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.