to phone MIL and tell her her behaviour is not acceptable

[tomatoesarered]

I want to tell her that each time she phones DH with her negativity and guilt trips she upsets him and ultimately me and the dc for at least a day. I want her to know that her attention seeking and self absorption just makes us hate her. DH has just gone out and I am so close to ringing her.

Block her and only take her calls one day a week

If you do she'll ring him to complain. Resist.

Ringing her will only feed her.

Silence is better.

Don't. It's between your DH and her - if it bothers him, he needs to sort it out.

Not enough info really.

Stay out of it.

Don't ring her without discussing it with your DH tempting as it might be.

If you ring her then you are the bad guy and she's the victim. She's the one who was minding her own business, watching TV or whatever, and you're the nasty witch who rang up and gave her a mouthful of abuse for no reason whatsoever. I know this because my own MIL is a similar sort of person, we're NC and the way she tells it is that she's done nothing wrong because - to her warped view of the situation - she hasn't done anything wrong.

The best course of action is to quietly withdraw. Don't seek her out, don't go looking for her. If she's bothered then she'll make the effort to keep in touch, if she doesn't then no loss.

I would resist. His mum, his problem to deal with, although I get that you have to deal with the negativity fall out. You phoning will make you feel better for a while, give her "woe is me" attitude a massive boost, and ultimately make things tricky between you and your husband.

Bear frills got it spot on.

As tough as it is your DH needs to deal with his DM and not push it on to you.

If your MIL is upsetting your DH so much then he needs to tell her or limit the situations where she can upset him. It is crap that it ends up affecting all of you so I can understand why you'd want to tackle it but it'll just make it worse.

You need to ask him to change how he reacts/deals with his mum because it's his subsequent mood affecting you guys and he, in turn, needs to deal with his mum whose causing his mood IYSWIM.

If you and your husband know that her phone calls have this effect on him, then he needs to be proactive - neither of you can change her, all you can do is limit the impact she has on your lives by ignoring her calls, setting a time limit on how long you can speak to her for or just gradually leaving it longer and longer in between speaking until you have nothing to do with her at all!

It might be better to discuss this with your DH and help support him/build him up to the point where he can defend himself.

Either that or get him to recognise the impact on you all and work to mitigate it. It's really not on that everyone should suffer one day out of seven.