Here's the back story, skip to the next part if its too long. We have an almost 4 year old, I'm British, but live in another European country where my husband and his family are from (I'd prefer to be in the UK, but that's another story) when my son was just under a year old I had to have an operation, I had lots of complications and ended up in and out of hospital for a while, recovery was really long and difficult. This is why my in-laws started having my son every weekend sometimes for two nights, and at the worst they'd have him for a night during the week too, he continued going every weekend for a night (early Saturday, until late Sunday) for a few months until I began trying to limit it. This has been an ongoing battle since, not only from them, but also my husband. He enjoys our weekends together, but he's out of the house mon-fri, where does that leave any room for family time if my son is at his grandparents every single weekend? It's slowly improved, but I constantly feel like we're on the edge because of it. I have had to force it to the point of us having terrible arguments, just for my son to go Saturday evening and be picked up later on Sunday.
Now my son has just started preschool and ill be missing out on a huge amount of time with him, I've made it clear he won't be spending over half of the weekend with them, I made sure to tell my husband that seversl months before so we wouldn't clash so much over it. It's his 4th week now, they've been seeing him for a couple of days after school for an hour or so with me around and I continued letting him sleepover Saturday night but he's been going there from Saturday evening until around 2-3pm Sunday, this last weekend I decided ill finally put my foot down and keep him here overnight. They picked him up 10am sunday, and we picked him up at 3pm, we didn't leave their house until 4pm, so that's 6 hours with him Sunday (we'd also been there for 3 hours Friday) you would think I'd stabbed someone! The atmosphere in the room was terrible and I know it's because I've cut their time. I am so sick of this constant battle to keep my son for the weekend, I don't know what to do about it. I'm a very private person, so even though my in-laws are really nice people, I can't deal with having them around me all the time. I want to spend quality time with my little family alone, what is wrong with that?
Another issue is my son is bilingual, so when we're there they mostly speak in their language, this has created a huge divide in parenting and rules. For example, yesterday my son spat in my mother in laws hand. This is completely unacceptable to me, but she hardly said anything to him and was pretty much laughing two seconds later, while she still sat there with it in her hand. I feel tension as soon as I say anything, because they're so used to being the discipline in their house due to language. They are way too soft on him (I know all grandparents are) and it's not how I want to raise him, they allow him to do and act in ways I'm not OK with, but what am I meant to do about it? I already feel like everyone is about to lose it because I'm cutting back their time a bit.
Then there's how ott she is with him, lately she's been glued to him, constantly kissing and hugging him (I know this sounds normal, but it's in an uncomfortable really ott way) I don't feel like I can get anywhere near him when she's around. Which brings me to my next issue why can't she see him with us being there? Why do they always need to have so much alone time with him? It's driving me crazy. I feel like I'm in a divorced family, where I'm being ordered to not be present during visits.
I'm lost, I don't know how to set boundaries when they would take him every single day if they could and my husband seems fine with it, so we butt heads constantly. At this point, I'm thinking my only option without our marriage breaking down is moving back to the UK, but I know that would destroy them.