The Return of the MIL...

[Mariellama]

We've not seen her since the beginning of 2020 when DD was a baby, now we also have baby DS. Since DD was born she's never had a birthday or Christmas card/present from MIL and she had facetimed with us once. DH isn't close to her and had a pretty rough childhood but he tries to be nice to her.

My issue is that MIL'S previous behaviour didn't fall into what I'd call social norms. She was very overbearing when she visited newborn DD, barely let me feed or hold her and tried to come into my bedroom at night when she was crying. She was creeping in the corridor whilst i was napping with DD and purposefully woke her up once. DH addressed some of this at the time, but MIL barely speaks English so it's very hard for me to try to communicate with her, DH also found it awkward but he was at work so he didn't see all of her behaviour. In MIL's culture respect for your elders is paramount so he wouldn't want to upset her.

So we've not seen her for a while although she has visited her relatives overseas. I have a feeling she's going to come to our home thinking she's granny of the year and she'll want to take lots of photos with the kids to send to her friends and family, in spite of not having any kind of relationship with the children.

I have no ide how she'll behave but at least it's just for the weekend so I'm sure I'll manage to stay polite. Not quite sure why I'm posting, just wanting to rant a bit I guess.

I guess I should have posted to AIBU, AIBU to not want MIL to visit us? I would have been slaughtered though...

My MIL lives 25 mins away and has always bothered with her daughters children over ours she could go months if we didn’t visit her and she was only 40 when we had our first child in my opinion no excuses, my youngest is now 15 and I regret not saying anything much to her face over this, she used to go pass our house whilst taken her daughters children out for the day as she looked after them whilst her daughter worked full time, I worked pt hrs and one point could not work due to one of my daughters being ill (3 yrs) this yr we maybe have seen her 4 times I feel like she treats our children as if they are an acquaintance, if you are not happy please speak up, I’m still trying to x

Op I can offer you sympathy rather than advice. My dad hasn’t seen dc for about 5 years but whenever I posted a picture of them on Facebook he’d copy it to put in his Facebook and I’d see dozens of likes and comments from his ‘friends’ so I stopped posting. I hate that he wants the world to think he’s the world’s best grandfather.

Good luck with the visit, just make sure your dh agrees with whatever way you find of dealing with her.

@stealthninjamum it's exactly that pretentiousness that I dislike, the opinions of her friends and wider family mean everything to her and it's all about appearances.

She put a photo of DD as her profile picture on Facebook, a child she didn't know at all.

Now it seems that DH plans to invite her over for Christmas because he thinks she'll enjoy seeing the children open their presents 🙈. I suggested that she might visit after Christmas but not be here on actual Christmas day. There goes my Christmas joy!

Fuck that, tell your dh she is not coming at Christmas. You get a say too, your house. You’ve got a dh problem too. You only get a few magical Christmas’ with kids - don’t let her ruin it.