Dreading becoming a hated MIL

[FlatOnTheHill]

I have read so many MIL threads on MN and many of the attacks on MILs are for such petty, ridiculous and unnecessary reasons it makes for uncomfortable reading.
Does anyone else dread the thought of their DS's one day marrying a controlling MIL hater.

I'm really looking forward to becoming a granny!

I'd be gutted is ds married and had dc with a woman who wouldn't let me vist for 2 weeks after the birth, moaned about me wanting to hold my grandchildren ect ect. I like a pp has said will be living my life and travelling to all the places I'd love to go but couldn't as I had dc so young. I'm really looking forward to being selfish when my dc leave home.

MN seems like a parallel universe compared to my life where school mums regularly have their parents or pil babysitting weekends, there are always grandparents on the school run, my friends regularly drop their dc off to spend the weekend with granny and I can do the same whenever I want to.

On MN no one spends a night away from their dc till they go on school camp! (and I remember the bonkers thread where the mum drove and stayed in a b&b near the school camp)

I would hope that most reasonable people would realise that they are just trying to be nice and instead of moaning about it they could just speak to MIL or ask their husband to instead of making it into a big deal.

I try to ask myself when MIL does something to annoy me if I would care if it was my own mum, and half the time if I'm honest I probably wouldn't. I remember MIL making DD a cake and DD liking MIL's cake more than she liked mine and it pissed me off. I soon realised that I was being unreasonable because if it was my mum I would have found it funny. So that's how I can tell if I'm being unreasonable.

As I said its some threads ive read in the past for example whereby a MIL bought grandchild its first ever Advent Calendar and the DIL was fuming as she wanted to buy the childs first Advent . Did it really matter? That sort of petty thing

The thing is, if you are aware that your DIL doesn't want you to buy her kid an advent calendar because she wants to buy the first one (and really, why the hell not, it's her baby) and you do it anyway, then you are, indeed, being a complete arse. If you are not aware and then the DIL goes mental at you, then it's quite likely you weren't listening or have previously overstepped boundaries in some fairly fundamental way. It really is the straw/camel thing a lot of the time. I don't see a lot of massively unreasonable DIL behaviour in the threads I read, tbh, though obviously there is some.

I'll tell you what I really fucking hate about my PILs, shall I? No? Oh, well, I'm going to do it anyway. When my DD was small, I often told PILs that I did not want them to feed her too much chocolate/sweet stuff when she went out with them for the day. The odd chocolate button, absolutely OK. Three packs of chocolate buttons a day, really not OK. They saw her once a week so it wasn't an irregular thing. DD used to tell me what they'd given her - often several large chocolate bars over the course of a few hours. I asked them for three or four years not to do it. They ignored me mostly and told DD not to tell me (she did anyway).

Fast forward a few years and their daughter has a little boy. He is now three. I decide to get him an Easter egg as DD has been given tons of giant inappropriate Easter eggs over the years by PIL and SIL so I assumed it was the done thing in their family. "Oh no" they say, "Little boy never eats chocolate, it's so bad for his teeth and health".

Fine. So your daughter's rules are OK but mine are not? In that case, fuck off the lot of you.

The first Xmas after I married DH, his mother put 'to my new Daughter' on my Xmas presents.

She has no daughters and I think she thought we'd have a Mum/daughter relationship.

Unfortunately, I didn't see it the same way. We've had a strained relationship ever since.

"Nice" is subjective unfortunately. It doesn't always work. I never considered it would happen to me but when your DIL doesn't like you - you lose your Son too. C'est la vie

Oh and then DD had to have three teeth out under GA when she was five because she had tooth decay. As she'd had practically no sugar at all while with me, I'm really hoping PILs felt at least a little guilty but they probably still think I was being unreasonable because they Just Don't Listen To Me Ever. So I have given up on them ever being reasonable and don't trust them with my child.

Why didn't you see it that way Horse?

SaucyJack
My DS always had advent calendars coming out of his earholes. Both sets grandparents, myself and friends. Kitchen looked like an art gallery at christmas.
DS grandparents on fathers side bought him his first Clarks shoes. I was bloody grateful. All this 'first' mallarky is a control 'thing'.
Its basically saying "im in charge and you have to pass it by me first".
That is bloody sad to think that a parent could be so consumed by jealousy and control of a child's grandparents love and giving. I have never come across this or heard of it before until seeing it on MN

Totally missing the point but isn't it the role of the Godmother to buy the advent calendar?

ambroxide

That would piss me off mightily.

Horsemad what a sad post.

Horsemad - I've had this issue too. I'm married to a man who's one of two boys and his mother had big expectations of what having a daughter would be like - none of which had any basis in reality of course. When I pitched up, i was SUCH a disappointment. She's never been terribly interested in finding out what I'm really like..

Industrial
Do You mean Grandmother?
What do you mean (not the role)
I take it you are joking? Anyone can buy a kid an advent calendar. If a parent gets offended by that the. I would say they have serious issues.
(Different for religious reasons of course)
Please tell me your comment was a joke

I saw a beautiful baby book so brought it for my pregnant dil.

In conversation I asked her if she had one and a friend had allready got her one.

I didn't cry.

So it's in the wardrobe for the next family baby.

No dramas.

So anyone who wants to choose their own child's shoes is a jealous control freak. Oookay then.

YANBU btw. I think you're right to be concerned about becoming a nightmare MIL.

Well I'll be sad if I'm the most significant relationship in my son's life in say 10 years time. I'll be absolutely thrilled when/if he meets someone.

But there do seem to be some mumsnetters who think it's fine for women to stay close to their mums but nor for men. And they scare me,

I kind of understand the Advent calendar thing if it's something that the GP considers to be a Very Special Thing... so then they go and do it themselves. My MIL can be a bit like that - she'll think "Oh, feeding him his first bits of food is a special thing, I'll make sure I do it" or "taking her to see Santa is really special; I'll get in there first with it". She never stops to think "if it's so special, maybe I should let DS and DIL do it".

Personally, I wouldn't care about the Advent calendar or the Santa visit in and of themselves (though it did piss me off when she started scooping food into DC1), but I'd feel a bit miffed that she wanted all the " special experiences" for herself. My mum, on the other hand, if she thought there was something special happening (eg if she got very excited about Advent calendars) would first say to us "I saw Advent calendars in the shop. Are you getting the DCs some? If not, I'd love to buy them for them". Or " I see X has a great Santa grotto this year. If you're looking to take the DCs, that might be worth considering ".

My MIL has, amongst other things: fed DC1 chocolate at 4 months; fed DC1 her first food; written all their Santa letters, posted them, and then sent them replies; does a "Santa sack" for each of them each year, leaving us to explain why Santa comes to our house and Nanny X's house, but not Nanny Y's; and produced her own party bags at one of their birthday parties because she thought I wouldn't do "proper" ones (I'd said I wasn't planning on anything other than a slice of cake in them, as that's what happens in my circle of friends, by mutual agreement, but MIL turned up with plastic crap to hand out).

Don't do stuff like that and you'll be fine!

Sounds like she was just being nice Horsemad. Sad that you reacted like that.

Of course anyone can buy a kid an advent calendar. It doesn't mean the child's parents have to let them have it.

I would have been mightily offended if my PILs had bought my child a chocolate advent calendar at any time due to the problem of them ignoring my perfectly reasonable wishes about them not feeding her chocolate all the bloody time. And I would not have let DD have it.

SaucyJack
weird

My MIL died many years ago from cancer.I loved her. I first met her when I was 17 and had gone to stay with her and her husband and my then boyfriend.
She bought me so many Christmas presents I couldn't believe it.
We eventually married and had 2 children, who stayed with them frequently. She never interfered, just once offered advice, which I took.
Just before she died, she said I was the daughter she never had.
I still miss her.

FlatontheHill - then you're in a Scenario 2 advent calendar situation - see my previous post - and, as such, you can't understand the perspective of those in a 3 or 4. It's easy to be dismissive when you haven't had difficulties.

Where GPs are genuinely loving and supportive, they take the trouble to find out how they can be helpful, including what would be useful for them to buy. Problems can arise when GPs are constantly raining gifts down on the children without consulting the parents. It can be quite undermining - I bet ambroxide's PILS complained that she was being 'controlling' about not liking her child to have sweets - but look what it led to.

OP, I cannot be bothered to read the full thread (sorry and sorry if this has already been brought up) but the thread which you are basing this worry on was about a great deal more than that advent calendar. If it's the one I'm thinking about. It wasn't about that gift at all really; the DIL had told the MIL she was really looking forward to buying her brand new baby an advent calendar and a stocking. The MIL turned up with an advent calendar and a stocking straight afterwards.

If you read that as a DIL having a petty, ridiculous problem, you are petty and ridiculous...and well on the way to being a disliked MIL, yes.

Horsemsd
Did your strained relationship come from the "daughter" comment on the present? Or did you not get along anyway.

Ozy
Thats a lovely story

Anyway, you can't do anything about it other than gripe on MN, so why not pin a smile on and plan to be pleasant when your poor son brings some (probably well-intentioned) girl home, rather than festering about it in anticipation for years. I devoutly hope my DD never meets your son.