Controlling grandmother

[Uberly]

Hello,

Myself and my DP are fuming with my MIL.....my DSS grandmother. Would be interested to hear others opinions and advice.

You need to know a little back history, which is that MIL looked after DSS for about 6 years (he's now 10). It was quite a struggle for myself and DP to gain our boy living with us full-time from MIL, but we made it! Complicated story why this was the case, will explain if needed.

Anyway, ever since DSS has been with us, she's wanted to be in control. Not every, but most weekends, he goes to spend the weekend with her and grandad. DSS is allowed to play computer games 24/7, eat what he wants (inc lots of sweets, crisps, chocolate, etc), drink what he wants (mainly coke), gets what he wants (toys, etc) and stay up late (normally 1am...although MIL doesn't know that we know that!)

DP and I have the attitude of grandparents spoil their grandchildren. We don't have a problem with that, as its balanced out with the amount of time that DSS now spends with us, and he's at an age where we can explain it to him. But here's the issue....

We ask grandmother to make sure that he brushes his teeth.....he doesn't. She lies to us, telling us that he does. He tells us otherwise.

This weekend, we ask her to make sure he doesn't stay up too late as he has an important week ahead of him, so we say bedtime 10pm (didn't think that was too early, still pretty late!). He came home today and we found out that he went to bed at 10.30pm. Later grandmother came and got him out of bed (she said there was a lot of noise on the street keeping him up, he said there wasn't). He was then downstairs until grandparents went to bed.....at 3AM!!!! To tip us over boiling point, she lied to us about this. She said that he slept after she disturbed him, but he didn't. He told us that he stayed up with his grandparents.

This is purely to get control. The reason we wanted to go bed at a semi-decent time is for his sake. She didn't have to wake him, he was fine.

So Sunday night, as I type this at 11.30pm, he's still awake.

What gets me is that she will go against our wishes, to the point in telling our son to lie to us! She lies to us, saying that shes doing this or that, but we find out otherwise from DSS. This is not a good message to give to my DSS and puts him in an awful situation as he knows not to lie, but he doesn't want to upset grandmother either.

So what do you think? There are more examples, but this is the latest one.

Thanks for taking the time to read this :)

Hmm. Not sure why she had him for such a long time but it is very hard to "let go" for her I suppose.

How about if he didn't go every weekend? Now he is older and has more social stuff to do then perhaps you can keep him at your place on, say, three out of four weekends? He could phone her a bit so she doesn't loose touch.

Make sure you do some fun stuff with him (she gets him at the weekend which is, after all, the more fun time when it's not a schoolnight) too but things that end earlier so that he wants to spend more time with you and DP and not them. Not in a nasty way, but because it's right.

are you not in a position to just tell her if it doesnt stop he cant stay with her, cos not only is she going against your wishes HIS MOTHER, but she she is telling him to lie to his parents, what morals is this teaching your son! as his grandmother she shud be doing what is best for HIM!