To be fed up of being pressured to involve the step nan?

[pansydansy]

I've name changed because this is very outing and I'm not sure if she uses mn.

So I have 2 dc ages 2 and 6

They have my parents, and dh parents split when he was young and they've both re married.
So there's 4 biological grandparent and 2 step grandparents.

Dh doesn't like his stepmum. Won't even acknowledge her as stepmum and just tolerates her for his father. She married his dad when he was 5 and wouldn't even allow him to the wedding because it was "her day"

She also accused him of hitting her children that she had with fil and always singled him out when he was young. Fil had to pay maintenance to mil being this woman's back because she resented him.

Anyway fast forward..we now have 2 DD's. When dd1 was born she instantly called herself nanny without asking first and has been known as nanny ever since. My mum is nona mil is grandmother.

Yesterday i got a text from fil asking me to not forget that it's Mother's Day Sunday and nanny is expecting something from the girls. (He does this often. For her birthday he wants a video of the girls singing happy birthday to her and for me to post it on fb and tag her) now I find this irritating. I don't do this for my children's biological grandparents so why am I going to make her feel special by sharing it on fb for my own dm and mil to see it. Oh I know..because she wants her friends to see it and feel all high and mighty!

I don't mind this woman in small doses and I'm not trying to be a bitch I swear I'm not. But why. Why should I spend my own money to buy her something from the girls when I don't dont do this for the others!
I haven't replied to fil text because I'm just seething and don't know what to say without sounding rude. They help us out a bit and have the girls 3 times a month so I don't want to sound shitty but I'm just pissed off.

Aibu? Have I just looked too much into this?

I can't believe that they have so much to do with your kids given how shittily they have treated all of theirs.

Why does your husband still work for them?

What really pisses me off about all this is that Mothering Sunday has got fuck all to do with mothers and is about the church in which you were baptised/christened. Which, obviously, for most people coincided with going home as people didn't move around so much. (And I say this as an atheist.)

Shhhhhhhhh. My daughter might hear.
We both love Mother's Day!

I would reply “Sorry! I’m a bit confused as to why MY children would be buying your wife a mothers day present when she is NOT their mother, so as you can surely understand any gifts given on that day by them will be given to THEIR mother and only THEIR mother, I hope this clears up any confusion here”

The problem here is that the real issue isn't Mothers' Day. It's quite worrying how much you depend on her goodwill- not so much for childcare (and I'd be upset about losing almost every Saturday with my kids tbh), but for your living.

I think your husband would do well to start looking for other employment. What will happen to the family firm when his father dies? Does he own any share of it, or will it all go to his wife and thereafter her children? I don't think his position is secure at all and he may even be held back by working for his family.

If he could be sacked because of a falling-out with her (and it doesn't seem impossible that this might happen given their history) then your husband might be left in a position of needing to making an unfair dismissal claim against his own father. Not many relationships would survive that, and he could even spin his wish to leave as a wish to preserve their relationship as well as gaining wider experience which might help if he ever came back. Does he have a proper employment contract and is he paid a decent rate for the job he does?

Crikey, she sounds like a price of work

"Hi Dad, I'm confused, it's Mother's Day not Gran/StepGran, so I won't be doing that for any of the grandmothers, so I'm not sure why that would be expected of me, I hope you understand xx Pansy"

@DontDribbleOnTheCarpet we don't rely on them for childcare. Dc want to go to their grandparents and they want to have their grandkids. Dh and I do stuff together that day or he works while I catch up on cleaning. Plus sometimes it not always 3 saturdays. They go on holiday a lot and have a hectic social life. Some months it's only 1 Saturday or two.

The company is being handed down to dh in five years when fil retires. It will be all his.
So he has no interest in going elsewhere. He has helped his father build this company and wouldn't be anywhere else.

@RomanyQueen1 step nanny.

I think your FIL showed how rude he is...I mean who rings up and demands/passively agressivly pleads for presents...He sounds a right tosser....time he grew a back bone and left you and your DH alone

She shouldn’t be referred to as Nanny imo. It’s fair enough if your DH actually had a good relationship with her but she sounds toxic. My DC don’t refer to step grand-parents as anything other than their first name and rightly so. You also definitely shouldn’t pander to her, she sounds batshit.

My dc used to refer to my sm as dgm dragon!
To her face!!. Can't remember how it came about tbh.

Start 'affectionately' referring to Nanny as Nando

Once your DC have thoroughly picked it up, you can look innocent 'Oh but I think it sounds sweet - I guess it's their nickname for Nanny! Don't know where they got that from...'

She can be... Nandos.

I'm going to go against the grain a bit here.

It is FIL who has asked. It is him who will be pissed if you get all arsey with her.

FIL is the owner of the business you live off, what with your DH working for it, having helped build it up for many years and is due to take on in five years

His wife may have behaved appallingly in the past but is a molecule of "setting the cow straight" be worth the possibility that it could blow the life of your immediate family out of the water.

This is your real life. This is not a soap opera. The demand to give appalling people their 'just deserts' is all well and good in the moral perfection that exists on this forum but it doesn't transfer to the real world. There are no posters here who will stick around to bankroll your family if it all goes tits up. Be careful. Real people take umbrage at some very strange and/or very minor things and hold grudges for a bloody long time. Can you be sure of FIL's response if you refuse him. I suspect his loyalty to his wife is very strong or he wouldn't be asking.

She doesn't sound like she really deserves you being so nice to be honest but sometimes you just have to bite your lip, rise above it and think of family harmony and the future.

I realise this is not going to be a popular viewpoint.

Maybe to soften the blow a little, you can do something for all three GMs so you don't feel you're giving her singular special treatment.

I agree with DontDribbleOnTheCarpet and considering the way your DH was treated as a child, don't understand why you would leave your children alone with them.

Your DH's employment doesn't sound secure, it sounds precarious since it appears reliant on not pissing off DF and/or SM. I see the company will be his in five years, I hope he has that in writing? So five more years of doing as you're told or else. What price freedom.

I guess you will be agreeing to the request after having a moan about it on here. It's totally unreasonable but they have you over a barrel.

Now our DCs are older, 18 & 16, if people ask DH what he's doing for me his response is always 'nothing, she's not my mother's. I would respond with someone like, you do know it's mother's Day don't you FiL?

I’d just do a ‘ha ha-it’s my only day off, so you’d better text DH!’

@Holidayshopping I've replied to him something very similar to that. He just laughed and said "yeah your right"

@SilverySurfer yes it's in writing.
Also dh argues with his dad on a regular basis. They've fallen out many of times and his job has never been a weapon. Fil would never see his son jobless, not when he has kids to feed. He know if that happened he wouldn't get to see his granddaughters and they are his world.

Except you said the following in one of your earlier posts:

'It's complicated because dh works the for the family company. Which is great in some ways because he has a secure job. 'But in others ways you feel like if you piss them off enough and there's a fallout then he could lose it.'

I hope the five years fly by.

@SilverySurfer I don't think anyone would sack their son over a card. You'd have to be a pretty awful person. And fil isn't one of those.

Fil sacrificed his ds for a controlling dw.
He isn't nice op.

Given that the firm will be handed over in 5 years (if it will, I've known people who found it very hard indeed to hand over a family firm and retire, and also a spouse who insisted the business was sold instead) I might be less direct than I normally am, but a lot would depend on the immediate consequences.

If you ignore the whole thing and do nothing(or keep up the vague "Oh, my husband is dealing with all that" line), what will happen? Will she just sulk? Will there be pass-ag messages? Will they ask to see your children less often? How long will the sulking, if any, last?

But to be honest, I'd be more concerned with my husband feeling that I was disloyal to him if I toed the line and facilitated her social media-fest. You can't please her and your husband as well as having a nice day yourself. Personally I'd be fine with a bit of histrionic facebooking if it meant that my husband knew he had my full support.

You don't need to be mean to her, just don't do anything. And for the love of all that's holy, stay off of social media for a few days!