Have you ever set boundaries with your in-laws regarding elderly help? If so, some tips and advice are needed please.

[Cheeseandbeansontoast]

For background info, there is dh and his brother, plus me and SIL and their adult children. We didn’t have children.

Some help required here as the In-laws (who think women should be kept in a box until help is expected 🙄) are getting older and getting more demanding.

Dh is doing all he can to help, his Dbro isn’t doing much to help as their adult children ‘need him at home’ , and as we don’t have children, surely we have nothing better to do…..As you can tell, I’m a bit pissed off.

I help out every now and then with Dh, but they make a five minute job into a day of a thing, adding jobs on to the original ‘to do’ list, so we are stuck there longer than anticipated, and the hints of women’s work and elderly care are getting stronger. Up to now, I have ignored them.

But it’s going to come to a head one day, and I think boundaries need setting now. Have you set boundaries regarding this? If so, how did you implement them?

My thoughts are that the primary caregiving goes to Dh and his Dbro, 50/50, seeing as she gave birth to them and brought them up.

I haven't rtft but I have read OPs posts.

There is a real difference between offering support with tasks she could do on her own, and stepping up as and when with actual personal care when she is not able to do things. But in both cases you'll need to practice being clear and assertive.

At the till with wallpaper "Ah, sorry MIL, I can't go round choosing again, afraid I've another commitment now (e.g. I am meeting someone in an hour) let's arrange to come back another time when you've planned the dates you want it done." Then just weather the pursed lips etc. This is advice which is nothing to do with someone getting older. She could pick out wallpaper herself. If she needs help it can be on your terms, as you're offering it.

Later on, you might not even need to be clear with her - if she is widowed, with dementia or whatever, you will be deciding with DH how many times the carers should come in the day, what instructions to give them, how it's all paid for. The issue will become what boundaries are suitable for you, to feel OK about what you are doing & impact on DH.

For example. You might well be negotiating with meals on wheels, the hearing aid manufacturers, calling the GP as you suspect she has a UTI... this is all totally normal level of support even for someone who has wall to wall care agencies. And it's likely there will be a phase of this before/instead of her going into residential care. You can say "It's totally down to DH" but it won't be - you will care about him and you'll say "look love, you've got that work meeting, I'll nip round and let the gardener in" or whatever it is. So you need to think about what you can and can't affect in future, and your boundaries now. Personal care is off the table- but supporting DH is on the table? Where would something like calling the council fit in? Answering the call if she went to sleep on her emergency button & set it of How about writing notices to put on the inside of her door saying 'You are at home, please don't go out, call me instead.' These are examples of stuff I have done for MIL.

So I suggest you take a more adult view of the two separate problems. Long term, she's going to get older and DH will probably be the one who takes the lion's share of admin & decisions & actual care. You are going to be implicated in that - you simply won't be able to ignore it and have a lovely weekend. Decide what you can reasonably do, as it unfolds. The less guilt and emotion you bring to this, the better it will be for all of you.

So you need separate skills now - to have clear boundaries with a CF who wants help with everything and is trying to line you up for more. Again, you can't avoid her disappointment and disapproval so you need to just train her now, and train yourself to hold the line on what's reasonable. Women's work? "Haha MIL, it's not the 50s now, we all have to be responsible for sorting out our own care, don't we, these days?"

Great post @Whitegrapewine.

I get that you would like BIL to do more but in practice I just dont think thats realistic. Clearly they wont. Perhaps they have their own reasons. For example, in our family - PIL are now very elderly and need a lot of care. BIL lives with them and takes the brunt of it. My DH sees them once a month at most even though we all live in London. Do I think thats fair, no. Nor do I think that DH is being fair. But he simply isnt prepared to do anymore, no matter what I say to him.

A lot of your posts are about MIL wanting you to do things, you can of course, decide not to do them. But whether you can decide for your DH is whats at stake here. Perhaps it's for your DH to decide how much he is willing to do even if his brother is not doing anymore. Realistically if he isnt doing it now - he wont do much in the future.