MIL and her constant trips down memory lane

[popsoc]

Does anyone else's mother or MIL take constant trips down memory lane? At any opportunity remembering what their kids did / ate, how they mothered them etc ?

My mother rarely does this. She mainly does it in private and not in front of others. MIL just cannot help herself and has to refer everything back to how she did it and tells tales of the olden days a lot. It's so boring. She makes it all about her. Even my DH finds it so annoying.

Also, constantly pushing her traditions on us and our kids. It's just all about her and what she did and how great it all was.

Examples include :

I buy my DS a special coat and she goes on about how she still has her children's coat and must give it to us.

Her wanting to carry on traditions she had with her kids, like a special broach they all have. My kids have to have one too now. A special prayer she used to say to them, she now wants to teach to my kids.

Just small examples. But they add up. I know that it's not mean of her, but it excludes me, doesn't it. It's all about their thing and what they did. My mum might tell me things in private - like, ' oh it would be fun if you send DD to ballet, like you used to, maybe she'll enjoy it'. But she won't make a whole saga out of it. Whereas MIL will give me a huge trip down memory Lane about how she took her DD to ballet and if I take my DD, she'll say ' aw look, DD is doing ballet, just like her aunt did '.. I know it sound silly and miserable, but it adds up and makes me feel alienated from my kids and like I never had a childhood to share with my own kids. Like I'm just an irrelevant third party anyway and my kids are basically an extension of her own children.
Annoying. Rant over !

YABU. You obviously resent your MiL and you’re not accepting that your DC are part of your MiL’s family. It sounds like she’s a devoted grandmother. You might try to appreciate that.

Presumably if someone in your own birth family did this you wouldn't feel excluded. It's inevitable that things from your MIL's past will sound like they're excluding you because you were not a part of it!

I thought it was the MILs or mothers that were always the narcissistic ones? You sound entirely egocentric and lacking in empathy, taking no pleasure from the children being offered loving grand-parenting.

You're lucky she cares.

I actually get what OP means
there’s a difference between kindly old nana having a lovely old teddy in the attic to pass on. That’s lovely.

it’s when all the teddies you buy or your own mum or friends buy are met with a pursed mouth and a ‘well when mine were little we got them teddies from Steiff, did you know we went to London and I went to a special shop….’ Etc etc etc to infinity

it’s not that bad when it’s someone you see once in a while but some One you see a lot it’s wearing

for example I have stopped taking my youngest to MIL’s unless she is in something g either she has bought, her best friend has bought or her daughter has bought for the baby. It’s not worth the ‘oh she would have been lovely in that dress Margaret bought her! You should have put her in that!’ Once baby dd was in a lovely dress my sister bought her. I counted MIL mentioned a dress her best friend purchased for DD SEVEN times and the first mention was within two minutes . Dd has now outgrown the dress and it’s too cold for a cotton summer dress anyway. The other day MIL said ‘you could have put her in that dress from Margaret with some tights and a cardi on top’. Its a pressing desire for her to take some sort of say or ownership and she I feel simply cannot help it, she can’t help feeling it so strongly she has to mention it. So I have made the situation easier by just dressing dd in things that will make her happy because cba with the conflict.

I typed out a whole reply but then worried it was too outing but I just want to add that I completely get where you are coming from, these memory lane trips happened to me before we even had kids and it was tiresome then.

I should add I know it’s lovely that people in MIL life (her friend, and our SIL as well) want to buy things for dd, I don’t want to sound ungrateful. But some days I just pop dd in a babygro and Mil will ring and ask me for a lift somewhere and it takes her five minutes to say ‘oh is she in he pyjamas?! I got her that lovely pair of dungarees from M&S? Or what about the jumper Marg knitted, she’s spent a long time on that! ’ I just want to say MIL I know and it’s so nice of you but I don’t think as deeply as you at what my 5 month old is wearing on a rainy Tuesday!’

@Mlb123
Sorry! I don't tend to really snap, and I was aware that she wasn't doing it with malice.

I'll practice my snapping for you.

I understand OP. My MIL even does this with things she couldn't really be able to remember- like telling me anecdotes from FIL's childhood as if she's been there when she couldn't have been. It's endearing for the first few anecdotes then just grating.

It doesn't sound like she's trying to make it all about her at all? It sounds to me like she's just relaying how times have changed and what was different.

You obviously don't like your mother in law for whatever reason but I don't think you need to dramatise things. Let her tell her stories and simply smile and be polite and get on with your day.

Yanbu.

my mil does similar and it’s tiring. My elder son also looks very much like me and my own mum (it’s uncanny) and if anyone mentions it my MIL gets so annoyed?

She constantly harps on about my dh and my BIL when they were young. Everything my kids do reminds her of the past.

i get it op, I get it.

I also get it, OP. It's a power grab by someone who's insecure and narcissistic, which in some ways is sad as she's so needy and desperate to make everything about herself. On my better days I try and reframe it to see her as someone needing pity for lacking self-esteem and a sense of worth. On my worse days I just mutter to myself and moan to DH when she's gone!

My MIL would often compliment DD's outfits when she was a baby, but I gradually noticed she only mentioned the ones she had bought herself! (but as if she'd never seen it before, sort of way). Once I got confused and said "Oh yes my mum bought that, nice isn't it" to be told by a very angry MIL that SHE'D bought it! She didn't say it so much after that...

Oh shut up, Ive been here long enough to know how these threads go.

I often wonder about all the MIL haters on here.... incredible that there are so many 'vile' women who raised sons that you all wanted to marry!!
You do realise that you will be MIL one day, don't you?
And a lot of you are already vile it seems, with no patience, care or understanding.

What I don't get is the amount of people moaning about their MIL saying dc look like their side of the family when they were little, I mean of course they will see resemblance, its not like they are going to say oh yes dc look just like you/your sister/brother etc as a baby as she never seen your side of the family as babies!

I get it my mum is like this

I am probably the same vintage as your mil but I understand your point exactly as I see it in my own family and it drives me nuts. Nothing wrong with a trip down memory lane but when you are ignoring the present or using it to constantly leapfrog back to a place where you are centre stage - it’s tedious and excluding.

I really can relate to this. My MIL is similar.

On the one hand it is loving and warm and shows really tight bonds of family.

On the other hand as an in law its VERY focussed on that nuclear family and history that you can never be a part of. Its not JUST reminiscing because its way more one sided then that. Its not chatting and asking others around the table about their own life or if they had pets as kids too or tell me about Christmas when you were a kid. She is simply not interested. If you spent xmas there there would not be things there that i would like to eat or drink. And thinks would be said with a snort like 'oh WE dont drink white wine'. There was no enjoyment in catering for others or having visitors. I went and bought my own.

I also felt panicked about not being able to create my own traditions or find my own way as a young mum.

If i ever wanted to break away from any of these things or do things differently. She would cry. SILs and BIL would ring and give abuse. It was very suffocating. It was all a bit weird.

But its hard to explain to others.

Yep I totally get you, OP.

It's very self-absorbed behaviour, and feels like it's being done on purpose to exclude you. And if it's not being done purposefully, it's still very rude and unthoughtful.

Perhaps it's not so bad if you have a good relationship with MIL, but if you have a poor relationship to begin with then this behaviour just cements that.

You've hit the nail on the head there, it's completely one-sided.

It's awkward and almost embarrasing to be made to feel you are being excluded. It can make you quite cross when you think 'hang on, I'm the actual mum of these kids!' .

Often other family members (eg OPs DH) simply won't spot the issue or understand it, as they aren't the one being excluded.

She probably feels wistful for her years when dc were young that's all.my lovely mil sadly passed now ,would tell stories of when dh and his ds were young. Didn't feel left out .although dm used to do it too.

When I see posts like this I would just love to jump into the future when the the OP has boys who are older and have their own kids and then they become the MIL who can’t do right from wrong. It would be interesting to see if those women do any reflection at that point.

I get where you are coming from. It has become an in joke between me and DP that every time we visit his family (and this is over a decade) the nuclear family always reminisce about the same 3 events. All in the mid 2000s. This happened in every single family zoom call during covid, That was when we realised it was happening. I've never plucked up the courage to say that it is very exclusionary and just sit there twiddling my thumbs.

'It's a power grab by someone who's insecure and narcissistic, which in some ways is sad as she's so needy and desperate to make everything about herself'

Very good description - this was my MIL to a tee. And yes, ultimately it's pretty sad stuff, but that doesn't mean it's not also tedious and infuriating

You see, I so desperately wanted a good relationship with my MIL. I tried, really really hard, offered to help her with things as she got older and less mobile, tried to be a friend to her. But, she remained cold and distant. We visited her, tried to forge a relationship between her and our DC, but she wasn't interested. She never came to our house, never saw the DC in their own setting. She never once gave them a sweetie or small gift. She boasted about the DC to her friends, and was extremely keen to hear about their achievements at school, but she never asked them what they enjoyed, what they liked. She was a crap MIL and a crap grandparent, sadly.