Who is being unreasonable - MIL at Christmas

[beth1991]

Hi all
To cut a long story short my MIL is a maternal narcissist (just to put some context around my feelings about her!) my husband also isn't her biggest fan and has purposely rota'd himself on to work some days over Christmas to have an excuse not to see her 🙈

We live about 1hr 15 away from her and have a little girl who has just turned 2. Last year we hosted Christmas, she came down for the day with other family and some of my family also came for dinner. This year we just want to spend it at home just us 3, no exceptions.

She has insisted that she see us on the 27th December and gives our daughter her presents then. I am not ungrateful at all for anything our daughter receives but this has really annoyed me as it's from her completely selfish point of view that she wants to see her open them not that it may confuse our daughters concept of Christmas. I do understand that she's want to see her open them but with my daughter maybe not fully understanding Christmas but starting to, that way she's not going to think nannas presents were delivered by Santa.

Birthdays are obviously different, I have told my husband that it's not going to happen which he agrees. Opinions on do you think we're being unreasonable especially because of my opinion of her. Or do you think I'm being a complete cow and we should allow this for one more year? X

YAB-soooooooo-U

You want the option to say no I don't want to see you, but leave presents here for Christmas.

Come on, think about that.

Very, very unreasonable. The joy of seeing a child open a present you bought is one of the reasons you buy presents!

If this is your usual attitude to her I don't think she is the problem.

YABU

Choose your battles, this isn't one of them.

Santa isn't parcel force. I feel a bit annoyed on his behalf that you're expecting him to do all the schlepping about of presents, what if the kid prefers the one he's just delivered over the ones the elves spent hours making.

YABU

Yabu.

Your poor mil.

Op
Santa doesn't exist
HTH

Santa doesn’t bring all the presents how will your dd learn the value of money and to thank people for their kind gift. At least she is young enough to sort this out, in our house Santa brings one gift and the rest are from us or whoever’s name is on the tag.

OP, your dd is too young to understand anyway but yabu. The person giving the gifts gets credit for them, also at 2 it's best to let the gift opening for over a few days ime- they can get overwhelmed easily because it's too young to understand the concept as you seem to expect.

Think longer term, when your dd is older and talks about 'what Santa brought' with other kids, if 'Santa' brings her everything but other kids only get one gift or a stocking or much less/more than her how will that sit? Keep it simple.

This is one of the most unreasonable things I've ever read on here.

I agree with your self assessment, you are being a complete cow. Your MiL is respecting your wishes to have Christmas alone but that’s still not good enough for you. You don’t really give any examples of her bad behaviour, so on the basis of the facts you have given YABU.

You described your MIL as being narcissistic but she is not the one doing anything unusual in your post!

One of my best things about getting divorced is getting rid of my mil.

But honestly, yabvvu and totally unrealistic.

YABU. It sounds like MIL has chosen a non-Xmas day (27th) to visit, so has paid attention to your wish to have a Xmas with just the three of you.

I can’t see how it’ll ruin DD’s idea of Xmas. Perhaps you should start explaining that Santa only brings Santa presents, and presents from relatives like MIL are brought over by them (or sent by post). If you don’t want to do that, tell DD Santa brought all the presents but you saved MIL’s so she could watch her open it when she visited.

Usually when people post about their 'difficult' MILs they usually try and hide how they themselves have added to the conflict.

At least you have made no attempt to hide your contempt for her.

YABU, as a proud owner of a 1.5 year old and a nearly 3 yo I think you are being over optimistic about how much your 2yo will understand about Christmas (clue, they won't) and this is probably just another excuse for you to aggravate relations with your MIL.

Sure your DH hasn't rota'd himself on just to avoid the both of you, if you aren't seeing her anyway why is he having to avoid her?

YABU, of course your MIL is going to want to give the presents herself and see them being opened.

No child is upset or has their up standing of xmas ruined by grandma giving presents a couple of days later. If you do t like it visit her earlier.

Yabu. You sound batshit. No wonder you don't get on with MIL.

You’re massively over complicating things by having Father Christmas Deliver ALL presents. If anything is going to make a logically minded child question his existence (and she’s only TWO - this is more when she’s a bit older and work out how weird the system is) it’s that. FC gives some presents just from him - a stocking and a big present perhaps. All other presents are delivered by the person who bought them, and they may deliver them before Christmas to be put under the tree, or after Christmas when they first get to hand the present over personally.

So DD's never allowed to be given a Christmas gift unless it's via Santa? That is honestly so ridiculous I don't even know where to start.
What will you do if someone doesn't give their gifts until after Christmas, burn them??

You don't get to dictate when/ where/ how your DD is given a gift, that's not how giving works.

No wonder you are having issues with your MIL.

YABU. And I say that as someone who asked there MIL to do the same thing (oh the shame).

I’ve had many disagreements with my MIL over Christmas but that one (and a few others) is totally my bad. Different families do things differently. Child gets presents, child does not give a stuff.

YABU

Santa brings a stocking. Everyone else gives their own gifts which are opened over the Christmas season. The more you can open in front of the giver the better.

I'm not sure MIL is the batshit one here.

My late exMIL was a very tricky person.
Every single year, without fail, I took my children to visit her and exfil 300 miles away on 27th and stayed for a couple of days. It wasn't all torture but felt like it at the time
The reason I did it was that they were the children's Grandparents, the children deserved a relationship with them and actually they deserved a relationship with the children and their hopeless father wasn't going to bother
And you begrudge your daughters Grandparents visiting her after Christmas?!
Im not sure if this is real, iso hope not. Otherwise I'd have to accept there really are people who are so ungenerous and spiteful in the world

On the face of this one, your MiL is not the one who is hard work here.

YABU for all the reasons everyone else said. My PiL will come for Christmas day but bring their presents with them at lunchtime. My mum will come on Boxing Day and bring hers. It’s not an issue, really it isn’t.

Glad the child is 2. She won't have grasped Christmas yet. You won't let her see the child on Christmas day and the 27th is also an issue? Be thankful she wants to see you all at all and be part of her life.

You aren’t being a cow but you are being unreasonable. It’s fine for presents to be spread out a bit over Christmas. Children can be overwhelmed by getting too much at once.

And it’s not unreasonable for someone to want to see a child unwrapping their gift. I don’t often get to see my godchildren opening what I’ve bought them but on the occasions I do it brings me so much happiness to see their little faces.

Your post makes it clear that you don’t think much of your MIL and no doubt you have good reasons but that doesn’t mean she can’t be a loving and involved Granny to your DC. Lighten up a bit.