To think she shouldn't have stayed away with DD?

[rostronlorn]

DH is working at sea so it's just me and DD 18 months at home. MIL arranged to take DD and her 2 other grandkids (4 and 7) to an adventure farm type place on Easter Saturday for an Easter Egg hunt event. There was also a petting zoo and face painting etc. I originally was going to go along with them but am 5 weeks pregnant and experiencing awful sickness. DD was bored with me unable to take her out so when MIL offered to take her anyway I said yes.

The adventure park is a 2 hours drive away. The reason she chose this and not somewhere nearer is because it is owned and run by her close friend. MIL doesn't drive and got the train. She picked up DD at 9 to catch the 9:30 train. I was told they'd be catching the 5:30 train back and DD would be back at 6. As soon as she picked DD up I went back to bed. Around 5 I get up and everything seems fine, MIO has sent pics etc. Expecting DD back in less than an hour I decide to make a start on our tea. Then about 5:45 I get a frantic text from MIL saying she'd missed the train. It was the last train of the day. She wasn't willing to ask a family member for help and claimed she didn't have any money for a taxi which I found somewhat odd. Despite feeling like shit I offered to go and pick them all up and she insisted she couldn't allow me to do that. I said it was fine etc, it didn't matter because it was my DD and she hung up.

She phones 10 minutes later and says her friend is coming to get her and they will stay the night at hers and come home first thing. I still insisted on getting DD but she said "No. Get some rest. Will have DD back by lunchtime tomorrow." I rang SIL and she seemed fine about what MIL waa doing. I couldn't pick my DD up as I didn't have the friends address. I went to bed thouroghly pissed off because I saw from the photos that DD's clothes got muddy at the farm and I hadn't packed enough nappies for an overnight.

She returns DD at 1pm (she said between 11-12) and acts like it's no big deal. I did make an offhand comment to her that I found it a bit uncomfortable that my toddled spent the night in a house with people I have never met and that I would've been happy to come and collect them all or pay some of the taxi fare for them so they could have come home that night. MIL has been quite funny about it and said she won't be so keen to take DD out in future. AIBU?

Capable? She couldn't even catch a train.

nosauce well in case anything happened and I needed to get there, or inform someone else where she was. I would say its pretty obvious why.

Yes capable, she managed a day out on a train with 3 children under 7. That alone is enough to give me a migraine just thinking about it.

The charitable- and therefore probably correct- assumption is that the mil didn’t want the OP, who is pregnant and had been too ill to go out for the day, to do a 4 hour drive. The child was with the grandmother the OP trusted her with for an entire day, including a farm park and a long train journey.

A lot of people have probably got experience of controlling MIL that engineer things so they get their own way regardless of how the DIL feels about it I know I do. If it was my MIL I know it would be no accident.

@NoSauce no, I would not be happy not knowing the address of where my four year old DS was sleeping, regardless of who they were with.

It's not about the trust of the GP, it's more about simply me knowing where they were sleeping. It's other unknown people/location I would worry about, not a loving and caring GP.

She didn't manage it, she missed the train!

Capable? She couldn't even catch a train.

Aye best call Social Services, I'm a single parent with 4 DC and I've missed a train!

If anything happened I'm sure MIL would have told her. She was clearly withholding the info to try and help the OP, who if you remember 'felt awful' and spent the day in bed.

Well, I have three and never have missed the last opportunity to get us home on any one day. I await my gold badge.

More likely, it was an engineered situation with good intentions poorly executed. I'd be cross not to know where my child was sleeping though.

Plenty of people every single day miss a train or their bus or other things @teyem. It doesnt make them incapable ffs. There was a post on here the other day from somebody who missed her train and had to wait 2 hours for the next one. Was she called a Muppet or incapable no the bloke she was with was called a dick cos he got his train without waiting with her. So yeah perfectly normal capable people can occasionally miss a train.

I do think it would have been so easy to tell the DIL the address. Why not tell that's what I don't understand. I'm sure the MIL was being lovely and trying to give the DIL a rest - however, not giving the address of where her young daughter was sleeping would not cause a restful night. It would actually cause more anxiety.

The OP asked for the address, presumably to go and collect her DD, not because she would sleep better knowing exactly where she was. MIL was concerned about her driving 2 hours with morning sickness so didn’t feel the need to give it.

Very different to point blank refusing to give it out for the OPs peace of mind.

Perhaps plenty of people but it's a stretch to call them capable.

“OR, what if there was a fire in the friends house while ops DD was there? If mil had brought the DD home as planned.....”

Or what if she had brought her home and there’d been a fire at the OP’s house? If mil had only kept her overnight...........

here you go @teyem you deserve it for being absolutely perfect.

I'll put it with the others

If your daughter enjoyed herself I wouldn't get too worked up about it. Your MIL may have thought she was doing you a favour as you said this current pregnancy has made you feel so unwell. At the end of the day no harm came to anyone - next time she takes her out pack more clothes/nappies!

“OR, what if there was a fire in the friends house while ops DD was there? If mil had brought the DD home as planned.....”

"Or what if she had brought her home and there’d been a fire at the OP’s house? If mil had only kept her overnight..........."

Or say if by bringing the DD home, the fire didn't happen because op decided to make something different for tea instead of cooking (there's cooking involved in my ridiculous "let's say for a minute" scenario)

@NoSauce regardless of whether the MIL thought she was doing the right thing by not giving the address, she should have. She thought she was doing the right thing by giving her a night off but she in fact caused a lot of anxiety. A mother/father should always know where their very young child is sleeping. Out of interest, would you have been ok (if you're a parent) not knowing the address of where your young child was sleeping regardless of how much you trusted the person they were with?

I’d had been fuming, and gutted not to spend Easter Day with my DC. It’s quite a big deal in our house with egg hunts and a special lunch. I’d be seriously pissed off if my MIL had done that to us.

I think it was planned! I'd have demanded to pick MY Dd up - ynbu at all she was out of order!

It's not always easy for me to get hold of DH while he's working. I did manage to speak to him last night and he did think her behaviour was a little bit strange. Though he did end up telling me to go to bed and not over think it.

wellhelloyou if I was happy enough to trust the person to let them take my dc out for the day but then plans changed so it meant they were sleeping over, no I don’t think I would demand to know the exact address. If they had told me that “ we’re staying at my good friend Sophie’s house “ that would have been enough.

YANBU; your MIL should have been upfront from the start. As you were happy for her to look after your child and you'd have been happy for her to keep her overnight (if she'd actually said so in the first place), the only issue is the inherent deceit. I cannot fathom her reasoning - there was no need for her to lie about it. x

op could trust the MIL to keep her child safe on a day out again, that's different from knowing your child is safe in a location you're not allowed to know the address of, not knowing where / how they're sleeping (which is V important for an 18mo) and who else is there.

What kind of adult can only be trusted to keep a child safe in daylight hours? “How they’re sleeping” is not a safety issue. If OP really thinks MIL is so ineffective at childcare she would bring a child to someone’s house and not be able to assess whether it is safe, she shouldn’t trust her to take her on a train, to an adventure park, because in terms of risk, those two things hold far more risk to a child than sleeping in a strange bed.

If you think that a situation like that is definitely safe, I think you need to re assess how you parent.
ODFOD. I absolutely could trust my child’s grandparents to look after a child overnight, even if I didn’t know where they were. I could absolutely trust them to keep a child safe. you have a problem with trusting your family members, don’t make that an issue with my parenting.