What to say to demanding PIL re limited time to visit them?

[SoTiredSoTiredSoTired]

I need to work out what needs saying to PIL about our impending visit to their city. We will be there for 8 days in total.

The visit is specifically to help my mother deal with my father, who has had a stroke. Mother is driving 100km each way daily to visit him in a rehab hospital and is exhausted. We are visiting to help by driving her to the hospital and cooking her dinner each night. All of us will be involved in these trips, so that we all get time with my father and mother. The time spent with my father is likely to be an hour or so at most.

PIL live nearly an hour across the city in the other direction from my parents' place. They are fit, healthy, very used to getting their own way, and dare I say it, they like playing the main parts in their luxurious life with everyone else as extras.

When DH tells them about our visit, MIL will go into "poor little me" mode and wheedle at DH for just a few visits here and there (meaning: every day). DH will feel guilty and promise that he and DS will visit every day. FIL will go into shouting bulldog mode and phone up DH and bully him into a schedule worked out by FIL where DH has to bring DS to visit for exactly as many hours as are being spent with my parents, whether or not this suits anyone. DH will feel guilty and agree, because he always agrees with everything his father says. He always has.

Meanwhile DS will be stuck in the middle of all this and will be spending 5 hours a day in the car, being dragged around from one set of grandparents to the other. I will be required to play the nanny, required to come to visit PIL with DH and DS, but not actually allowed to partake in any part of the visit (no talking, no eating or drinking, etc), merely being there in case DS needs me.

Needless to say I don't want to do the PIL bit. DH claims also not to, but "wishes it would all go away" re his parents being demanding, and thus will agree to every single damn thing his father demands.

I've pointed out on many occasions that by always letting his father ride high-handedly over everyone else, DH is not behaving as a decent husband or father. He says he doesn't enjoy it, says it's all so weird, and then just lets it all happen again, every time. The weakness is profoundly unattractive. I am, however, completely dependent on DH at the moment.

What should DH say to PIL when he tells them about our trip?

My idea below:

"Dear PIL, we're visiting your city, however it is to help SoTired's parents because her father has had a stroke. We will be spending a very large amount of time on helping her mother and visiting her father, and it will be on an unpredictable schedule. We will not be able to visit you every day, so please don't request visits every day or even every second day."

...will undoubtedly result in a viciously demanding phonecall from FIL to which DH acquiesces.

This is a war you married into. I believe you can’t fight your partner’s family dynamics without their lead. Unless they have the courage.

Might DH & ds go to PIL for a few days while you do your parents and then come and join you - divide and conquer? Not fair of course but a solution to avoid excessive shlepping?

Your PIL sound grim but also unlikely to change. They may think looking after your parents is your job not dh’s?

I always say to anyone who asks to play the Long Game. You have everything to gain by not trying to change them as it usually doesn’t work and you end up with more trouble then you started with.
Good luck as it’s a tough road with childish PIL.

If you DH insists on telling them, tell him he isn’t to tell details of what you are up to. Just say you are in the city visiting your father who has had a stroke. Make it sound that you are only at the hospital- not ferrying your mum around and seeing her. If they say when are you seeing us tell them you’ll be doing another trip later in the year.

I think you have posted before about these dickheads?

Ask DH if he’s sincere about wanting the conflict to go away. If he says he is, then point out that the simplest way to achieve that is to put PILS on an information diet.

Start with this trip.

What do you mean they don't have anything to do with you? And they feed everyone but you?

Thr whole situation is ridiculous. Your mum needs to stay close to the hospital, if she wants to prioritise seeing your dad every day. Why have you agreed to all this driving when you can't even drive yourself?
Everyone on both sides seems to be groaning and wailing about the unreasonable demands of the others rather than deciding what will actually work!

So many red flags.

Your DS is being raised in a mess of an environment. He's been 'bullied' out of school so has no contact with peers. You describe his behaviours as obsessive re germs, at 9 that's well outside the bounds of normal. He is witnessing his father's awful relationship with his parents. You can't drive. Poor kid.

I agree that this is all really weird. Why is she driving 100km a day rather than staying close by to the rehab?

Why would you stay with someone who let's his parents treat you like this?

Why would you stay with someone who let's their parents feed your child food he's allergic to?

Yes I’m aware of that.

my dc were “merely” lactose intolerant so the consequences of being at pils was “just” explosive diarrhoea for three days.

my SIL then had a baby who was genuinely allergic (full on anaphylaxis) and pils put him in hospital. My SIL and bil no longer eat at their house. They invite pils to theirs or meet up for a day out.

i am thankfully now divorced and well out of the whole situation. My two are now at uni and never see pils (I tell a lie, they saw them at their dad’s wedding to his second wife)

older people “not beleiving” in allergies or intolerances is very common.

Is there anyone else in the wider family who can do some of the driving? It seems tough on your DH that he does all of it.

My DH does all our driving on holiday and resents it, rightly, but I hate driving abroad now and also scary little mountain road driving - I’ve lost my nerve for (!)

This support of your parents is hard on him because of the driving. There seems perhaps more ways you might solve this? Might you stay nearby with your mum maybe for some of it?

How is this of relevance? OP can't and that is all that is needed to know.

“What should DH say to PIL when he tells them about our trip?”

Its not yours - or MN - place to decide what your husband should tell his parents.

You’ve decided your husband should drive your mother to hospital, I don’t think you can unilaterally decide he can’t visit his parents.

Have you posted before about this dynamic? As I'm sure I've read a similar background and the last post was that they'd basically banned you from visiting, and you didn't want DS (quite rightly) to be unsupervised with them but sadly didn't know if DH would stick to his guns under his father's demands.
Sorry if this isn't you but there is a poster on here with similar experience if not!

OP, PILs already don’t like you (and you them) and the problem isn’t your husband spending time with them - it’s your son. Just don’t let your DH take him, it’s as simple as that. From what you’re saying if you really put your foot down your DH will sulk (does that anyhow), PILs will be furious (they see you as paid help already so who cares). So, your husband trots off to his parents and you and DS stay with your mum- that’s it.
But, also, someone else made a valid point- your mum should get a room/air b&b somewhere closer to the hospital for the time being it would make things easier for her (and you if you could just be dropped off at hers).

It’s that posters MO, ignore them. They seem to hate mothers.

You can’t trust your husband wth your son’s health and welfare? That’s the major issue

Quite honestly, I would refuse to go to PIL if they treated me so awfully, and I would expect my husband not to go in solidarity. Not getting on is one thing, but not even offering you a drink? How utterly disrespectful of them, and your husband for allowing this to happen. As you aren't comfortable with DS going due to health and safety concerns, he shouldn't go either. This is not about whether you should visit on this trip, it is whether you should visit at all, ever! Tell your husband to grow a backbone!! What is the worst that could happen if he actually stuck up for his wife and child for once?

Jaysus there's some arseholes on this thread. Sorry OP, this sounds very stressful.

The problem is, the injury has already happened. Your husband provided personal medical information about your parents to his parents, as well as personal information about your plans to go and help them as a family.

This was completely unnecessary, and has resulted in the unachievable set of demands that now lie at the feet of the OP and her husband at a very difficult time.

OP, I have similar PILs and have insisted they are put on an information diet. My husband is beside himself with guilt over it and it makes him genuinely unhappy and distressed to 'keep' things from his parents. This isn't great, but the situation you describe is exactly the sort of situation I refuse to be in: accomodating ILs feelings while I am going through one of life's real rough patches.

They have made births, marriages, deaths, redundancies and serious/eventually fatal illnesses much, much worse that I think some people can imagine, and the marriage is unsustainable if that continues I'm afraid.

It's not fair and I'm sorry, and I hope your dad gets better soon OP.

No. She is trying to look after her sick dad.

'Lexibletheflexible · Today 06:45
ImmortalSnowman · Today 06:35
She also said her PIL feed her allergic child food that could potentially kill him (depending on his allergies) or at least make him sick. Would you put your child at risk to appease your husband who won't stop them? Active child abuse.

Show quote history
Honestly, that read more as a red flag for me. It's very unusual that someone would know their DH would risk the life of their child and still stay with them. I also know that people in some toxic co-parenting situations use things like this to try and undermine and control the other parent.
I am dubious to say the least.
This reads to me like a person who has gone from potentially controlling parents to a controlling spouse and now they are warring to have the most control over him. I suspect he does want to maintain a relationship with his parents. Maybe one with more boundaries, but he doesn't want to cut them off. No matter how much the OP talks them down.'

@Octavia64 @Sulgari there is anaphylactic allergy and non-anaphylactic allergy, as well as intolerance. DS9 has a non-anaphylactic allergy to dairy: whey protein gives him severe diarrhoea. MIL thinks I am "being difficult" and choosing for DS not to be able to have a normal life like a normal child. Therefore she insists on feeding him stuff like milk, ice cream and cheese. DS objects and gets told by FIL to be quiet, DH goes to object and FIL steps in and tells him he's being stupid, MIL has brought up children, MIL knows what she's doing. DH cringes, tells DS to shut up and be grateful. DS politely eats the food and then half an hour later has diarrhoea. Meanwhile I am sitting in a cafe 1km from PILs house because i haven't been invited in, so I only find this out afterwards. I say this isn't going to happen again, so I will attend all visits in future. I then attend visits, uninvited, where PILs don't even talk to me let alone offer me any food or anything. My presence stops MIL from deliberately feeding DS9 dairy, but there are no other upsides to the visits other than DH assuaging his conscience.

Yes, I have a DH problem. However, we live in a different country from the city where PIL and my parents live, so this stuff doesn't come up more than once or twice a year, but it drags on unresolved from one year to the next.

It is also worth considering that not everyone has the money to just up sticks and move to somewhere they can get a job after 10 years out of the workforce, particularly with a child in tow who has unreliable school attendance (and currently, no school attendance). If I dump DH and move cities, and take DS with me - and DS crumbles due to the stress and won't go to school at all - is that a better outcome than us living where we do?

On driving, I have tried many times over the past few decades. I have visual issues and PTSD from previous attempts at learning. I am so bad at it that driving instructors suggest that I find alternative means of transport. This works in most places we go to, and has in the past worked for our parents' city - but it doesn't work for covering the distance to the rehab hospital.

On DS not attending school, yes I agree it's hardly ideal. However, a rigid school system with fines and prosecutions for non-attendance, as well as draconian punishment for "poor choices" like compulsive daydreaming rooted in anxiety instead of completing work, isn't a good fit for a highly anxious, people-pleaser, germ-phobic ND 9 year old. It's far better for him educationally and in terms of mental health to be correspondence-schooled at home and get to see peers outside of school time. He has plenty of extracurriculars and plenty of friends. I'm working on the germ thing, but he got it by being forced to attend school sitting in classrooms full of sick kids.

Re my mother staying closer to the hospital, i completely agree and will try to ask about whether this could be an option, again.

Tell DH that on this trip, you will not be visiting his parents - at all - and neither will your son. He can't make you get in the car. If he insists on going without you, get an Uber to wherever you're going to help your DP.

Your DH is a selfish man who will always do what's easiest for him. You need to make treating you like crap the worse option for him, and standing up to his parents the easier one. After all, you're the one he lives with. Get angrier. Tell him that your parents are having the crisis here and you need his support, and you expect it. And that you don't visit people who ignore you, or who are a danger to your son, so that won't be happening. Does your ds even like visiting them?

"Dear PIL, we're visiting your city, however it is to help SoTired's parents because her father has had a stroke. We will be spending a very large amount of time on helping her mother and visiting her father, and it will be on an unpredictable schedule. We will not be able to visit you every day, so please don't request visits every day or even every second day."

I don't think that comes across very nice at all.
Why not "We will be visiting my parents to help out after my dad suffered a stroke. Are you available on x date? It would be lovely to fit in a visit with you before we come home."
Lays the expectation of one visit, and puts you in control of when it happens. It being lovely is a socially acceptable lie, I think.

(edit: I dont think they particularly deserve nice. I just think the way you phrased it might be asking for an extra headache!)

Seriously, if your DH is prepared to allow your MIL to feed your son food he is allergic to, you are all condoning an assault on him. You have to do whatever it takes to prevent that happening, preferably by making it 100% clear to your husband that he doesn't tell his parents you are in the vicinity.

Yes this is almost exactly the dynamic that I saw at pils.

for the moment I’d suggest that you are dealing with a crisis with your parents and now isn’t the time to try to fix the pil dynamic.

it’ll play out. Just let it play out. Now isn’t the time to try to do anything about it.

if you don’t see them very often it’s not worth getting divorced over.

yes you’ll be tired. So will your dh. Maybe he’ll skip some of the pil visits if he’s too tired (probably not if FIL is that fierce though)

I wouldn’t tell them.

This all sounds very strange. Why can’t you go by yourself to visit your parents? Leave DH and DS at home and don’t mention it to his parents. You’re making such a big deal out of a simple visit. Also, if your DS is 9, surely he knows what he may be allergic to and just doesn’t eat it?