Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Child-safe in minutes.

Meet the Other Phone.
Child-safe in minutes.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

MIL suddenly refused to babysit

301 replies

Want2727 · 17/08/2019 09:59

Tonight having a meal with my family for my brothers 40th birthday. The meal is booked for 8 in a really posh restaurant. It has been planned for ages and we asked my in-laws to babysit DS 6 about 2 months ago.

MIL has just rung to say she won’t be babysitting as it is disgusting we won’t be including Ds in the meal as brother kids will be there.

Now my brothers youngest kid is 18 so very different to six. Where we are going has no kids menu. The adults menu will have nothing Ds wants. My brother did check when booking it and I said “your birthday your choice and it would be nice for us to have a night out without Ds”

So now DH is having to stay at home and I am fuming. MIL had known about the exact reason they are babysitting for 2 months and today on the day of the meal she decided she won’t be babysitting as it’s unfair we are not taking Ds.

So 2 AIBU here the first
Should we bring taking Ds tonight?
And
AIBu to be fuming at MIL

OP posts:
GabsAlot · 17/08/2019 19:02

Its a posh restaurant so he prob wouldnt eat anything anyway theres no other kids there so would completely change the dynamic

Glad you got your friend you know where you stand with mil now

BertrandRussell · 17/08/2019 19:13

Completely irrelevant but I found that the posher the restaurant the more they would accommodate small children. I remember once asking for one portion of roast chicken to share between them and the waiter bringing two beautifully presented plates, and a message from the chef to say that because all the children he knew didn’t like spinach, he had “steamed them a little asparagus instead”.....

MerdedeBrexit · 17/08/2019 19:17

Yes, BertrandRussell, along the Jesuit lines of give me a child till he's 7 and I'll give you a Catholic for life. Or some such, but Michelin star oriented. Grin

MadKittyCatMum · 17/08/2019 19:24

She’s cut her nose off to spite her face - never ask her to babysit again - her loss!

StillCoughingandLaughing · 17/08/2019 19:27

Do we really need to keep derailing the thread by arguing about what a six year-old will and won’t eat? He was never going to go anyway; it was just some crackpot notion of the MIL.

GiantKitten · 17/08/2019 20:05

Want2727
“If a child is hungry he’ll eat what’s put in front of him.”
You have it met my Ds. Ate everting as a baby and then turned 2 and would only eat pizza and chicken nuggets. He is much better now but still fussy

I had one of those. You're doing well to have got him eating better at 6! Mine basically lived on pizza & nuggets until he was 14 & started doing interesting Food Tech at school Grin

SockMachine · 17/08/2019 20:21

Want2727 what a 6 year old will or will not eat is irrelevant.

At 6 my kid ate raw oysters, crab, Proper curries, okra, aubergines, goat cheese, squid, anything you might find on a fine dining menu.

Still wouldn’t have taken him. He wasn’t invited, he would be bored, he wouldn’t be happy sitting still fit so long, it was past his bedtime.

Adult meal, the child wasn’t due to be there.

daisyboocantoo · 17/08/2019 20:42

Have a great night! MIL loss,issuing out on time with her DGC.

Nanny0gg · 17/08/2019 22:38

@StillCoughingandLaughing

The OP commented too...just sayin'

Caterina99 · 18/08/2019 00:33

My DS is only 4, so I live in hope that by 6 he’ll be so much better behaved that taking him to a nice restaurant at 8pm (past his bedtime and a good 2 hours later than he normally eats) with no other kids would be enjoyable for anyone. Realistically I think that’s pretty unlikely and I absolutely would not even consider taking him to something like this!

Your mil sounds unpleasant that she would drop you in it like that with that excuse. I hope you find a way to make her aware that you still went and had a lovely child free night. And that her babysitting services will not be required again

Yeahnahmum · 18/08/2019 02:47

Yanbu re mil. That is so rude and wrong of her. What a

Yabu about not bringing your kid. Your kid is 6. That is a good age. Easy for them to entertain themselves , behave, converse with others etc. And surely they would eat something from the "grown up "menu? Or does your kid only eat French fries and chicken nuggets Hmm

RebootYourEngine · 18/08/2019 04:04

Hope you had a lovely night.

Even though we love our kids it is nice and ok to have a night away from them.

TheSerenDipitY · 18/08/2019 04:13

next time MIL cry's and says you dont understand her, look her directly in the eye and calmly say "no we understand you perfectly" and walk off

HouseworkAvoider10 · 18/08/2019 04:37

What a cow.
She sounds v manipulative.
No wonder your poor FIL is not well.

DemiGorgon · 18/08/2019 04:51

My sister did this.
I was going to a big function and asked her 5 months in advance. She was SO keen to have her niece. 2 days before big event, she said could not do it as she was going to help her grown up daughter with packing the following day.
A lovely neighbour helped us out, but i have never asked sister again and never would. She wonders why she is not close to nieces.

rainbowstardrops · 18/08/2019 05:21

What on earth does it have to do with your MIL??? If she felt so strongly about the situation then she should have said she couldn't/wouldn't when you asked her!
I think she's shot herself in the foot on this one.

StillCoughingandLaughing · 18/08/2019 09:05

Yabu about not bringing your kid. Your kid is 6. That is a good age. Easy for them to entertain themselves , behave, converse with others etc. And surely they would eat something from the "grown up "menu? Or does your kid only eat French fries and chicken nuggets Hmm

If you’d actually bothered to read the OP’s posts you’d see she’d already said that her son wouldn’t eat the kind of food on offer there.

100timewforgotten · 18/08/2019 09:08

Having a meal out with children is completely different to having a meal with kids there. I know which one I would choose.

Hope you had a good night OP and you don't have much to do with MIL anymore.

MsTSwift · 18/08/2019 09:14

My in laws did this and it’s years ago but was final straw. We asked them months in advance to have our 2 well behaved dds for a weekend so we could go to my sisters childfree wedding I was bridesmaid all my side at the wedding obv. We have never asked anything of them. They agreed. Then a few weeks before they said they wouldn’t do it as they might have paperwork to do that weekend. It was so bad I actually thought they were joking. Our relationship never really recovered tbh.
My lovely friend had both girls all weekend in the end.

billybagpuss · 18/08/2019 09:16

Hope you had a good night last night op

LadyGAgain · 18/08/2019 09:30

I hope you had a brilliant night OP and thank goodness for your lovely friend.

Your MIL dictates what she will and won't babysit for? What you can or can't do? Fuck that. Never ask her to babysit again. Maintain a relationship but the drama and her unreasonableness is unbelievable! Oh and to the other poster who said that YABU as at 6 your DS should be included. You are honestly what this was invented for 🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️

Ninkaninus · 18/08/2019 10:08

A six year old absolutely does not need to be included in a meal like this, don’t be ridiculous. Children do not have to be the centre of everything and it’s perfectly fine (and healthy, actually) for the adults of a family to want to have a meal out with only adults present once in a while. This is one big reason why there are so many entitled, self-obsessed, narcissistic people around who expect the whole world to arrange it itself around them and their whims, because so many parents think their children should be treated like emperors of the universe!

MarySibleysFamiliar · 18/08/2019 10:24

This sounds like something my own MIL would do. She's a funny 'un. Always tells me that she "looked after her own children blah blah blah". I think she forgets that I live with her son and am well aware that he had a bedroom at his Gran's and stayed quite often from being very young.

The only times we have managed to get MIL to babysit is when it was something that we couldn't really say no to. DH being best man at a couple of child free weddings in different towns or an overnight work thing. The kids have slept at hers maybe three times. She also takes them for a couple of daytime hours if we have had a rare hospital appointment. All the kids are absolute stars and no hassle at all. We live on the adjacent street so her "babysitting" is just being an available adult they can come to from playing out until we return. Still she huffs and puffs about it even if they only pop in to say hi and then go back out. No way would she take them for a frivolous reason like DH and I wanting to go out for a meal or socialise.
We may finally get to start spending time out as a couple soon as DD1 is getting old enough to watch her siblings (for a price!)

My MIL can be snippy and get a bee in her bonnet about the most stupid of stuff so I wouldn't question the reason why OP's MIL did this. Some people are just like that. Although you still don't expect it to happen so are willing to try, you know they have form for unreasonable behaviour too.

Did you have a good night OP?

sonjadog · 18/08/2019 11:50

The people whose in-laws or family members have done similar - have they ever realized that they did something unreasonable and messed up the relationship afterwards?

MollyCuddle · 18/08/2019 12:02

My MIl had my three older children when my 2 week old dd suddenly stopped breathing and was rushed to hospital. We rang her in a panic to come and get them and a neighbour sat with them until she arrived to take them to hers.
We had previously lost a newborn from sepsis so it was a horrifying time.
It happened on the Saturday evening and DH and I stayed with her and were transferred to a ward.
On Sunday morning my parents popped up with supplies and clean clothes for us and offered to have the other dc overnight if we were staying in for another night but we had already agreed that DH would go home and I would stay.
DH then rang MIL to update and see if the dc were ok - she must have thought he was alone because she proceeded to scream down the phone that she would "stay in the house with the fucking kids while my parents lorded it up at the hospital" also that she was tired, they had nothing to wear except their pyjamas and she was meant to be cooking a Sunday roast.
My dad took DH straight to MIL to pick up the dc and she chased him down the street saying he had taken it the wrong way. She was also mortified that someone other than myself and DH had seen her mask slip.

It took a few more years of other batshit behaviour but DH is now coming up to 6 years no contact.