To wish in laws had asked about beds before arranging visit?

[TrucksAndDinosaurs]

BIL and his partner visiting us as BIL has work sales jolly held near us and partners invited so they are coming too and being put up in hotel with all the other top sales people on the jolly. Great, we are delighted to have chance to see them - we live in tropics , they live in UK so catch ups are rare.

Then we hear via BIL that MIL wants to come too, same dates same flight. Fine, lovely, she can catch up with Ds who she's not seen since he was a baby (he's now 3). We assume MIL also staying in hotel.

It is a known fact that we don't have spare bed or spare bedroom, just our room and DS room and kitchen/sitting room space.

So as not to drip feed, DS has SN and cannot sleep in with us, nor is there room in his bedroom for an adult to sleep.

DH and I would have to give up our bedroom and sleep on sitting room floor.

Which we can do, and will have to do, obviously but FFS, cannot believe nobody has thought to let us know MIL intends staying with us or check there is a damn bed.

Further info: MIL is lovely, super-keen granny, committed Christian, keen to help, tidy, cook, take endless pictures of DS, play and read to him and be really fully involved and then talk lots about art, literature, culture etc etc when he's in bed/n/a.

I like her loads and admire her and am a bit exhausted thinking about it it's only for a week but AIBU to be a bit freaked out about having a keen, excited granny in the house all the time and nowhere to hide or sleep? She doesn't want to avail herself of the tropical tourist stuff. She just wants to be with DS and her family. All the time she is here.

I have very little left to give after full day being SAHM to DS who has a huge schedule of early intervention therapy going on right now and by 8pm I am ready for wine and then bed, I can barely talk. I sleep very badly. I go to bed before 10pm. I need space and silence and time to exercise to cope and be a good parent to DS (and wife to DH). Otherwise I'm afraid to say I can't cope very well.

I am also unfortunately an anxious introvert who hates having house guests who want to stay in house all the time and talk and tidy and be always around.

All this and BIL and partner hanging out with us too and wanting dinner out and home cooked meals and holiday fun and nights out! DH and I are exhausted and have a night out about 6x year. We come home by 11pm.

Help me get perspective on this: am doing it for DH and his family's sake and because DS deserves to get to know his grandmother and vice versa.

But none of them have given a thought to our day to day lifestyle looking after small child with SN, single income, DH working huge hours and me SAHM.

They see the lovely location and the chance to have a super holiday and family catch up.

They didn't even check re sleeping arrangements - they just assumed.

AiBu to feel frustrated and annoyed?

Posted here not SN because kind of needed to see what expectations and reactions of NT families are: as BIL MIL all only have that experience and expectation. Meanwhile I only know parenting this way with this child so I forget/have no idea what's normal and reasonable for other families.

I did flag SN in first post and yes, the SN boards here are amazing.

I sort of wanted to know if people who didn't experience or could get it or get past their usual expectations of family visits. I can try and infer from that whether BIL will think we are U and whether he might be able to adjust expectations.

Because I have no idea what normal life is like really anymore. I just do day to day life here and I'm away from my family and friends and I forget what people do.

So it helped to post it here.

Fair enough.
I hope your BIL and MIL know a bit more about your situation already than we did. I'm sure they don't think you should have been hosting them, especially after your conversation with MIL. And when they see you and your family their understanding will be even greater. Great ideas on here by earlier posters about preparing them a little in advance for what they will find.
Best of luck for the visit and the future. Your son is lucky to have you looking out for him.

Well, I will be the second to hold my hands up and say that, in light of all your further posts, I can now see that 'normal' standards or expectations of hospitality cannot apply to you. You say you were looking for a gauge of a NT child's family to this situation: making slight allowances, that is what I was giving you. However, now that I know that the issues aren't slight, my views are not relevant, applicable or appropriate for your day-to-day.

I also use MN as gauge for 'mainstream' views on things that are atypical in my circumstances. I totally understand.

I hope you took no offense from the strength of my opinions, none was ever intended. And I hope that given you posted with a specific purpose in mind, you took my posts as you wanted to receive them.

Honestly, now, I think that (as it so very, very often is) communication is the key. This visit will be a lesson learned for all, from the sounds of things.

I hope you do manage to have some moments of enjoyment and don't just have to endure it all. Good luck, OP.

Hopefully MIL will understand more when she has seen life as you live it, and a therapy session. I don't have much direct experience of significant SN (though a lot with high functioning ASD) but have learnt an awful lot from posts on MN and talking to people who do have direct experience, and it has utterly changed my perceptions. I should expect this would happen with MIL.

Good luck, and don't forget you can vent here whilst she visits - assuming you get the chance!

Glad you found a solution OP. It's definitely the best one.

I also live overseas (not too far from you I think). I have NT children and still put all visitors in hotel down the road when they stay. I get all the stuff about hospitality, but surely the overriding principle is to ensure that your guests have as good a time as possible. I know that my guests will have a more relaxing time if they're not being woken up by toddlers at 6am, enduring my morning battle with DS over breakfast/ getting dressed, and can escape to their hotel for a quiet few hrs after dinner if they want to. No-one has to sleep on an air bed or on the sofa.

We used to have people stay with us in Dubai when we had a lot of space (just DH and I rattling around in a 4 bed/3 bath apartment), and even when we were first here with just DS, mum did stay with us (although if Mum and dad came they'd hotel it). However, when we had DD and she was a terrible sleeper, I just decided that although in theory, we could move her in with us for 2 weeks, risk losing the 5 hr blocks we'd finally established, and stagger thru mum's visit in a fog of exhaustion, it would be better if she decamped a 10 min walk down the road to a hotel.

Best. Decision. Ever.

It just takes down the intensity of the visit an unbelievable amount, in a good way. Gives you early mornings to yourself, which is a godsend. Just means you start the day feeling in control of it all which you don't if you're deflating air beds and the bathroom's never free.

In my part of Asia, the economics of living space are just different to anywhere else in the world from what I can see. Rents are so high that it's cheaper to put all visitors up in the Ritz Carlton than to get a spare bedroom. No brainer.

Yes, I'm sure you'd (literally) have survived the week, but hotel for MIL means that you will now hopefully have an enjoyable week.

Best of luck!

I'm with you OP. I've got NT children but dd2 doesn't like changes in her routine. We live in a desirable place to visit and have had lots of my family just assuming we'll budge up and make space and time. Which we do, as much as possible. But then dd2 starts to want her own room and her meals on time and a bit of downtime and she starts to kick off and then guests start saying "she screams a lot, doesn't she?" Or "why is she so grumpy?" And it's all I can do not to hiss "she'll be fine ONCE YOUVE GONE."

2 years ago 4 family members descended at once and then got pissy when we made them book a hotel for one week of their 10 day visit. They also made many comments about DC behavior. Never again.

Well handled, OP, very glad it's worked out in a manageable way. Really hope it goes smoothly.