A little bit of background:
DM has helped with some childcare over the years. This has been a help, to a degree, but often more of a hindrance re her overstepping boundaries. The main reason she did it was for ‘alone time’ with DCs.
About a year ago she was diagnosed with cancer. Thank goodness she is now well and has finished her treatment. Her day to day life is back to normal (more or less) but she’s still not quite ‘herself’. By this, I mean that she’s not as aware of things, she’s talked to me about chemo brain, asked if side effects to her drugs included confusion. She walked out onto the road the other day with DC (age5) when I told her a van was coming. There’s more but that’s the gist.
So she asked me if she can go back to looking after the kids. DH and I have talked and talked about this! We are both in agreement, for the reasons above plus others, that this can’t happen.
I practiced what to say and how to say it in as kind a way as possible, and then put it away to the back of my head, dreading the day we’d have to talk about it.
Basically, she is devastated. She categorically denied everything I said, claimed that I was entirely wrong on every example i gave. It was excruciating. She is devastated and it's my fault, as you can imagine (not DH, of course, it's all me).
I thought she’s understand once she’d had a chance to think about it but, the following day, I took a Father’s Day gift round for DSF and it was awful! He didn’t speak to me, apart from saying thank you. She couldn’t even look at me. The atmosphere was dreadful and helped only by the fact other visitors were there,
How am I supposed to deal with this? I’m a good mum and try to be a good daughter but it seems, on this occasion, I’m apparently being a shitty daughter by being a good mum.
She is not used to people saying no to her and I think this, plus the aftermath of cancer is making this very difficult. Going by past issues, I foresee that she’ll NEVER get over this.
What do I do?