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AIBU?

To put the fear of God into MIL by politely threatening not to visit as often?

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Mybiggoldbag · 04/01/2017 10:05

DH comes from a country in the Far East and the PILS still live there. It is MIL's constant lament that DH did not marry a woman from his country and therefore return to the fold, when really DH was living in the U.K. when I met him and would still be regardless of if we had met or not.

Because MIL always gets upset that DH and our DC live away from her, we visit as much as we can and we stay for quite a long time (between 2-4 months a year.) The DC are 2yo and 6mo so we are not bound by school yet and DH and I both work for ourselves. PILs flat is medium sized two bedroom on a fifth floor in a city. It is very child unfriendly with lots of little ornaments, marble floors, precious China and no space to run.

DH's brother visits far less often with his DC. Maybe for one week in the summer. As a result, PILs cling to every word he says, are endlessly grateful for tiny gestures or phone calls and idealise his life - you get the picture.

Anyway I have been driven really mad this visit (we have been here 3.5 weeks now, living in the same flat with PILs.) DD who is 2 has developed some problems with sleeping. Some would say because we have changed her environment so much she is feeling unsettled and because this flat is not conducive to children. Every evening it is a battle to get her into bed - we can start bedtime at 7pm and she will still not be in bed until gone 12 midnight or later. She also wakes up in the night and cries, waking everyone up. Last night was the worst - we were up all night with her in our room, where she was refusing to sleep, even in our bed. I am also BF-ing 6mo who will also cry a lot in the early morning.

Every time this happens, PILs start saying things like "oh you're making her/them cry again." And "it is never like this with your brother's children. They always just go straight to bed." And the worst - "you don't know how to raise children."

We have been lectured over the last 48 hours by PILs about what bad parents we are. MIL has told us we are on our phones too much and not paying attention to the DC (we really aren't compared to most, but to her generation it probably seems excessive.) She has said we don't have a routine (we do, but environmental factors here, plus 6 of us squashed in this 2 bedroom flat make it hard to implement.) She has (again) told us how hard she had it when DH and his brother were small. Much, much worse than me, apparently. That she never took a break, she was completely alone. And here we are not even able to get our 2yo into bed when she was building fires and skinning rabbits etc. Always the comparisons with DH's brother and DH's brothers children keep cropping up too.

DH is being v reasonable with her, politely disagreeing, reassuring her we have a routine, that we'll look less at our phones, listening to her stories of the long cold nights she spent alone with two boys with only scratchy cardigans she knitted herself to keep them warm (FIL was away a lot and they were very poor.)

AIBU to tell her that we are obviously causing them too much disturbance and we will reduce our visits to just a week in the summer, like DH's brother and his children? I want her to realise that she has to take the rough with the smooth if she wants us here. And that she should not let the fact we lay ourselves bare to her by uprooting our lives and staying with them for several months a year, mean that she has a right to criticise and judge?

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sonjadog · 04/01/2017 10:09

I think you need to rent somewhere nearby for your stay, or cut them down drastically. Two months is far too long to stay with someone in such cramped conditions. I'm not surprised you are getting on each other's nerves.