Myself and my partner have been together since we were 15 and I gave birth to our first child in September 2018 - we are both 26. We live with his mum as she can not afford the rent for the house on her own, we pay 3/4 of the rent and have the upstairs as our own flat with a living room, bedroom and bathroom. We give her weekly money on top, buy our own food etc. Recently, my partners elder brothers partner walked out on him and his three children, all three children now basically live with us and both parents live single child free lives! Neither parent give any money to the grandmother. She is therefore very involved in those grandchildren’s lives, makes decisions for them, disciplines them and their parents are happy for this to happen.
Because she is so involved in their lives, she somehow thinks she has the right to tell me how to parent my son. She constantly undermines me, has an obsession with him being hungry and wants to wean him at four months ‘as that’s how we did it in my day’. If I put him down for a nap she will try and play with him, if we are upstairs in our living room and she hears him crying she will fly up the stairs as though we are incapable of settling him. She picked my sons scalp when he had cradle cap till it was red raw, then got stroppy when I told her to not do that again. She has so far diagnosed him with colic, wind, teething pain, stomach bugs and gets annoyed when I tell her she is not a doctor. She accuses me of not feeding him enough (I breastfeed on demand) and wants to ‘thicken the bottle with rusks’. She calls him ‘her baby’ at every opportunity. I have pulled her up serveral times and told her firmly that he is my son and I don’t appreciate her interfering ways and she gets stroppy and sulks like a child. She has said before that she was not involved in her other grandchildren’s lives when they were so young so I understand she is happy to see him so much but I am sick and tired of her putting her beak into every 2 seconds. Myself and my partner want to move out, yet every time we mention it she saids ‘oh i’ll Just put myself in a homeless hostel then’ and my partner feels bad about leaving his mum on her own. We have had so many arguments about leaving and it’s getting to the post where I want to leave as soon as possible. She took out catalogues in my partners name without asking him and ruined his credit, she took out sky in his name as she is blacklisted (without asking) then has the cheek to ask us to pay for it and put the box in her room. I feel like she does these things on purpose to keep us from leaving. The house is a mad house, the children are messy and disrespectful, they constantly wake my son with their noise and interfere with our things. It’s so untidy and dirty to the point where I barely go downstairs if I don’t have to. I have suggested that she ask her other son who’s children she is raising for money and she is reluctant to do so for some reason but is happy to take a lot of money from us. My partner is getting fed up too and I suppose I could tolerate it before having my son but now living in this mad house with the constant interfering is becoming too much and I can feel an argument brewing, I don’t want to be disrespectful as it is her house but I can’t take the undermining, interfering and mad house any longer. I know it’s a long story and I apologise if it doesn’t make sense, I suppose my questions are do you think I am overreacting about her interfering, or are all grandmothers this way? ( my mum isn’t this interfering with him) and also, am I being unreasonable wanting to move out knowing she won’t be able to pay the rent? Any Advice/guidance is much appreciated , thank you! X