Feeling judged for accepting support by people who ' did it all alone with no help '

[judgementpants]

I have very young children and it's generally quite difficult, as it is for everyone.

I have a supportive family who help me when I reach out for help.

My sis in law's kids are a bit older now and she is the type of warrior mum who does everything alone and is very possessive over her kids. ( doesn't want them staying anywhere without her etc ). She's a stay at home mum. Always has a smile on her face and is just an amazing human being.

I'm a struggling mum. I don't complain or whinge about it. But I do accept help from my mum. She helps as much as she can and comes to stay with me every 3-4 or so months for a couple of weeks.

My mum also offers the same help to my sis in law and did help out a fair bit when asked to, but sis in law doesn't need it / didn't want it / wasn't as comfortable with it I guess, so she probably had/ has less help from her. She also had / has less help from her own mum. My mum helps me much more than my sis in laws mum helps/ helps her.

Anyway, whenever we talk about stuff, she ( and my bro ) now love to point out how THEY did /do everything on their own with NO help. They somehow always bring it into conversation that they have it so tough and no one helps them. I've also heard through the grape vine that they think I'm a bit extra for accepting help / asking for help / not coping without help.

I do cope without help a lot of the time, but if I can get help and I'm happy to get it, why does that make me a worse mother ? I don't mind my kids going to their grand parents ( in laws ). Even if they do things slightly differently to me with them occasionally, I'm not that precious about every detail that happens when the kids are not with me. I also think it's good for them to get used to being around other people. I know part of the reason why my bro and sis in law don't ask for much help, is that they're quite insular and possessive over their kids and want everything done just exactly how they like it and don't want to give up that control. That's my impression anyway.

Also if they want help so desperately, why not ask for it ? I understand some people find it difficult to do that, but why blame me / bad mouth me for having the ability to ask for help and accept it ?

I'm not some celebrity who has a million nannies running around for me and I do nothing for my kids. I just accept my mum coming to visit for a couple of weeks every few months.

Does your mum expect any help from your brother with any of her problems? If she’s helping you and as a result not doing well with her own affairs or doesn’t care about herself enough I can see your brother’s point of view.
If not, just ignore them.
if you are a single parent (someone implied this but I couldn’t find it in your post) ignore them in any situation, it’s very different from having 2 parents around.

I am a mother who accepts help whenever I need it, which recently has been a lot. At the end of the day, accepting help when you need it is smart. It allows you to recharge and come back a better mother. Everyone's circumstances are different, in ways you sometimes don't even know. But accepting support is not a weakness. Better to accept the help than struggle on and maybe make yourself ill- how would that help anyone?

In my experience , grandmothers don't mind spending a bit more time with their grandchildren anyway (within reason).

I'm on the fence a bit here as I know I would be put in the same bracket as your SIL if viewed from the outside; officially I'm someone who "can cope".

Unofficially, I struggled massively when the kids were young, my parents are deceased and we looked to my PIL for support but whilst they spoke of offering help, when we actually tried to pin them down to dates and times, something else always came up which meant they couldn't.

I had to cope because I had no other choice.

In contrast my SIL got lots of help from two sets of grandparents because she "couldn't cope".

Problem is that now her DC are grown (mine are still school age) and her parents are frail, everyone is looking to me to care for them as I "can cope" and my PIL can't possibly ask their own daughter as she "can't cope".

Just to clarify, there are no disabilities etc, both of us work, she lives closer to them.

So, by being forced to survive without help, I not only struggled by myself (I'm a widow) I got given the reputation of the person who can get things done, in comparison to my SIL who is the person who "can't", despite her having a capable DH as well.

If you hear SIL's side of the story, she's very much the victim and she's in shock that I am unwilling to take on her parents care when she is not 🙄

Tbh I get where they are coming from, I do it alone with no help at all (single parent) yet my mum will bend over backwards to have my brothers kids, she has them every Monday so they can work and also regular sleep overs yet won’t have mine, sil probably has no idea my mum won’t have mine, she definitely has a preference for having my brothers children and has always made that clear.

I've also heard through the grape vine that they think I'm a bit extra for accepting help / asking for help / not coping without help.

So you heard it from some other people, not them?

Also, you seem to have more issue with SIL than your own brother who is also involved.

My DH’s sister and her DH get lots of help due to her living close and being the first to have grandchildren for both sides. Both sides help them and have since the first was born. I have no issue with this but there was annoyance and hurt on my DH’s end when this support was given to them and his brother and SIL but not us. We always asked a month or more in advance, never offered. When our two were 3 and 1, MIL decided to change her mind 10 minutes before we were walking out the door. DH was obviously not happy and I was rushing around trying to gather our children’s things since it was too late to cancel. First outing with another couple since we had our 1st and I spent most of it walking around the closed section of a restaurant to keep the 1yo entertained. I chose to never ask again (barring an emergency). It was further cemented when MIL and FIL would visit us for our sons’ birthdays and complain about how much help they were giving their daughter to us. MIL is also one of the types who says she did it all in her own but DH says otherwise and hearing the stories at the dinner table, she was given similar help that she gives her daughter.

DH did eventually ask them and they watched the boys while we went to lunch in October last year so it had been 5 years since.

Would we have liked a fraction of that help once in awhile? Yes, but I would also say that seeing the dynamic and hearing the complaints, I think we were better off.

Don’t let it get to you and take the grapevine with a grain of salt. Why would someone choose to tell you that unless they were trying to stir drama?

It's a puzzlement, if the helps.Their why not make use of it when needed

Everyone is struggling.

It just doesn’t always look that way, or we can’t recognise someone’s struggle because it doesn’t occur to us that a particular thing, as unconscious to us as breathing, is someone else’s problem.

Accepting help can be a struggle. Sometimes the help isn’t helpful, or creates more work afterwards. I felt this to a certain extent but it was actually because I had SN, both in my dc, and unrecognised in myself, and routine shifts were a bigger problem than seemed reasonable to express. Sometimes the break made me feel terribly depressed afterwards. I felt like a bottomless pit of neediness at times so I kept a tight lid on things. Sometimes the only thing I could find in my own chaos to feel good about was that we were surviving.

I probably look like a warrior mum too.

And in all honesty I have (silently) judged a friend who couldn’t go shopping with one toddler, because her childminder was off sick, when I had taken an autistic toddler and a baby every week, and sometimes faced down the judgey pants when it wasn’t going well. Because you don’t find out what you can do until you have no choice but to do it.

I know it’s none of my business and I’d never say anything to make her feel bad. It’s hard not to be envious of someone else’s seemingly easy problems and these inner dialogues are ways of coping.

The person you should take issue with is the person(s) who would repeat these things to you because they don’t have your back.

It’s ok to need support. It’s brilliant that you can ask for it. It’s wonderful that you can get it.