My SILs and DN (10) are coming up for a few days and I am already stressed about it. My DP is the oldest in the family and her sisters seem to assume her life is always entirely sorted, so they never ask her any questions or show interest in what she's doing. They seem to see visits as a chance to talk to her about their woes, but they don't reciprocate. So I know DP will end up on edge and a bit sad.
I will get stressed, because my older SIL will talk a lot about her work, usually anecdotes she thinks are funny but are either incredibly banal, or offensive. Eg. she was in gales of laughter about dropping a box during a meeting and how embarrassing it was, and she repeated the story over and over and refers to it as 'the time I dropped a box'. Or she'll tell us how a 'dwarf' came into her workplace to make a complaint, and it was so funny to see him being angry. She doesn't intend to be offensive, but because she never really talks to me or DP about ourselves, she just assumes we will all be in agreement about things. Recently she got very into the conspiracy theories around Madeline McCann, and insisted she knew the parents killed her; I said I didn't think any of us was in a position to know, and I didn't really like her talking about it where DD could hear. She was really upset - it's really hard to challenge any of her views.
On top of that, we have an ongoing issue with DN, in that he spends every visit playing on his switch with the volume on full. He will literally come in from the car, sit down, get it out, and start playing. There's no sense he ought to ask permission; he has headphones but won't wear them. Last time he came his mum eventually told him to get off the switch and he offered to play hide and seek with our DD, who's 5. I heard her crying and went upstairs to find he'd told her to 'hide' in the cupboard and he was sitting on her bed playing on his switch again.
I don't feel as if I have much authority to tick him off, because his mum is there, and also because he's had a struggle to really understand what position I have in the house anyway - although DP and I had DD together, DP is DD's biological mum and he has found it difficult to understand that I'm her mum too, so would try to overrule me with DD. DP and I plan for this visit to suggest we just have no-internet time, and to say it's for DD's sake as we don't want her getting too much screen time. But I am stressing about enforcing that as I suspect he will just go and turn the router on.
AIBU? Or is this just families being families and I need to chill a bit?