MiL has been here 60mins...

[whatatod0]

Oh god. parents-in-law have been here 1 hour into a 7 day visit. They are already annoying me.
MIL likes to help/take over my kitchen and she doesn't listen when I tell her to go and sit down (nicely). If I give her a job to do she just gets in my way and takes forever to do it.
I want to run away for the week.

And forgot to add..DH was also her major life project no.1. High achiever with his life mapped out from the time he could hold an abacus. Luckily he had it in him to escape to the other side of the world

..sorry posted too soon.

...They are all very dependent on their parents (all in their 40s). If I had realised it sooner I would have steered well clear of DH.

I find her argumentative and manipulative. 'In my day we did xyz' Her day was over forty years ago and from all accounts she was quick to undermine her children growing up. I try to keep the conversation polite and nod away but she persists in going on about something basically arguing with me even though I do not respond. It is as if she can't bear not getting her way.

Not sure if I'm comforted or frankly appalled that we are so far from alone, WildRose and Mumto2!

"And DD nearly started WWIII by replying to that with 'My mum says that good manners mean making other people feel comfortable rather than criticising them all the time."

Your dd is spot-on, @ATailofTwoKitties!

My first husband's mum died when he was 18 so I only knew her for a few years. Second husband's mum is lovely and we see her about once a week. She's not very mobile so she doesn't come here. All our kids are grown up so there's no issues with that. Perfect family!
I'm also a mother in law and I get on
great with my son in law. I look after their little boy a lot, changed my hours at work to help them when my daughter was at uni so I could have the little one and even did their housework (my daughter asked me to, I didn't just do it!) And I used to let their dog out for them and puppy sit him for them when they first got him.
I tend not to see them when looking after the little one is not on the agenda, it tends to be I see them briefly when they drop him off or pick him up but we often get together for family occasions. I have my own time, they have theirs and it works fine. If I need them for something they're always there for us and vice versa. Perhaps I should hire myself out to the people who have too much/ not enough of the in laws!

God, it's such a tricky relationship isn't it.

I am lucky in the sense that my MIL is a really kind, good person who I think genuinely loves me. But that doesn't stop her from driving me insane when she comes to stay. She talks incessantly. She uses 1000 words where 10 would suffice and takes half an hour to tell the simplest story. She has never worked and has spent her whole life bringing up her two boys so has no comprehension of what life as a working wife and mum is like (especially with a demanding job). She is unbelievably fussy, especially about eating, so choosing what or where to eat with her is always an massive drama. She is an incredible neat freak (she criticises the state of my house constantly but I actually think she doesn't do it deliberately - it's totally subconscious!) she takes forever to get ready to go anywhere and has no concept of the word 'hurry'.

God it felt good to get that out!

DD nearly started WWIII by replying to that with 'My mum says that good manners mean making other people feel comfortable rather than criticising them all the time.

Your DD rocks.

Incessant talking is so draining, especially combined with not listening. It's my DM that is the culprit in our case. I can cope over a 3 hour lunch, but when she stays, or went we took her to a villa on holiday it gets unbearable. The problem is, it's rarely conversation, my mum loves her "eccentric character" reputation and she favours monologues, set pieces that we have literally heard scores of times, they are polished and performed with identical intonation and gestures. She can't do silence. We are not morning people so generally enjoy the first hot drink of the day in companiable silence, perhaps reading. On our villa holiday I hear mum asking DH "Are you not a morning person either? Oh don't worry, I won't talk to you, I know there's nothing more annoying ..... and literally continued without pause, until I came out of the bathroom and rescued him 15 minutes later to be talked at myself.
Similarly we work full time and while there was plenty of chat, it was bliss to also have the luxury of time to read around the pool. Mum brought a book that she never touched, despite being a "great reader" and a book of Telegraph Crosswords, but on seeing us laid around reading after lunch or on returning from an outing, she would stand by us and say "Oh! This is the READING corner is it? Are we all READING?" to which one of us would rather awkwardly respond with the self-evident fact that we were in fact reading but it wasn't compulsory, she would just continue to fire random questions or observations until we gave up "Don't you think those trees look just like pom-poms, if you half close your eyes, Drizzle! Those trees, half-close your eyes and look at them, don't they look like Pom-poms? Etc.

Another family came with us and were in a nearby villa, we'd drop around each other's villa fairly often and people would come and go, if anyone of us but mum joined a group around a table, we'd just join and pick up the conversation naturally or not, but it became really obvious that mum did a Lady Catherine de Bourgh every time, literally announcing "It's me! I'm here! What you taking about? And then taking over which was made even more awkward because she hadn't listened. The table would have no choice but to fall silent as she monologued on caves or the first time SHE did x. I think because non-family were involved, I noticed it more than I had previously because I saw it through their eyes.
It's awful because I feel bad for hating it, she only craves socialbility, but I just wish she didn't see conversation as a competitive sport.

Incessant talking is so draining, especially combined with not listening yes that's probably the worst bit about my MIL.

I've tried reading a book before and every time I looked down to try reading again she would talk at me. Always LOUDLY. I couldn't get past the first paragraph. She was watching TV so there was something to occupy her but no, she wanted to keep talking at me. There's never any substance to what she says - usually just the weather. What it's like now, what its been like, what its going to be like. Followed by "do you know what I mean?". Then if met with silence carries on anyway. Even carries on even louder if I leave the room.

In fairness she isn't a nasty person. Just very very different to me. Different values, different experience of work, families, different interests. I'm sure she would rather have a different DIL, one she gets on with. And that's fine. We simply just don't have anything in common apart from DH and my DCs.

at TinselTwins' MIL's horror of the steamer. Fun night for all the family there.

FWIW, I don't think TT's MIL is demented as another poster suggested, and I actually know what she meant!

All that stuff about how she only boiled and she didn't know how many if it was being steamed, right? She means that she usually prepares the spuds in relation to how full her usual saucepan looks, not by looking at the pile of potatoes in isolation.

So for five people, she might know, for example, that the saucepan needs to only have half an inch of room from the top at the sides, and to keep going until it does.

But she didn't know how to gauge the dimensions of the steamer, because they're generally quite a different shape to a saucepan.

She's probably evolved her measures through years of trial and error and never thought about it before, so she didn't get what you meant about just preparing the same amount as she usually would, which is where the wails of "but I've never used that before" come in. She didn't know how high five people's roast potatoes looked in Tinsel's steamer, and she assumes everyone does it her way!

My MIL moved in with us for 4 months after a fall. I really loved it and missed her when she went home.

DD is indeed mostly awesome, but not a tactful lass when faced with her grandmother.

I'm still scarred from the Battle of the Little Finger Position When Drinking.

DH shows lingering signs of this bullshittery too, and will suddenly rouse himself to roar at unthinking offspring who start wielding their knives incorrectly that 'they have no idea how to use cutlery in public!'

Which is, obviously, the main point of any meal, rather than, say, appreciating your food, and chatting to people about their day. Sighhhh.

(I have checked, by the way, that all three teens do know how to hold a knife and fork. Yes they do, and they don't lick their plates often or chomp with their mouths open. That'll do.)

ok, so I've come home from work to find dh out, and mil serving up a fried egg for lunch. It 3.40pm. My 15yr ds must be famished!!

Ha! Ooohh, the joy of mealtimes.

MIL a few weeks ago: "You should feed him more vegetables. He eats too much bad food."

She has virtually no idea what he eats since she lives over an hour away has seen him so far about five times this year, but hey ho. Then, we visited her about a week or two ago, and stayed for dinner. At 4:30pm, about an hour before the food was to be served...

MIL to DS: "Do you want a packet of Quavers?"
Me:
DS: "YEEEES!"

He naturally scoffs the first pack, and by pure coincidence I'm sure, as I'm out of the room, she offers him another, which he also finishes at about 5pm. Roll on 5:30pm, when she dishes up boiled rice (he loves this usually) with a sort of tomato stock on it (he hates tomatoes), cucumber (hates this), and steak (hates this). I explained all the ingredients she was cooking that he wouldn't like but regardless, MIL puts a giant plateful in front of him, and you will be utterly shocked to know that he had no interest in any of it.

MIL to me, even though my OH does all the cooking in our house: "This is because you feed him too much bad food. You've spoiled him."

Fucking hilarious.

Your 15 year-old DS is incapable of getting himself something to eat..???

Seams - apparently 15yr old was continuously told lunch was "on the way" so he didn't want to be rude!!!

Oh heaven's. All these posts about mils has scared me to death. I am one with son 500 miles away. When I visit I cook, clean, do washing, ironing, look after he now 6, take him out on holidays and weekends. I often stay for two weeks. Last time they were away on holiday, took he to school etc, cleaned range cooker, inside and outside of Windows. You have me really worried, do I take over-should I stop and perhaps just load the dishwasher? I feel sick, I am on my way now for two weeks!

I think it was floraeasy a few pages back who wrote a list of all the nice things she did for her MIL only to have PA bitching from her when there were no witnesses...

Thank goodness someone understands!

Years I had it... DH never believing me, until the wedding incident when FIL was drunk and didn't realise there were witnesses.

I went NC for the best part of a year, but at DH request I started seeing them again.

Then I had kids and in the post- natal exhaustion I ended up being horribly bullied by both of them. DH lives in FOG. He knows what they are and how they treat him, but rewrites it so that aren't that bad...

I'm NC, he's now LC. It's much better.

There are nice MIL/ PIL who you'd want to spend time with, but there again some just aren't that.

To the pp who mentioned the dishwasher drama, I have this with both DM and MIL!

Not that they interfere with how I do things but neither will use a dishwasher. PIL have one and refuse to use it and just rinse things one by one from what I can tell. My DM will not even hear the word dishwasher in the house! It's a sore subject; my DSF wanted one years ago and she would not consider it as apparently they are wasteful and lazy.

Is this a generational thing? I really cannot understand why you would choose to wash up when you don't have to. I mean, they wouldn't insist on washing all their clothes by hand and I don't really see how that's different.

For the record, my MIL is lovely and would never criticise my house or rearrange my drawers!

She does martyr herself slightly though I think, she won't let anyone help her ever and is constantly washing everything in sight!

manic I think your best to options are to listen to the signals that are being given off - DIL may be dropping hints. If you don't see anything obvious, or you're worried you're not "hearing" them, you could just ask really gently and openly, "You know, I was chatting with friends and this topic of overbearing MILs came up and tbh, they listed some of the things that drive them mad, and I'm suddenly quite worried that maybe I'm the same. Am I getting the balance right?" You can only hope that they answer honestly at this point, and again be switched on for anything that they might be trying to say in a way that doesn't give offence.

The fact that this even worries you suggests at the very least that you're introspective enough to be assessing your relationships with others, and that you'd be open to adjusting if you're off kilter. It's the ones who go straight on the defensive of "poor me, I can't do anything right, I'm always the bad guy, you DILs don't want anything from us unless it's money and free childcare" that largely convince me they're probably nightmares who have absolutely no intention of trying to adjust or compromise.

I think it's important to recognise that sometimes nightmare MILs are great DGMs, and vice versa. (And sometimes they nightmares or great at both.) My MIL has finally started to turn into a good DGM now that she's stopped trying to be DS's mother, but her MILing is beyond hopeless. I think that for us, the problems stem from a very different culture, combined with the fact that for the fifteen years before DS arrived, MIL spent the entire time constructing an elaborate picture in her mind of how it was all going to be for her, which was basically a replay of how it was for her and her DM/MIL. Basically she was going to be the absolute matriarch in sole charge of her adoring DGS, who dispensed her wisdom upon us all, and whenever I did appear, it was merely to do as she instructed, thank her profusely, and vanish again. Had I known she was imagining this future I would have nipped it in the bud at the get-go, but there you go. It's had fifteen years to cement itself so unsurprisingly, it has been so hard for her to let that dream go and adjust to the very different reality, in which I expect me and OH to be in charge of my DS. Unfortunately she was so overbearing in trying to make this dream happen with her DGS in the first two years that as soon as he could move, he started to actively avoid her. It was very hard for her, and there were a lot of tears, but finally, she's getting it. Now, rather than treating him like a little performing monkey and a trophy to show off to her friends, she's actually treating him like a person with his own feelings and wants. For the first time he is starting to ask after her and wants to spend time in her company.

But, she has made almost no progress in how to be a good MIL. She still believes that she is the matriarch and I should defer to her. Unsurprisingly, I categorically don't believe that. Where she has good advice I'll take it but largely her views on childcare are forty years out of date and heavily coloured by an extremely patriarchal culture, so, er, no ta. Inevitably, it causes huge amounts of friction because when I give her direct instructions about DS, she treats them as requests that she's entirely welcome to ignore. I tell her he isn't eating solids till 6 months. She tries to feed him solids at 4 months. I say sliced grapes. She gives him whole. I say no more chocolate because he's only one. She brings over four giant boxes of chocolate for him at Christmas. I say no big, loud toys for him. She buys him a massive indoor trampoline and a noisy massive ride-on zebra. And so on. So, she's getting the DGM thing to an extent, but the MILing is going to be a loooooong, hard slog.

I think I write too much.

It's cathartic, FTSOF, isn't it? And cheaper than therapy.

WHy are you on this thread derxa? To bash at people bashing their mils?