According to DHs family my children are miserable

[Jackieyoulooknice]

My twins are 1, they are teething a lot, they also seem to be going through some separation anxiety and want me and DH allll the time.

When DHs family visit (extended family, the children love their grandparents) my twins cry quite a lot, are very grumpy and clingy. It's exhausting really, it would be OK if the family members could tolerate it but there are constant comments about how miserable they are and how they can't possibly always be teething and their behaviour isn't normal. It is normal, I remember my first born going through a similar phase till about 18 months or 2 years old. If they see photos of them laughing it's all "oh so they can smile then, I've never seen them like that when we're there". My twins are very happy chatty beautiful babies and sociable when out and about, but I am wondering if maybe they find DHs extended family a bit intimidating or full on.

Ive forced them to deal with these visits fortnightly for 3 months now and I'm finding it exhausting and upsetting. What do I do? The twins don't like it, the extended family moan all the time, I've tried giving them alone time but they can't warm to them.
Also my twins are very normal, I leave them alone with their nans while we go out and they have no problems, meeting all their milestones etc, so I'm finding it quite insulting to be told they're not normal and it makes me sad when they get called misersble! They're only like that when they're here.... Help!

Tell them you'll meet them at the park/soft play/museum etc rather than at home. More space and they'll probably not follow you and the kids onto the play stuff?

@MorrisDancingViv no not a lot of visitors but the time of day is a huge issue for us. My children get up at 5am and nap at 12pm. I always ask visitors to come in the morning, they have a huge issue with this and say they can't get up for 10.30 visits. So they insist on coming after 2.30 which is when they've just got up, and they're miserable from then until dinner at 4.30. After that bath time chaos makes visiting a huge pain in the arse. I wish they would just do morning visits but they won't, and if they do they hang around during lunch time which delays everything and makes the children even more moody. I know we sound high maintenance but 3 children of this age is hard and we very much have to have routine or they're moody.

My PIL were morning refusers too. Eventually we started making excuses as to why they couldn't visit at the times they wanted.

We started to prefer to visit them because we could (usually) leave after a couple of hours whereas if they came to us it was harder to kick them out (although I found it hard in the early days to just get up and leave as they kept making excuses for us to stay - now I just don't care)

I do think it's a generational thing with great grandparents - it's like it's been so long since they've dealt with their own children as babies, they've forgotten the reality.

In their minds, all babies should be bouncing, happy, sunny cheeked little cherubs.

I can see how this would be infuriating having to listen to the same old shit week after week. How can you not take it personally either?

Just limit contact. They won't change.