to refuse to feel guilty?

[WinkyWinkola]

Last weekend, we were at PILs who live 210 miles away. DS (3) always wants to sleep in our room and won't even countenance sleeping in DH's old bedroom. We tell MIL this every time but for some reason she is very keen for him to sleep in there. She says it's DS's room now.

Anyway, DS wouldn't sleep in there again, makes a bit of a fuss and snuggles down in the room we're sleeping in.

I go downstairs and say that I''m sorry but DS won't sleep in a strange bed. (We take up our bedding to save her the washing so it's familiar to DS anyway). MIL glares at me and says with real anger, "Well, who's fault is that then? If you bothered to visit more often, then he'd be perfectly happy in his room and his grandparents' house wouldn't be strange to him," Obviously she says this because DH and FIL are not in the room.

I'm taken aback at her hostility. We go up three or four times a year max. We also have other relatives like my dad and my mum (who are divorced) and my DC's cousins to visit. That's a lot of weekends travelling out of the year. Plus we have our own social life which is very busy at the weekends.

Why does she always manage to make me feel guilty and that we're not doing enough to ensure the DCs see their GPs enough. Grrrrrrr. But I won't feel guilty. I won't! I went on holiday with them this year and I think that's a lot more than most do. I'm still gggggrrrrrrrrr though. AIBU? Minor point but it really niggles.

Winky, have only read your OP and can't understand how your obnoxious MIL can make you feel guilty, when by your own explanation she does not have a leg to stand on.

You have nothing to feel guilty about, and if MIL doesn't like it, it's her problem not yours.

My advice is not to keep the argument going unless she raises it, but in future work on the assumption that you are being reasonable and if she still doesn't get it, you may need to be assertive. It might help to speak to her yourself on the phone before you go, on the grounds that you don't want to put her to the trouble of getting the room ready when ds is NOT going to sleep in it. Be firm, be polite, stand your ground.

She may have felt when you came down and told her that ds wouldn't sleep in a strange bed that you were rubbing her nose in the fact that her arrangements didn't work out. Was it necessary to mention it at all? My dcs often haven't accepted my Mum's arrangements about who sleeps in what bed, but I've always avoided drawing her attention to it. If they end up squashing in with us, who cares? But if I went up to her and deliberately mentioned it, she might well feel called on to defend herself.

It's a bit like when they won't eat the food- my SIL always used to make a point of saying out loud at the dinner table 'I'm afraid they don't eat this/they don't like this food/they're not used to it' when the rest of us just wished she would maintain a discreet silence. You are going to make mistakes when entertaining children you don't know that well; nothing more embarrassing than having it underlined by their parents.

Cory speaks a lot of sense.

Erm, she asked me where he was sleeping.

I just think it's really really childish. Why on earth should she care where he sleeps as long as he's happy?

Nope. End of thread. I've decided I'm not being unreasonable. Thanks for all your input though.

I make a lot of effort for her and just because we don't see them as often as she would like and that my DS doesn't want to sleep in the bed she thinks he should, she shouldn't make such angry attacks.