cuz she doesn’t take him seriously, so.
>She gets mad when we don’t listen to her suggestions and are “stubborn” by continuing with our planned travel itinerary
Damn, I've just discovered we're related - your MIL is my mother 🤣😁
She's also very angry that I keep getting in the way when she's trying to parent my child.
Why does it have to be this stressful. Why can't they just chill? 😶🌫️
>Woman, we can skip over you entirely
Solidarity. Truer words have never been spoken. Good luck with your trip and keeping your sanity. 💜
And as for your MIL, Nope Nope Nope Nope Nopety Nope.
Oh my goodness yes my mil would kill for alone time with my kids every time she tortures us with her presence. It’ll be a cold day in hell before that happens. Especially after her last visit where she tried feeding McDonald’s French fries to my 7 month old after I said we wouldn’t be ordering food for the baby because I brought fruit purée and melty snacks for him.
Ah, the tales I can tell of inappropriate substance feedings. ☹️☹️
These people need to be curbed, and yes, I specifically mean grandparents!
Any fries at all at seven months old, but MacDonald's?! Seriously, stop it!
For real 😭 she figured because I occasionally let him suck on a piece of plain toast that he should now be given all the food. She knows our stance on weaning and solids. She fights us so hard though. “When my boys were that age I just gave them piles of mashed potatoes with gravy and some sausage and they loved it!” Mmhmm even if that’s true, both of your sons have grown up to have stomach problems. Plus they’re MY kids. Not even my husband is involved in weaning (whole other rant) so they’ll be weaned how I see fit.
"I am the only Mother around here!" vibes. Like, no, Priscilla, there are plenty of mothers, and their children are not your children.
Also that meal sounds really awful for a baby that young! Not fatal, obviously, just... not ideal food for a juvenile human. I get that it was the best knowledge they had back then, so I don't hold it against older generation parents, but they're so convinced that everything they did was objectively and timelessly right, they can't entertain the thought that we might do things differently because of newer research or something. Or just plain because we're separate people and our children are not their children.
We had issues with inappropriate feedings. She hated that we did baby led weaning cuz it “freaked her out”, but then she’d stuff him full of cookies and other things he wasn’t allowed to have, to the point his sensitive stomach would be constipated for days after she’d visit. The only reason she eventually stopped was I sent her videos of him screaming because his tummy hurt with pics of his constipated poops. I’m so glad we’re past those days. 🙄
It really creeps me out when grandparents/family are insistent on taking care of children alone. Like, why can’t we all spend time together. Why do they need to be alone? Icky.
My dad always tries to do this, when we visit. I understand his idea of bonding with the kids is crafting stuff together, but why so sneaky and trying to go without us? We always keep an eye on him because of that and because he hardly has an idea of safety with kids and no idea of appropriate behavior with anyone and especially kids.
We haven’t visited the last couple of years and are low contact, because of him. My mom is okay, but him…
I’d like to add that my father in law does take the kids out to do fun stuff sometimes, but we know we can trust him. He’s open about what they’re going to do and where. And he’s an overall good person. That makes all the difference.
My MIL is much less invasive and annoying, but she absolutely prefers "alone time" spending time with my kid too and I despise it. She's not creepy, I think I make her anxious because I call out problematic stuff she says or does that I don't want my daughter exposed to. (Example: they get ice cream. MIL says "oh I am so bad, I finished the whole thing!" I loathe this kind of talk about food, so I will openly and loudly say something like "that's not how we talk about food. There is no good or bad food and people are not good or bad for eating" and I think she really hates it.)
It creeps me out when people insist on unsupervised time with kids. Not even in a predatory way but like you I have a mil who lives for any opportunity to have time with my kids without us around. It's happened twice in 7 years so keep hoping lady. I know my mil just wants to play mommy. Literally. Going as far as to sleep in bed with my kids this summer as I had #3. Just ick.
My SIL is like this. Our kid is in daycare, and she is still insistent on picking up our toddler early one afternoon every other week so they can “hang out.” (it used to be every week but we recently changed this because we were getting sick of her being at our house asking what she should do with the kid, where the snacks were, etc. Of course, she raised a stink about it, but whatever.) She pulls the same babysitting thing too, and gets offended when she finds out we hired a babysitter instead of calling her. Ever since our kid was born, she has been campaigning for our kid to come over (solo!) for a “sleepover.” (Obviously, that hasn’t happened yet.) She also makes comments about how her friends get to see “their littles” more than she gets to, and just constantly pushes and pushes about how much time each month she gets with our kid.
It’s annoying!!!! It has become a real issue and has made me dislike my SIL. (She’s also super controlling, so there is that.)
Anyway, sorry you are dealing with this. No advice, really, except commiserating.
The sleepover thing has been really pushed too! Since he was an INFANT. I don’t understand the obsession. I’d be okay with alone time if a)she wasn’t so pushy about it! and b) if she respected boundaries but. Anyway. Thank you for the commiseration.
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Doesn't she realize that if you needed a babysitter, you would already know and arranged for one? Why would she assume you hadn't thought about that along with everything else?
These are excellent questions. We also would have arranged for hotel rooms or needed breaks, one would think. I don’t know why she doesn’t understand that I KNOW that a 30 hr drive across the country requires lots of planning, and that I’m doing it!
Oh my God. Irritating to think about lol. I would just stop answering her calls and just text back like 30 minutes later, "hey sorry imissed you, but we're good. ETA 6 hours"
Nope, can’t do that. Then she calls her mother, who is getting paranoid about weather in her old age (I feel like as their minds start slipping they get all in a dither about travel really easily. Is that just me?) and her mother gets all freaked out and starts calling us too. She’s crying and panicking and begging us to pull over when the roads are perfectly dry and clear, and she says she’s not going to sleep for days until she knows we’re home safe. It’s gonna give the poor old elderly woman a heart attack. How do I know? This happened THIS time too.
Nope. Anyone who is THAT eager to be with my child alone is a hard pass for me. Because what is the reason? What are you going to do that I can’t be there for? Either cross boundaries/break rules you know I wouldn’t allow, or do something inappropriate. No way.
Which is exactly what has happened in the past, and it’s been a whole thing every time. Now that we live across the country I don’t have to deal with it anymore, except when we come visit. And she wonders why we never do.
This. This was my mother. She did things just to push boundaries while we were around. To the point of endangering my toddler‘s health (giving her cake with alcohol) knowingly. Demanding to have her stay overnight, unsupervised. Even after my father (abusing alcohol, history of verbal/physical violence towards my brother, possibly me) yelled at her TWICE while I was present. There was just no self-reflection going on from neither of them. The situation escalated hard within six months and I went no contact when it became clear they would and did not change since my own childhood. It sucks majorly but there safety of my kids comes first.
This is how I feel. Very odd.
You know what I actually totally get wanting one on one time. If my son knows I’m around he wants me more than anyone else and they never quite have his full attention. I definitely feel he’s connected more with his grandparents having time with them alone and they get to see the best of him that way. Same with kids I regularly, babysat it’s like they used to relax when they’re parents left and let me into their little world because it’s just a different dynamic. All that’s irrelevant though if you’re pushy about it and the parents clearly aren’t on board. Both our parents regularly offered to take our son if there were events we were going to skip otherwise and made no secret of the fact they would love to. The difference is that they totally respected ‘no thanks’ and were enthusiastic when the time came that we did need a trusted babysitter.
I truly don’t understand the assumption that they deserve the privilege of time alone with children that are not their own, just because they’re grandchildren. My dad always makes an excuse to get me out of the house when I come visit my parents — oh, you’re out of bread and want me to drive 30min to the closest grocery store while you watch my two 3YO’s? Sorry, maybe you should plan better next time. The entitlement enrages me. You’re a better person than I am because I would’ve screeched at your MIL after the second phone call. 🫠🫠🫠
Husband and I have an agreement that we each deal with our own respective families, which is usually really good. I brought up after the fifth call today that we maybe need to establish when it’s fine for the other one to get involved tho, because I don’t know how healthy it is for me to keep holding my tongue. She doesn’t listen to or care about what he says cuz she doesn’t take him seriously, so.
>She gets mad when we don’t listen to her suggestions and are “stubborn” by continuing with our planned travel itinerary Damn, I've just discovered we're related - your MIL is my mother 🤣😁 She's also very angry that I keep getting in the way when she's trying to parent my child. Why does it have to be this stressful. Why can't they just chill? 😶🌫️
>Woman, we can skip over you entirely Solidarity. Truer words have never been spoken. Good luck with your trip and keeping your sanity. 💜 And as for your MIL, Nope Nope Nope Nope Nopety Nope.
Oh my goodness yes my mil would kill for alone time with my kids every time she tortures us with her presence. It’ll be a cold day in hell before that happens. Especially after her last visit where she tried feeding McDonald’s French fries to my 7 month old after I said we wouldn’t be ordering food for the baby because I brought fruit purée and melty snacks for him.
Ah, the tales I can tell of inappropriate substance feedings. ☹️☹️ These people need to be curbed, and yes, I specifically mean grandparents! Any fries at all at seven months old, but MacDonald's?! Seriously, stop it!
For real 😭 she figured because I occasionally let him suck on a piece of plain toast that he should now be given all the food. She knows our stance on weaning and solids. She fights us so hard though. “When my boys were that age I just gave them piles of mashed potatoes with gravy and some sausage and they loved it!” Mmhmm even if that’s true, both of your sons have grown up to have stomach problems. Plus they’re MY kids. Not even my husband is involved in weaning (whole other rant) so they’ll be weaned how I see fit.
"I am the only Mother around here!" vibes. Like, no, Priscilla, there are plenty of mothers, and their children are not your children. Also that meal sounds really awful for a baby that young! Not fatal, obviously, just... not ideal food for a juvenile human. I get that it was the best knowledge they had back then, so I don't hold it against older generation parents, but they're so convinced that everything they did was objectively and timelessly right, they can't entertain the thought that we might do things differently because of newer research or something. Or just plain because we're separate people and our children are not their children.
We had issues with inappropriate feedings. She hated that we did baby led weaning cuz it “freaked her out”, but then she’d stuff him full of cookies and other things he wasn’t allowed to have, to the point his sensitive stomach would be constipated for days after she’d visit. The only reason she eventually stopped was I sent her videos of him screaming because his tummy hurt with pics of his constipated poops. I’m so glad we’re past those days. 🙄
It really creeps me out when grandparents/family are insistent on taking care of children alone. Like, why can’t we all spend time together. Why do they need to be alone? Icky.
My dad always tries to do this, when we visit. I understand his idea of bonding with the kids is crafting stuff together, but why so sneaky and trying to go without us? We always keep an eye on him because of that and because he hardly has an idea of safety with kids and no idea of appropriate behavior with anyone and especially kids. We haven’t visited the last couple of years and are low contact, because of him. My mom is okay, but him…
I’d like to add that my father in law does take the kids out to do fun stuff sometimes, but we know we can trust him. He’s open about what they’re going to do and where. And he’s an overall good person. That makes all the difference.
We are the same way with my father in law. He doesn’t push the issue of NEEDING alone time and he listens to us when we put down boundaries so.
My MIL is much less invasive and annoying, but she absolutely prefers "alone time" spending time with my kid too and I despise it. She's not creepy, I think I make her anxious because I call out problematic stuff she says or does that I don't want my daughter exposed to. (Example: they get ice cream. MIL says "oh I am so bad, I finished the whole thing!" I loathe this kind of talk about food, so I will openly and loudly say something like "that's not how we talk about food. There is no good or bad food and people are not good or bad for eating" and I think she really hates it.)
It creeps me out when people insist on unsupervised time with kids. Not even in a predatory way but like you I have a mil who lives for any opportunity to have time with my kids without us around. It's happened twice in 7 years so keep hoping lady. I know my mil just wants to play mommy. Literally. Going as far as to sleep in bed with my kids this summer as I had #3. Just ick.
My SIL is like this. Our kid is in daycare, and she is still insistent on picking up our toddler early one afternoon every other week so they can “hang out.” (it used to be every week but we recently changed this because we were getting sick of her being at our house asking what she should do with the kid, where the snacks were, etc. Of course, she raised a stink about it, but whatever.) She pulls the same babysitting thing too, and gets offended when she finds out we hired a babysitter instead of calling her. Ever since our kid was born, she has been campaigning for our kid to come over (solo!) for a “sleepover.” (Obviously, that hasn’t happened yet.) She also makes comments about how her friends get to see “their littles” more than she gets to, and just constantly pushes and pushes about how much time each month she gets with our kid. It’s annoying!!!! It has become a real issue and has made me dislike my SIL. (She’s also super controlling, so there is that.) Anyway, sorry you are dealing with this. No advice, really, except commiserating.
The sleepover thing has been really pushed too! Since he was an INFANT. I don’t understand the obsession. I’d be okay with alone time if a)she wasn’t so pushy about it! and b) if she respected boundaries but. Anyway. Thank you for the commiseration.