This is so much longer than I intended, and I am sorry! I would be so grateful for any comments/suggestions about how to handle this as it's a new situation for me.
My DP's mother has alcohol induced dementia, and is currently living in a care home. The condition she has isn't degenerative but the damage to her brain from drinking is severe enough that she can't live independently at the moment, and it is unlikely she will be able to live independently for the foreseeable future (if ever again). Her short term memory has evaporated and she can't retain anything recent. She will forget that someone has visited her the day before, for example.
She was a heavy drinker and (truthfully) a functioning alcoholic for many years. My DS is a toddler, so has no memories of her at the moment, which I am grateful for, because I do not think she is a particularly nice person, quite aside from the alcohol dependency, and she has not been a good mother to my DP.
Sadly she was never interested in getting treatment or help with her alcohol dependency when it was flagged to her, by DP, her relatives, her doctors etc - no one seemed to be able to get through to her that her drinking was a huge problem, or it may be that she simply didn't care.
The last time we saw her before she was admitted, she suggested meeting for lunch. I didn't realise it was a pub until we got there. I sat through the lunch with her, her then partner, my DP, DS and two of her sisters (who I actually get on well with) but found the whole thing really unpleasant. In short, she was not kind to my DS. He was only 2 at the time and she expected him to sit still and be quiet for the hour and a half long meal, whilst she and her partner drank their pints. She told me my DS must get his inability to sit still from me (rich coming from her, given she has never told my DP who his dad is, so who gets what from where is a sensitive issue), and that my DP wasn't like it when he was younger (because he was always dragged into pubs with her and apparently he just sat through it). I said that most pubs are not family friendly places for children, so we don't take DS there, because it's not fair on young children to bring them into an adult environment and expect them to enjoy it. She asked me where else we could have gone (!), and I replied by saying that I don't live in the same country as her so it's not up to me to pick a child friendly venue. I pointed out that she lives near a beach and we could have gone there but it was too cold for that apparently.
She also mocked my DS's accent (him and I speak with an English accent, and she is Irish) by saying 'Mate, mate', even though we've never said mate, and was complaining that my DS doesn't like her dog, saying everyone loves her dog etc. At this point, I'd had enough and said to her and her DP, who were waxing lyrical about their amazing dog, that my son was 2 years old, not used to be around dogs or in pubs and that a little tolerance from those who are considerably older goes a long way. I spoke exclusively to everyone else for the rest of the meal because I just couldn't trust myself not to lose my temper with her.
She is now in a home and went though a phase of calling me constantly, asking where she was, when she was going home etc. I spoke to her as much as I could, but it became too much so I've had to stop answering. A lot of her family members are in the same boat, as she will call constantly, and won't remember the previous conversation at all. She calls and messages my DP to the extent that he's had to block her number, so he now calls her once every two days to speak to her. Her partner has left her, so we don't talk to him much anymore, but he said she did the same to him and he ended up blocking her number too.
My question is, do I take my DS to see her when we go to the country where she is to visit the rest of DP's family? The rest of his family are very nice people, and I am doing all I can to encourage positive relationships between them and my DS. It's just her. I'm worried that she will say or do something that will frighten or upset DS, who is 3 now, and I don't know if there's much point in taking the risk. She also never showed a great deal of interest in DS, which is obviously quite painful to witness as a mother. But then she is his grandmother.
What would you do in this situation?