Fuming at my family

[MumWifeBossLife]

I just have to vent.
I am absolutely at my wits end with my parents & my sister.

To set the background:
Both my husband and I agreed to move into a BIG country let with my parents to help us all have a lovely property to raise my little boy in ( our combined income meant we could get somewhere much nicer than we could alone and we split the property). It was all going well and it helped me to have extra help to start my business from home for over a year.
Then there was a big family party and my younger sister and husband came to help organise. To cut a long story short my sister and my husband had a very minor disagreement but her response was MANIC. She started screaming and shouting, completely unwarranted behaviour and all in front of my son, at the time 1 year old. I was calm and told her we don't shout in front of my baby and to stop etc. You will not believe the venom that continued. I of course left with my little one to let her calm down. Every time we came back to our house that day with things for the party etc from running errands she would verbally start attacking me (even though it wasn't me that even had the argument with her). This carried on for several days and even though my parents witnessed the abuse she was hurling at us did nothing to intervene or even ask her to go home.
We told them we couldn't stay there and put up with this, that we would pay our notice period but couldn't stay a moment longer.
They didn't stop us. We had to pretty much flee overnight it was so awkward, and with little savings etc and no help or anyone to watch a baby we had to clear out our house with no help, it has been a nightmare. We upped and moved an hour and a half a way and my mother in law put us up for 2 months until we found somewhere close to her. Luckily my husband knows a lot of contacts here and managed to find work quickly.

Since then we got civil with my parents for the sake of my son. We had a meeting several months on and agreed that they could see him as regularly as they wanted and we would be amicable but as my sister continued to spew hate and gossip about us on social media she was obviously not over it, never tried to make contact and we didn't want someone with her temper and let alone her hatred for us to be around our son. My parents AGREED.

My son has recently started talking and it turns out he has been spending time with my sister and her husband ALL ALONG whenever my parents were meant to be having him the odd weekend. I do not know if my parents were even around when this was happening.
I am fuming.
When confronted my parents are not apologetic. Say we should get over it and how dare we try to keep his aunt away from him & that they won't be complicit in such a thing.

i feel totally let down. That they have the audacity to have gone back on the agreement. That they are once again blaming us for the hatred that my sister is the one continuing. That they have snuck around behind my back WITH my child. Have put my child in situations I was not aware of.

....I have told them they cannot have my child to stay over now, that i cannot trust them anymore. I won't stop them seeing him they can come and see him as much as they want but i don't trust them to follow our rules now with him alone...

Am i being unreasonable. Am i going overboard. I just feel so angry I don't know if i can see the wood for the trees...

Sorry for the massive rant. I just want some impartial perspective.

X

I'm sorry your parents have treated you like this. I suggest a period of little or no contact - I'm confused as to why you'd invite them over after this.

Do they have form for this behaviour?

Your parents and sister sound totally disfunctional

StaplesCorner & AdalindSchade I am glad you don't think i am over reacting.
Yes i definitely need no contact for a while to just calm down. They just constantly throw at me that removing my child from his extended family is damaging to him but i honestly think it is worse to put a child in stressful situations.
You are right i shouldn't have them around its just that i am so torn up about it, i was always a Daddy's girl (he is getting quite old now) and it really plays on my mind that this could be the way things end between us just because my mother & sister are manipulative.
My sister DOES have form for totally irrational outbursts and behaviour but it is my parents behaviour that is baffling. That they have taken her side so strongly is just so strange and upsetting.
I just want to cry all the time.
Thank you for messaging me.
X

your Parents agreed with your Sisters venom... they also wanted you gone... this is proven by their continued behaviour...

Cut these people out of your Life.. they are poison x

That is what i thought too Gemini69.
I have decided to cut them out as much as possible. It is awkward because indirectly my business and livelihood is connected to my parents business. But i don't see how they could damage my business without damaging theirs if that makes sense. So for now I will not be getting in touch with them and i do not want to see them.
X

well done.. take control back and you make the decisions on who has access your your child.. nobody else ...

Stay strong Lady xx

I went NC with DH's family 16 years ago and I can honestly say its worked out brilliantly for me.

I wouldn't leave my children with people who go against my wishes behind my back over something so important.

If they disagreed with you not allowing contact between your sister and your child, they should have discussed it with you directly. It is unfair to your child to put them in the middle of this, hearing your sister being rude about you, knowing you have a major problem with your sister (justifiably so based on your OP) and having to deal with conflicting loyalties, and presumably lies as they wouldn't want what they are doing getting back to you.

No, I wouldn't let them have unsupervised access to their grandchild either.

I'm a little confused as to why a disagreement about a family party meant you had to flee the house?

However regardless your parents should not have gone behind your back.

I think your solution (visiting at your home) is a good one. It leaves the ball in your court.

As for your sister, she can't really expect to build a relationship with your son while being publicly nasty to you surely?

So your sister had an OTT read ton and instead of checking if she was ok, worrying about what was wrong with her your reaction was "you can't be upset, my son might hear a raised voice"??
I'd have plunked baby on Daddy and looked after my sister. Your 1 year old will not grow up damaged from a one off bit of shoutong.

So something tells me there's history between you two.

Its obviously not ok she continued to spew verbal abuse at you but did it not concern you why DSis was suddenly acting like thiS.

Did she threaten to harm you? Because otherwise fleeing in the middle of the night, giving up your home and jobs is a little OTT too. I assume you weren't in a 2 up 2 down. You could have kept put of each others way for a few days or even stayed with in laws for a couple of days if you needed a break.

You paid off your part of the house but has this left them with a huge house they cannot afford?

Just seems like a huge over reaction up until this part.

However if you explicitly told your parents they could have DS but not near Sis then I dont think thats acceptable and i wouldn't leave him there alone.

I do however think you all need to talk to each other more

MommaGee - the original argument is irrelevant to the matter at hand. The OP could be being totally OTT about the original argument, but again, irrelevant. Doesn't matter that there's history between her or not.

I see it quite simply. Your parents let your child spend time with someone you dislike and explicitly told them you didn't want him around. Doesn't matter who that is. They have no respect for you as a parent. They feel they, and your sister, have a right to your child. They don't.

My SIL is acting like a total cow at the moment. I don't dislike her enough to keep her away from our son, but I also know that she knows jack shit about him, didn't visit him when he was sick and hospitalized, and knows nothing about children in general so I wouldn't ever leave him with her without someone else around (which my in-laws know as well).

If your parents were around and you trust THEM with your son, at least take comfort in the fact he was safe. It doesn't change that they don't respect your choices but I'd be able to calm down a little... they'd be added to my list of people where supervised visitation is required because they obviously don't make sound choices/choices I agree with. I would be apoplectic with rage!

Your relationship with your parents must have been disfunctional to begin with as you felt unable to tell your sister to leave on your own but had to wait for your parents to do it.

That was YOUR home as much as your parents...you were also paying for it yet you deferred to their rule when your sister was shouting at you like that.

I'd have just told her to get out. Why didn't you?

I totally agree about her parents being in the wrong. I only raise the other points because there's clearly bigger issues and I do wonder if OP has a tendency to over react. The mid night flit because her sister was upset. Telling her sister she wasn't allowed to be upset because the 1 yo might hear a raised voice. Her parents should not have let DS see his Aunt without Op's permission though

Momma I know what you mean about the midnight flit but I certainly didn't want people shouting around my babies...and I would react badly to a family member doing that.

I would be fuming about the son being allowed to see the auntie too.

I did read the piece about the disagreement and think something did not compute though and there must be history there or something very wrong.

Something is not right with this story.

You setup a home with your parents. Sister comes over to arrange a party, has argument with your DH so you move out after a few days. Why did you move out if it's not your sisters home?

Both reactions seem OTT

What do you think your sis would say if she told her side of the story?

MrsOverTheRoad so if your sister and her partner had a disagreement and your sister completely over reacted your first reaction would be to shot your sister down completely because no one can raise their voice in the vicinity of your child? Not to get DH to move DC out the way or to to take DS away? I'd be worrier about my sister . I think it speaks volumes that OP wasn't

Regardless of the intricacies of the original disagreement, if the OP has told her parents she doesn't want her sister to see her child, her parents should have either respected that boundary or told the OP they disagreed, couldn't honour her wishes, and therefore wouldn't be able to look after her child at their house. Simple.

As they've decided to completely ignore her wishes for her own child, it's clear they can't be trusted to look after him now. Simple again.

Momma

She said this.. " I of course left with my little one to let her calm down. Every time we came back to our house that day with things for the party etc from running errands she would verbally start attacking me"

So she did remove her child. But the verbal attacks went on.

To those asking why i didn't remove my child from my sister kicking off, I did. Straight away!!
She kept the situation going through messages etc.
Why we felt the need to leave after an argument over a party and was it blown out of proportion? Totally, That is the whole point.
It was literally over nothing and it should have just been people getting stressy organising a party, some snippy comments and an apology should have been the end of it. Which is why i refer to her reaction being 'manic' it was completely uncalled for, and she has continued it ever since. I honesty think she needs medical help judging by her reactions and anger issues and if my child hadn't been present then I would of course think it best to have stuck around and help her through it, but I couldn't do that when my kid is likely to be around any outbursts as that was my home.
Because it was a party for my parents anniversary we thought it best to just stay out of her way until it was over to not upset her, but my parents have always walked on egg shells around her and favoured her, and when she continued throwing abuse at us even the next day, and then messaging me with unprovoked further abuse, we said we couldn't have her around our child and in our house until she sorted herself out and calmed down at least. My parents decided not to say anything about her reactions and refused to restrict their child coming to visit them whenever she wanted in their home even short term. It got very bitter and we had to make the decision to remove ourselves from the situation if that is how they wanted to do it.
With the threat of my very ANGRY sister just being able to turn up whenever she wanted and my parents making the house seem very hostile as they had picked their side, deciding my sister needed their support above trying to talk her down from the situation and see sense, they just continued to validate her response and made us feel like we were in the wrong.
With a young child in the house i don't see how we could have stayed, my parents were ignoring us in the hallways etc it was beyond AWKWARD and childish and i do not want my kid exposed to that kind of tension.

I have no doubt if you had all been in the same living situation you would have done the same!

The only thing you did wrong as far as I can see is by staying as long as you did. They sound like a nightmare, and you were completely right to remove your child from that situation.

Better off out of it, I think.

Thank you, you have all helped strengthen my resolve. I appreciate you all listening to me, i really needed it. X