Mother-in-laws

[Allyinoz]

I try really hard with my mother-in-law. But I feel really underwhelmed by her lack of interest/help in and with my son.

I live in Australia with my husband near his family, my family live 13,000kms away,

My DS is 2, obviously he stills need a lot of care and attention. I work and he goes to childcare.

My mother in law helps out occasionally, but it always seems under duress. Without her help I cannot go to the doctor/dentist etc etc. We rarely go out as we just don't want to trouble her. It just all seems too hard.

We haven't found other babysitters as yet. She has another 4 grandchildren who she sees at family get togethers. She raised 3 kids and I can understand that she may be over it. She is retired and of reasonable health.

One of the reasons I want to return to the UK is this lack of interest. AIBU?

when my eldest was v small i was astonished at the lack of help offered by both my mother and MIL. i had this image of them taking over whenever i needed a hand which is of course not how most people work. my mother lives over 50 miles away and is well into her 70's now and whilst my MIL is younger and only 10 miles away, she cared for her ageing parents for over 10 years which only ended the year before my DS was born. my DH likes to ask his mother to babysit every so often but u can tell she's not that keen, would rather see them when we are around. have recently used a paid babysitter who lives across the road and helps out at DS school. a complete revelation!!!!!!!!!!!!

no guilt - its wonderful. a win win win win really for MIL, babysitter, us and kids as they love her. altho dh likes the fact MIL is free..............

guilt free is better than free free for me. say that in an hour when you're well into your bottla red

I think YABU to expect help, but YANBU to want help! However, like so many of the other posters here, we managed to get our from babyhood to adulthood with very little outside help. I think that if in 21 years, we left our two with anyone else, including family members, more than 20 times, that would be about the total of it! Yes, sometimes it is difficult, especially with certain types of doctors/ hospital/ dental appointments, but it can be done!

As someone else said, ultimately, you chose to have your children and as long as there is evenhandedness in the lack of interest, you really can't complain about it!

I think you're homesick and looking for reasons to come back to the UK. Nothing wrong with that!

It sounds as if you haven't been in Oz terribly long (as you say you haven't found babysitters yet).

I've lived in the UK for 14 years with my whole family in NZ and I can tell you that the homesickness does wear off.

Well, I think it is very sad when GPs don't seem to want to get involved for whatever reason when they are perfectly able to. There is a lovely, close relationship between my children and each set of grandparents. I suppose I'm lucky in that both sets of grandparents just enjoy being with their grandchildren, so I can understand why the OP feels so sad by the lack of interest. You think your child or children is/are the best in the world and of course you want your parents, and the child's father's parents to think the same! So must kind of feel like a betrayal when they don't want to know.

As for those people who actually seem proud not to have had any help for years and years, again - I think it's a shame that children don't have a chance to build close relationships with other people apart from their parents. If it's not a grandparent, it could have been a neighbour or other babysitter, of whatever age - it just seems a more rounded way of developing your child's social and relationship skills.

big difference between gps wanting a good relationship with grandkids, wanting to spend time with them/enjoying their company and having to babysit.

many many reasons gps don't/can't do the latter but many many want to see them and want the relationship.

ours i think feel they've done their time and don't want to be used as hired help. this doesn't mean they don't want to be involved.

Curly, what some of us are saying is that close relationships between grandchildren and grandparents don't have to depend on the amount of assistance that is given to the child's mother. A child can have a great relationship with a grandmother that's never made the mother so much as a cuppa.

I have never been able to call on MIL for much help (though we like each other very much)- I would hate to think that that somehow got in the way of my dcs relationship with her.

I just think the OP is confusing her needs with her MILs love for her grandchild. Of course, that love may be totally deficient. But it is not necessarily related to the OPs ability to get to the dentist.

This always seems to cause a great divide, doesn't it!

I think the big issue is how can you seriously, as a person (read: human being) say that you just don't want to know when your original child (now mum or dad) is either really struggling and could use a break or needs some help for e.g. root canal or, for those of us preg again, those long doctor's visits that are made all the longer by the massive wait. I honestly don't know any toddlers that can sit still/play for the hour or more you can be waiting!

Just to put a different spin on this question - I've spent a year looking after a friend's child for one afternoon a week at no recompense or reciprocal babysitting because he mum is dead, her MIL is absent and she needed a bloody break. And I don't think I'm particularly marvellous, either - I really think we should help each other out in this way if we can.

So, if I do that for a friend, you can be pretty damn sure that I'll help out loads with my own grandkids! It really does hurt when my own MIL just says 'you know, we didn't get any help from parents/in-laws' like that justifies her non-involvement

(Just as a quick aside - don't mention my dad in these posts as he's brain damaged and couldn't possibly be trusted with a child - my FIL has some kind of attention deficit disorder/dementia - I really don't know what and apologies for using all the wrong terms, he just couldn't be trusted, either - just that there's a real reason (not sexism) I only mention the mums and not the dads )

Neither my mother nor my mother-in-law have ever looked after DD for even ten minutes. They both live within one hours' travel, but just have absolutely no interest in helping us out, even during times of illness or hospitalisation. They have their own lives, which are full of their own friends, health problems etc. My mother was even "too busy" to come to DD's second birthday lunch: she had another appointment apparently.

So where you say that your MIL "helps out occasionally" eg. when you go to the doctor/ dentist, then all I think is- lucky you.

YANBU to hope for help and to want to go home but YABU to expect it. It's a fantasy that every gp in the world is happily helping, sorry.

I think it IS fantasy that every gp is happily helping, domesticslattern - it's true. I didn't realise this until recently - I just thought that lots of grandparental involvement and babysitting was the norm as it was all I had experienced. But just last week my own mum shocked me by saying that when I was born her own mother never came to visit her and me (her first grandchild) in the hospital, even though she was in for a week as was the norm in those days. Prior to my birth my mum had a miscarriage, and her mum never came to see her then either. She was only half an hour's drive away and even though she worked part-time she was able to pick and choose her own hours as she was more or less freelance.

I can only imagine how let down and just plain sad my mum felt when those things happened, especially when her mother went out of her way to visit my mum's cousin's kids and help her out to give her breaks etc. My nan actually got a bit more involved with me and my sister when we were past the baby and toddler stage. But I think it was probably because by that time she was past retirement age, bored at home and her health wasn't what it was so my mum used to pick her up every week and bring her to our house for tea etc. But it was my mum running round after HER eg bringing her cups of tea (and whisky!) and pandering to her - she never really helped my mum out with anything much.

My mum and her mother never really had a good relationship and I always wonder if it was because of all those things.

There's no accounting for the actions of some people I suppose. Various grandparents threads on mumsnet have really opened my eyes to the differing types of "grandparenting" that exist, which has made me feel very lucky and grateful to have such lovely, hands-on grandparents for my kids, who say they ENJOY having the grandchildren to stay the night every couple of months and that they don't do it at all grudingly.

I always wonder what type of grandparent I would make. I would hope that I would be a hands-on type, but maybe you DO just get to a stage where you think "I've done my share of childrearing and going out to work - now I just want to go off travelling or pleasing myself or whatever." A couple of my mum's friends are like that and she doesn't understand them. She is so hands-on, which she and I find really funny as she wasn't the most patient of mothers when we were little and never really wanted to sit and play with us - she found it boring probably and always seemed to have something better to do like cleaning non-existant dust! We were just left to play on our own really.

So I suppose we'll never really know what type of grandparent we will make until we become one.

What I wanted to add before being so rudely interrupted by my laptop battery running out of battery is that if your MIL doesn't want to help you out, then is that really help you would want anyway?

I also think you need to make some friends with children and I know how hard that is in Oz, having lived there myself. Is there an expat group/website you can contact? There must be a group for mums who work, and they may also have a babysitting circle.

My parents love my kids as do their paternal grandparents but just lived too far away to do casual childminding, plus would have been working if they lived nearer. My grandparents were the same.
I do think alot of people imagine mythical grannies who never have any lives of their own and live just round the corner.
This seems a poor reason to leave a country if you are otherwise happy.

Op I don't think yabu, it's v hurtful when gps don't seem to want to be involved..

My Mum promised the world when I was pg with dd but this has never materialised, she likes seeing dcs but only really when we are there as well. She does babysit ocassionally but will sit on the sofa rather than offering to help out with bedtime despite dd leading with her to read a story .

Agree with ninedragons the prevailing view on mumsnet is to expect any help from gps is totally unreasonable but I don't agree either.

After my own experiences with my parents I'll be offering my dcs a lot more. E.g. looking after them for overnight/weekends a few times a year and lots of hel in the early days. I know what a difference it will make and I want to help them.

YANBU we moved two years ago from being near DH's parents to being near mine. It was the best move we made.

Two examples:

In old area (near Brighton) DH was in Iraq, I had ds1 nearly 3, ds2 nearly 1 and was 5 months pregnant with ds3. I got a call that dh had dislocated his shoulder and would be coming home and I had to get up to a garison up past Nottingham (4hrs each way) to pick him up. I arranged for ds's to go all day at nursery and asked pil if they could come down (1hr 15 min drive) to ours in time to pick up children from nursery at 6pm and they could also then see dh when I brought him back. They said no, the best plan was for dh to stay at the garison until the weekend or whenever my parents could pick him up because they were going to thier house in France in 3 days and it would not leave them enough time to pack! Bearing in mind that it was a few weeks before christmas and they had not seen dh since end of August and he was now injured. They really couldn't give a monkeys.

New area (Bristol way) yesterday I had to do an emergency dash to the hospital with dfd, however my ds's needed picking up from school and the heating repairman was due any minute (dh was in Afganistan). I rang my dad and he was around in 15 min to deal with heating man, heating man turned up late, so dad had to arrange for sister to go and get the boys. DFD and I arrived home to find my mum turning up to take over. I was amazed and so gratefull how they pulled together for me.

The difference between the 2 sets of parents is just . We were stupid not to have moved sooner. PIL have visited once in the two years, dc see my family pretty much every weekend and often during the week aswell.

It sounds like you already know that mil is not going to get more involved, if your family are grab it with both hands it make such a difference to family life if the support is there. I do not regret the decision at all.

Thanks for the replies.

I have been here 9 years and have lots of friends with kids. I am aware of expats sites and whatnot.

I don't want my MIL to be unpaid childcare. I just want her to be more interested. I feel my child needs family involvement and that she isn't able to provide that. The difference between the GC's is my son has no other family here on my side.

My family are much more proactive when it comes to family and don't have a "Í had it tough so so should you" attitude.

In 9 years we have never been invited to her house for a meal, but we have made countless meals etc for her.

I think all I am saying is it would be nice for her to say "could I help?" or how are you?

I guess I just want more for my child and family.

Feel for you, Ally - we just spent Christmas with my in-laws and in 8 days they didn't once ask me how I am or what they could do to help.... and I'm 6 months pregnant with Number Two!

I don't know about yours (obviously...) but mine are actually really nice people who have a different attitude to involvement in other peoples' lives... they practice the negative politeness model of by not interfering, they are respecting our boundaries. They genuinely do, I'm not being sarcastic! I'm a very, very different person, and I know they find me hard to take sometimes.

I guess what I'm saying is that I've found (relative) peace by acknowledging that they are as involved as they want to be, given the people that they are, and it's my problem if I expect more.

Allyinoz, I really feel for you and I think you aren't being unreasonably one bit. It's very sad that your MIL doesn't seem to be interested much in any of her grandchildren. I have no advice to give, only heartfelt sympathy and YANBU.

14hours, have you heard of/ are you part of the Berkeley Parents' Network? It seems like a fantastic site. I can't be part of it because it's only available to Berkeley residents, but I got some great answers from reading threads on it when DS was tiny, and indirectly it is how I found Mumsnet.

Parents.berkeley.edu

Jacksmama - spookesville! - my DS is a Jack, too

Yes, I'm a member of that group and (mostly) really like it. I actually posted my variant of Ally's question to that listserve and was slammed with a load of 'you chose to have the child, how dare you expect help' which put me off a bit

But mostly, yeah, I like it...

Are you in the US?

I'm in Canada, near Vancouver