Great relationship with SIL but SIL hates my mum

Sounds as if your brother is quite angry and upset about his childhood and that seems quite reasonable to me if his father was abusive and his mother minimises it. It sounds as if your mother also expects her family to share some of the ongoing drama of your dad and sympathise with her and prop her up, even if they don't see him any more. I understand why you want to help your mum, but I also understand why your brother and SIL do not and are quite cross about it.

Witnessing domestic abuse is also being exposed to abuse as a child - your brother is within his rights to feel cross about that, and to feel that your mum has inadequate boundaries - even if it is not her "fault", that doesn't mean that he cannot have a boundary.

It's sad all round. I think that all you can do is make your own choices. If it were me, I'd tell my brother and sister in law that I support them in their choice to maintain distance, even if I don't make the same decision, that I don't want to be involved myself in any drama and am going to try to stay out of it and not be involved myself whilst maintaining a separate relationship with them. I'd also make clear to my mum that I do not want to be involved in any drama or pick any sides, that I want to support her, but I understand that my brother doesn't want involvement any more and will respect that.

If you make clear that you're not interested in hearing or commenting on what each side says to the other, then it will be less upsetting for you. You're not going to mend the relationship for them.

So why then are you making this about your SIL when even your brother puts down your mum and is nasty to her?

You choose to either stabs up for your mum and push back against your brother and SIL ot prioritize your relationship with you SIL and keep quiet and continue to support your mum.

You need more therapy OP and find someone who will listen and not minimise it down to they loved you and did their best.

I suspect you are a similar age to me (mid 40s) and no that wasn’t normal growing up in the 1980s at all

i think they both sound abusive and your coping mechanism is to put it all on your Dad (who undoubtedly is incredibly abusive) and set yiur mother up as the victim you need to look after even though whilst she may have been a victim in her marriage she wasn’t with you. This is starting to make you question the whole dynamic you have created.

yiur husband isn’t helping either and who knows what your children are seeing with their grandparents

does yiur SIL have a strong relationship with her parents

This thread is really disturbing the way you minimise everything even the title of your thread is completely misleading. You need to distance yourself from your mum. This isn’t normal.

Everyone who is replying all this boood is thicker than water shit are equally as disturbing and should read all the updates before replying.

So you both have bad family’s and you both kinda down play it.

I get it, its easier for your partner to claim it’s just part of how things where back then. But it wasn’t.

Not everyone has parents who everytime they where upset where told they where the problem (too sensitive).

He thinks your dad’s psycho but not that bad… those two things cannot truly exist together. One might pretend to be nice to certain people.

This is your normal. I think it takes an outsider (or many in the case of this thread) to see it for what it is and call it for what it is.

This is the saddest thing that you've posted as her abuse of you drips off of your posts.
I was where you are years ago so I know that it's hard to see it for what it is when your still inside it but I promise you that when you leave and start to look at it from the outside with a good therapist who specialises in adult children of abusive parents you will see ot as clearly as many posters on here do

Your descriptions of your childhood are quite chilling. Do you agree with your therapist that your parents did their best? That your abusive dad loved you a lot? I'm quite surprised that a therapist would minimise your parents' abuse of you and your brother.

You don’t see it because you grew up with it.

What does your partner/husband think of your parents? When you see how his family behave in comparison to yours.

OP's mum has told OP and her brother, who both had abusive childhoods, that they were spoilt and entitled because their childhoods weren't as bad as hers. She told them that what their father was doing wasn't so bad.

OP is loyal to her mother. Too loyal in fact. Her brother and SIL have the right idea by keeping their children away from OP's mum.

Does it matter what the term for it is?
It is not acceptable to be treated this way - your DB and SIL can see that and have removed themselves and their children from the situation.

You say your mum can’t leave her abuser - in a similar way, neither can you.

Yes its a massive red flag of a narcissist.
I'm sorry but you saying that you'd cut your mem 9ff if you saw her emotionally abusing your dc is a joke when you can't even see that she's still abusing you everytime she says this to you.
Sorry to be so harsh but you need to wake up and smell the coffee so to speak. You are being abused by BOTH of your parents YOU are allowing your dc to be abused by seeing BOTH of your parents abuse you. Why are you CHOOSING to spend Christmas with your abusers and putting your own children through that. You need to cut off both of your parents to PROTECT YOUR CHILDREN and yourself.

She's your mother * not kotherm typing mistake

Here here, she's your kotherm and the fact you can tell your mother what you think about what she says about sister in law but never tells off sil about her slagging off your mother as she don't want to ruin the relationship. I wouldn't want a relationship with someone who slags off my mother. Seriously.

Imagine what she says about you behind your back.

Like pp, your loyalty lies with your mother.

Take care

I can see it from SIL point of view but I actually don't think my mum needs to be frozen out and I'm sad for my nieces.

@pnakolada - you are looking at this the wrong way. Don’t feel bad for your nieces, be happy their parents care enough about them to remove them from a very negative situation.

I don't think at present that my mum is dangerous for my children. I'm also always around when she's there anyway

Not dangerous physically but what about emotionally? The way she talks about you and your DB as spoilt and entitled, minimising your lived experiences, being a narcissist?

Also if I start kicking up a fuss about it and getting overly involved, our family will be even more broken. They don't speak to my parents. Then they'll also not speak to me ? So it will just be me and my abusive dad and mum ? This is my brother, I only have one. I don't want to lose them. Neither does my mum for that matter.

You don’t need to lose your DB or SIL - keep the relationship with them entirely separate from your DM. You do not need to fix the relationship between your DM and SIL.
I also think you need to keep your relationship with your DB and SIL to help recalibrate what a normal family relationship should be like. This is not your fault and not something you need to fix.
Your mother has made her own choices.

The thing is everytime you defend your mum and her actions/choices you are both being complicit in your mum's emotional abuse of your db and sil, you are choosing to be her flying monkey, and it's that choice that will get you cut off by them.
Just from your posts I can see exactly why they think that your mum is a narcissist because many of the things that you've described her doing are classic narcissistic behaviour right down to using flying monkeys to get what she wants ie access to your niece's.
Your need some serious therapy to get out of the FOG (Fear, Obligation and Guilt) that many children of abusive families suffer and see how badly you were treated (and still are being) by both of your parents. May I suggest that you look at the freedom programme to start with.

You remember how awful your childhood was. Don't you feel angry that you mum tells you that you and your brother were spoilt and entitled? I'm assuming that your children and your brother's children are growing up in homes with no abuse at all. Does she think that her grandchildren are also spoilt and entitled because their childhoods aren't as bad as her's was?

Have you had any therapy to discuss your abusive childhood and your parents' current behaviour? You obviously feel very sorry for your mum and you are sad that your brother and SIL won't let her have contact with their children, but I think that deep down you are really conflicted and you know that your mum's behaviour during your childhood and now is totally unreasonable as she is denying and minimising your abuse both by her but especially your dad.