MIL planning her own party and didn’t invite me!

[ImaMothertoo]

MIL has planned a Mother’s Day afternoon tea party for herself.

She called dh to invite him today and made it clear the invite is ONLY for him ! He’s one of 5. She only wants her dc there ! Told him she’s arranged it early so that nobody else makes plans and we (the partners) all have notice 😂😂 she’s mad !

He told her that he already has plans and he will pop round the day before with her gifts !

AIBU to think she’s really rude to do this !

I agree with you. Poor MiL has invited her children round for a TEA PARTY.. not a whole day trip to a theme park, not 2 weeks in Vegas, just a little Mother’s Day tea party. And not only has her son has fobbed her off and is popping in on another day but OP has got a load of people calling her batshit.

The fact that OP is also a mum is irrelevant, she doesn’t need to monopolise the entire day. Some one on one time with her kids on mother’s day while their dad pops out to see Grandma isn’t the end of the world and is actually modelling kind behaviour.

And before the usual accusations come along, I’m not the MiL either, my children are under 10. But I’m also not heartless, and I understand that an older mother with grown up children is still a mother. We’re grown women, we should be able to share time without competing with our husbands mothers.

Utterly selfish & self absorbed
I don’t expect my DD to spend the day with me . She has her own DD now so it’s her day. I’ve had plenty of Mothers Days before she became a Mum , now it’s her turn

You sound so kind and considerate @saraclara
so many people on here forget that their MiLs are also mothers who love their children. The fact that you came to that conclusion without any prompting, speaks volumes of you 🩷
I hope my son meets someone like you when he grows up 😅

Poor MIL 😂 OP hasn’t said anything about monopolising the whole day. She may well have been happy to go along with DH and share the day with MIL. MIL clearly doesn’t want to share the limelight!

And tbh, I love my MIL and we see her every Mother’s Day but there’s not a chance in hell I’d accept my DH being treated to a tea party all afternoon while I sit at home solo parenting 3 young kids on Mother’s Day.

Mate, it’s a tea party.

Thats not selfish or self absorbed. It’s a single tea party with all of her children. What IS self absorbed and selfish is begrudging a mother an hour or so because you want to be pampered do the entire day.

Think of it this way. OP is in the stage of motherhood where all her children are with her every day. Yes, wanting special time with them on Mother’s Day is reasonable. But her husband isn’t her child. MiL on the other hand isn’t at that stage any more and probably doesn’t get much time with her children. Especially not all together, with just them. Why shouldn’t she be set aside a small part of Mother’s Day? In what way is that selfish? How are people this thoughtless.

The fact that you don’t want or expect that means nothing. OPs MiL has her own feelings, and they’re just as important as anyone else’s.

Well it's not going to be with all her children because some of those children weren't consulted about whether they wanted to do this and have other plans on that day. And of course their feelings are just as important as the MILs so no-one can complain about that.

Oh well (and good on OP's DH).

Her feelings aren’t just as important as anyone else’s. She’s his mother; OP is his wife and the mother of his children. MIL’s feelings are secondary.

No I’m a mum, of course it has relevance. I just don’t think I’m the only mum in my family. Or that I deserve special treatment over my own mum or DH’s mum just because I have young kids.

My issue isn’t that the op wants Mother’s Day to herself, it’s that she’s so pissed off her mil also wants the same thing.

Mainly my issue is that so many people have called the mil nasty names just for wanting to see her own child on his own on Mother’s Day.

It’s poor form of your MIL to go ahead and organise but I’m assuming she feels the need to organise as nobody else does?

its also a weird concept to me that a man should stop seeing his own mum in Mother’s Day just because he has a wife and dc.

im a mum but still go and see my own mum on the actual day as opposed to spending 100% of the day with my DH and dc

He told her that he already has plans and he will pop round the day before with her gifts!

Perfect response from him! It sounds like he has the measure of her and knows how to avert her attempts to be petty/unpleasant and exclude her DILs. I’ll have to remember to point to this on Mother’s Day when we have the inevitable plethora of hurt women whose husbands are useless.

Actually it's the opposite. Mothering Sunday was the day that adult children in service were given off work to visit their mothers. That is the entire origin of Mother's Day.

It’s a tea party. No one needs to compete for limelight.. she your husband’s mother, you don’t need to be jealous.

What are you on about no one’s talking about monopolising the whole day? If that were the case MiL could be spared a short visit for a couple cakes and sandwiches.

You don’t need to accept anything. I’m guessing your husband is a grown man with agency? It’s not about him being “treated” it’s not about him at all, it’s Mother’s Day. I’m sure you could manage “solo parenting” (or in my world “spending time with my children”) for a short while (who said ALL afternoon), so your MiL can share in Mother’s Day.

I'm with you on this one. I'll want to see my adult son on Mother's Day, but can't imagine saying "I want to see you, but Jenny can't come" (name changed there obviously)
It's different when they're adults with their own relationships. You have to adapt or be "that" MIL which I try hard not to be 😬

She invited her children. She didn’t hold a gun to their heads. That is in no way selfish, self absorbed, batshit or any of the other accusations thrown at her. No one has suggested that her children’s feelings don’t matter either so what’s your point?

To get back to OP's original question, given we've established everyone's feelings are equally valid here.

It's not unreasonable of OP to feel that her MIL issuing an invitation to her DH that excludes her on mother's day (given her mother passed away fairly recently) is rude and not considerate of her feelings.

It's not unreasonable of OP's DH to decline his mother's invitation and to put his wife and children first on this day and make his own plans (he is popping around with a gift the day before so he's being quite nice, just on a different day which suits him better).

OP's MIL is free to make such an invitation. Other people are free to decline it.

No. Her feelings are just as important as anyone else. What a world.

@MynameisJune oh sorry, earlier on in the thread you said that you don’t really put any relevance on Mother’s Day

I'm not a MIL (in the Mumsnet sense) as I only have sons in law. But I am so grateful that they're both really laid back and have no problem either spending time with me, or enabling my daughters to spend mum and daughter time occasionally.

Society works very differently now. None of these people celebrating Mother’s Day on this thread nor any of the family they are talking about are ‘in service’ so the historical meaning isn’t relevant.

From the OP:

She called dh to invite him today and made it clear the invite is ONLY for him ! He’s one of 5. She only wants her dc there ! Told him she’s arranged it early so that nobody else makes plans and we (the partners) all have notice 😂😂 she’s mad !

When she's saying that it's so no-one else can make plans (presumably that's her DC with their own wives/husbands and children) and giving the partners notice (why would they need notice? What is she expecting them to do - other than not expect their partners to be around) she may have termed it an invitation but it does seem more like a summons. Given the way she's presented it I also suspect that it wouldn't be an hour or two for sandwiches and cake but a lot more would be expected.

I’m not jealous of my MIL, I love her, that’s why I arrange to take her out on MD and sort her card & gift. The reason I love her is that she welcomed me into her family and supported me from the start. That energy is reciprocated. She would never try to exclude me from a family event, especially on Mother’s Day of all days.

And yes, my DH is a grown man with agency, who understands the natural order of things. He adores his mother but she is not the woman he will grow old with. My feelings come first, always. It works both ways. I would not entertain my dad excluding him from a Father’s Day event.

I “manage” solo parenting my 9 month old and 2 year old 5 days a week. Doing that on Mother’s Day would not be a treat.

But she's not your mother? Not specifically for mother's day, but a couple of times a year me, my brother and my mum get together without our partners or kids. Sometimes the whole family gets together, sometimes its just us. I don't see the problem.

Don't you occasionally want some solo time with your kids without the solution of friends or family?

Nothing, if her children were not grown ups with children of their own.

But mother's Day is not just for mothers of young kids. It never has been. I'm 70 and when I was a child we'd have the morning with our mums and the afternoon visiting our grandmothers.

Unfortunately we lived too far away from my mum and MIL to do the samev reverb we had children, but they were always factored into mother's day with cards, gifts and a decent phone call.

No-one who's the mother of small children now, gets to dictate what Mothers Day is about. You can decide for your family, but not for everyone else.

She didn't say nobody CAN make plans. She said so nobody else makes plans. There's a difference. And it might be that she meant that her children might otherwise make plans for her