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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

AIBU or are my in-laws?

138 replies

BluePhone · 25/10/2010 18:26

My in-laws have a house with several bedrooms. We are due to go there for Christmas this year.

SIL and BIL are going too, with their 3 children. We have 2 children, a son, who will be sharing rooms with SIL 2 eldest, and a daughter, aged 1.

The gripe I have is thus. The inlaws want us to share our room (a double room with a double bed, and not a lot of room for anything else, but room for a cot) with our 1 year old daughter.

This would be fine if they didn't have a spare room to put her in, but they do. They have a spare room with a single bed, and room for a travel cot, and they will not agree to let us use it.

They have come up with some fairly weak excuses as to why we cannot use it, like "oh its too near the bathroom" etc etc. There is no solid, decent reason why we can't use the room. We went round and round in circles with them last time and they kept evading us.

The reason we dont want to share a room with our 1 year old is that she is a noisy sleeper and easily destracted. We are likely to wake her, and she us. If we are awake, we are both awake, and she just sleeps a lot better in a room of her own.

I would not expect them to magic up a room that doesn't exist, but as there is one, I am miffed at them not allowing us to use it.

I am willing to "try" 1 night of sharing with her to see how it goes. But if it goes badly, is it worth really pushing the issue of putting her in the spare room so we can get decent sleep over what is the last few days of annual leave my DH has and the first decent break away we have had this year since May? Assuming nobody is using the room?

Do you think its worth making an issue of, or having 5 nights of terrible sleep when there is a perfectly good room there that could be used?

OP posts:
LookToWindward · 26/10/2010 20:47

It's their fucking house. They are under no obligation to offer any kind of reasoning as to why they don't want you to have the room. They have made an offer which you either accept or decline.

Presumably if they were staying at your home you would expect them to respect your wishes without demanding an in-depth explanation as to their reasoning?

You sound like an absolute charm.

Appletrees · 26/10/2010 21:34

Windward: they're going to please the in-laws. The in-laws want them. It's her life, her sleep, her holiday: so if the in-laws want them, they need to be hospitable. This isn't hospitable behaviour. So if you're not being hospitable, you can't complain if people don't want to stay long. Or visit at all.

LookToWindward · 26/10/2010 21:42

Then don't go?

I'm sorry but if someone is putting me up I accept their rules / requests.

She has enquired about the other room and been informed that it isn't available. It isn't her place to question that.

If she doesn't like it then don't go.

Can you imagine the response this would have got if someone had posted that their in-laws were being parky about the sleeping arrangements when invited to an mnetters home?

This is - at the very least - the height of rudeness not to mention extremely arrogant.

One of my friends has a "spare" room that actually belonged to her now departed sister - if I were to stay and were pointed to a particular room I wouldn't question as to why I can't have the nice double room down the hall and I certainly wouldn't demand an explanation as to why.

Just to repeat myself - it's their fucking house.

KT1324 · 26/10/2010 21:49

I think you should go get really drunk every night and crash out on the sofa and leave DH to look after DC and cope with his parens too :-)

Appletrees · 26/10/2010 22:00

That's what she's saying: she'll leave early. And everyone including you is saying that's not unreasonable.

As the only one using fuck on this pretty measured thread it doesn't hugely behove you to start talking about the height of rudeness.

LookToWindward · 26/10/2010 22:10

If were not the fact that the OP concerns a little one then the OP would have been chased off long ago.

I am continually amazed at the myopic view that sometimes crops up on Mumsnet; completely unreasonable behaviour that is suddenly excused when a child is involved.

Perhaps I'm getting grumpy in my old age.

KT1324 · 26/10/2010 22:13

well said Appletrees

Lets remember after all that this is DH parents we are talking about. If my parents refused to let me use a room I would want to know why and the DH should ask his parents why not.

wayoftheworld · 26/10/2010 22:22

I can not quite see my DH questioning his mother! But than it could be just me...Hmm

piscesmoon · 26/10/2010 22:36

Maybe they just think that she will be less likely to disturb everyone else if she is in with you.

tearinghairout · 26/10/2010 22:53

Could it be something to do with the actual hard work of making up another bed? So if DD sleeps in a travel cot with you, that's one less bed to make up?

I only ask because we'd been sleeping at MILs house for about 10 years when she made some comment about us not doing the actual making/stripping the beds. So, now, after a 4-hour drive I have three beds to make up Smile and then I strip them before we leave.

TorturesInAHalfHell · 27/10/2010 06:58

But the OP just wants to put her daughter, in the travel cot, in the spare room. Not use the bed.

piscesmoon · 27/10/2010 07:53

I bet that she knows if she is in with you then you will deal with her if she wakes, but that you might not hear her if she is on her own.

ZacharyQuack · 27/10/2010 09:19

Do you have a baby monitor, to negate any "you won't hear her if she's in a different room" nonsense?

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