Mom Wants to Take My Kid to the Doctor

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've posted a few times in this thread. I feel for you, OP. My mom is manipulative and borderline and is completely incapable of having healthy relationships. I am an only child and didn't have the tools to establish boundaries, so I always just tolerated her manipulation and emotional abuse.

She behaved in some really frustrating ways within the first few months of my wife and me becoming parents. My wife suggested we talk to a therapist to figure out how to get on the same page with regard to dealing with my mom. We didn't go to many sessions, maybe 5-8. But it helped tremendously, and I have far more control now.

By all means read some books, but you should probably talk to someone, too. Establishing boundaries will be very hard, but you will be so glad. Otherwise you will be in these patterns until your parents pass. They will manipulate your children, and you won't know how to stop it.

Thank you! I have been to therapy about it. I even tried therapy with her but that blew up.

I absolutely need to do a better job with the boundaries. But it's so hard to give up the free childcare plus they do really love the grandkids and the grandkids love them (but you're totally right, soon enough she will start manipulating the grandkids too, I'm already starting to see it and it terrifies me). We were actually making progress but then COVID happened and then we didn't have any other childcare options that we felt safe with so we fell back into it. And then my husband lost his job and so getting paid childcare became a financial challenge too.

One challenge is that everything will be great for like a month and I start thinking, "Ok, we're good" and let down my guard and then out of nowhere, the manipulation and control reappears. And then I try to pull back, then everything is good again and the cycle happens again.

Sounds like you’ve made your choice then. Yes to romantic evenings, yes to grandparents controlling your family.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Op absolutely is missing something. There is no reason dh should be so exhausted he can’t provide childcare and needs grandparent help. In my household one of us has been out of work this whole pandemic. Guess what he has been doing??? Childcare!!! We have never had any need for a sitter or grandparents or whatever. Sounds like OP and her husband need to figure out how to live life as adults.

OP here. It's easy to write anonymous snarky posts, but if you're really in the same situation, how about some constructive advice?

My husband is actively job searching, which is taking upwards of 20 hours per week. Between searching for jobs, writing cover letters, reaching out to people to network, working with recruiters, interviews and prep for interviews, pro bono projects to develop skills and make contacts, it really is like a job. So it's not like he's just sitting on his ass. To get concrete, here's how our day looks:

Morning: he is on kid duty, I work frenetically to get a full day's work into 4-5 hours.
Afternoon: I am on kid duty, he does his job search stuff and catches up on groceries, bills, house repairs, mail, all that "adulting" fun. He makes dinner while I watch kids.
Evening: we eat dinner together, then bedtime routine. After kids in bed, we finish the work we didn't get done in the morning. We pass out from exhaustion and then get up and do it all over again.

Are there other families with young kids and similar workloads and no childcare? I'm sure. I know some of them. They are always tired and their romantic lives are nonexistent. I'm not really interested in living like that. I like having romantic evenings, spending time with my husband and having regular sex. I like going on vacation just the two of us every year. If you are satisfied being with your kids 24/7, all power to you, but there are plenty of families that do use sitters and grandparents to get much-needed time away from kids.

OP, I'm with you about not burning yourself out on kid stuff, and we also lean heavily on grandparents (in addition to having an au pair). But part of that deal is tolerating meddling. You can't have it both ways.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, what are you looking for here? We can’t change your mom; we can’t even give her advice because she’s not the one here asking. Your choices are simple - go along with what your mom wants, or stand up to her and give up your free babysitting. The rest of it is just noise.

OP here. That's exactly what I was looking for - to figure out whether to go along or give up the free babysitting. It's a really hard choice.

My mom really loves the grandkids (a bit too obsessively, I guess) and there is a lot of good in the relationship.

BUT ALSO she's been manipulating and undermining me forever and that's never going to change. There is no job I could have, no life choice that I could make that will ever be good enough. We might have a good month or two, but then it's back to judgment and control and emotional extremes.

BUT ALSO, her own mom treated her this way and it's all she knows, so it's not really her fault. My grandma is still alive and I see her treat my mom much worse than my mom treats me. So I feel really sorry for her

BUT ALSO, she refuses to get therapy and set boundaries with her own mom and fix her behavior. And soon my kids will be old enough to start noticing and being affected by it.

BUT ALSO, free childcare is nothing to scoff at. And I know people keep commenting like "deal with it, that's adulthood". But not really. The idea that raising young children needs to be exhausting and miserable is a social construct. Our society offers no support to parents, and that's not normal. I don't think we should wear our exhaustion like a badge of misery. Look at all the posts on these forums about sexless marriages and affairs and having nothing to talk to your spouse about. That's what happens when you spend all your time working and taking care of kids. I do think there is a real value in adults-only vacations or weekend breaks. My husband and I have been together more than 15 years and we are still very much in love (and I mean romantic, passionate love, not just the doing-dishes-together-and-chatting kind). And that is because we have been able to carve out regular time for just us, and my parents are the reason we could do that. When we had a nanny, that was for work hours and maybe errands. My parents always provided couple time. And I'm reluctant to lose that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've posted a few times in this thread. I feel for you, OP. My mom is manipulative and borderline and is completely incapable of having healthy relationships. I am an only child and didn't have the tools to establish boundaries, so I always just tolerated her manipulation and emotional abuse.

She behaved in some really frustrating ways within the first few months of my wife and me becoming parents. My wife suggested we talk to a therapist to figure out how to get on the same page with regard to dealing with my mom. We didn't go to many sessions, maybe 5-8. But it helped tremendously, and I have far more control now.

By all means read some books, but you should probably talk to someone, too. Establishing boundaries will be very hard, but you will be so glad. Otherwise you will be in these patterns until your parents pass. They will manipulate your children, and you won't know how to stop it.

Thank you! I have been to therapy about it. I even tried therapy with her but that blew up.

I absolutely need to do a better job with the boundaries. But it's so hard to give up the free childcare plus they do really love the grandkids and the grandkids love them (but you're totally right, soon enough she will start manipulating the grandkids too, I'm already starting to see it and it terrifies me). We were actually making progress but then COVID happened and then we didn't have any other childcare options that we felt safe with so we fell back into it. And then my husband lost his job and so getting paid childcare became a financial challenge too.

One challenge is that everything will be great for like a month and I start thinking, "Ok, we're good" and let down my guard and then out of nowhere, the manipulation and control reappears. And then I try to pull back, then everything is good again and the cycle happens again.

Sounds like you’ve made your choice then. Yes to romantic evenings, yes to grandparents controlling your family.

That is the choice we have been making so far...but maybe it's time for a different choice. It's just people are writing posts like this is the most obvious decision in the world and it's not, because there are sacrifices no matter what I do and it's hard to figure out which is the least bad option!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I've posted a few times in this thread. I feel for you, OP. My mom is manipulative and borderline and is completely incapable of having healthy relationships. I am an only child and didn't have the tools to establish boundaries, so I always just tolerated her manipulation and emotional abuse.

She behaved in some really frustrating ways within the first few months of my wife and me becoming parents. My wife suggested we talk to a therapist to figure out how to get on the same page with regard to dealing with my mom. We didn't go to many sessions, maybe 5-8. But it helped tremendously, and I have far more control now.

By all means read some books, but you should probably talk to someone, too. Establishing boundaries will be very hard, but you will be so glad. Otherwise you will be in these patterns until your parents pass. They will manipulate your children, and you won't know how to stop it.

The weird genetic history thing gave me flashbacks to my borderline MIL too.

[Anonymous]

You sound insufferable, OP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've posted a few times in this thread. I feel for you, OP. My mom is manipulative and borderline and is completely incapable of having healthy relationships. I am an only child and didn't have the tools to establish boundaries, so I always just tolerated her manipulation and emotional abuse.

She behaved in some really frustrating ways within the first few months of my wife and me becoming parents. My wife suggested we talk to a therapist to figure out how to get on the same page with regard to dealing with my mom. We didn't go to many sessions, maybe 5-8. But it helped tremendously, and I have far more control now.

By all means read some books, but you should probably talk to someone, too. Establishing boundaries will be very hard, but you will be so glad. Otherwise you will be in these patterns until your parents pass. They will manipulate your children, and you won't know how to stop it.

Thank you! I have been to therapy about it. I even tried therapy with her but that blew up.

I absolutely need to do a better job with the boundaries. But it's so hard to give up the free childcare plus they do really love the grandkids and the grandkids love them (but you're totally right, soon enough she will start manipulating the grandkids too, I'm already starting to see it and it terrifies me). We were actually making progress but then COVID happened and then we didn't have any other childcare options that we felt safe with so we fell back into it. And then my husband lost his job and so getting paid childcare became a financial challenge too.

One challenge is that everything will be great for like a month and I start thinking, "Ok, we're good" and let down my guard and then out of nowhere, the manipulation and control reappears. And then I try to pull back, then everything is good again and the cycle happens again.

Me again. Yup. I can totally relate. I think it's very common with borderline people. It sucks.

I can also relate to feeling sorry for her because she lost her mom young and her dad was a depressed asshole, but of course since he passed she talks about him like he was an enlightened genius.

It's good you're aware that she's already manipulating your kids. Don't fail to act on that awareness.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Op absolutely is missing something. There is no reason dh should be so exhausted he can’t provide childcare and needs grandparent help. In my household one of us has been out of work this whole pandemic. Guess what he has been doing??? Childcare!!! We have never had any need for a sitter or grandparents or whatever. Sounds like OP and her husband need to figure out how to live life as adults.

OP here. It's easy to write anonymous snarky posts, but if you're really in the same situation, how about some constructive advice?

My husband is actively job searching, which is taking upwards of 20 hours per week. Between searching for jobs, writing cover letters, reaching out to people to network, working with recruiters, interviews and prep for interviews, pro bono projects to develop skills and make contacts, it really is like a job. So it's not like he's just sitting on his ass. To get concrete, here's how our day looks:

Morning: he is on kid duty, I work frenetically to get a full day's work into 4-5 hours.
Afternoon: I am on kid duty, he does his job search stuff and catches up on groceries, bills, house repairs, mail, all that "adulting" fun. He makes dinner while I watch kids.
Evening: we eat dinner together, then bedtime routine. After kids in bed, we finish the work we didn't get done in the morning. We pass out from exhaustion and then get up and do it all over again.

Are there other families with young kids and similar workloads and no childcare? I'm sure. I know some of them. They are always tired and their romantic lives are nonexistent. I'm not really interested in living like that. I like having romantic evenings, spending time with my husband and having regular sex. I like going on vacation just the two of us every year. If you are satisfied being with your kids 24/7, all power to you, but there are plenty of families that do use sitters and grandparents to get much-needed time away from kids.

Wow. You are either a troll or raised with immense privilege. What you are describing is normal and yes, many -- most -- other parents do it every day. You're "really not interested in living like that?" LOL!

You don't stop working for pay and start a business that you *hope* will support you in a year (but not until) with a spouse who isn't working. If you don't want to deal with your own kids full-time and yes, be exhausted (welcome to adulthood, again), then you need to stop playing house and one or both of you get a PAYING FULL-TIME JOB. Then you can afford the "breaks" you so desperately have convinced yourself you need.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, what are you looking for here? We can’t change your mom; we can’t even give her advice because she’s not the one here asking. Your choices are simple - go along with what your mom wants, or stand up to her and give up your free babysitting. The rest of it is just noise.

OP here. That's exactly what I was looking for - to figure out whether to go along or give up the free babysitting. It's a really hard choice.

My mom really loves the grandkids (a bit too obsessively, I guess) and there is a lot of good in the relationship.

BUT ALSO she's been manipulating and undermining me forever and that's never going to change. There is no job I could have, no life choice that I could make that will ever be good enough. We might have a good month or two, but then it's back to judgment and control and emotional extremes.

BUT ALSO, her own mom treated her this way and it's all she knows, so it's not really her fault. My grandma is still alive and I see her treat my mom much worse than my mom treats me. So I feel really sorry for her

BUT ALSO, she refuses to get therapy and set boundaries with her own mom and fix her behavior. And soon my kids will be old enough to start noticing and being affected by it.

BUT ALSO, free childcare is nothing to scoff at. And I know people keep commenting like "deal with it, that's adulthood". But not really. The idea that raising young children needs to be exhausting and miserable is a social construct. Our society offers no support to parents, and that's not normal. I don't think we should wear our exhaustion like a badge of misery. Look at all the posts on these forums about sexless marriages and affairs and having nothing to talk to your spouse about. That's what happens when you spend all your time working and taking care of kids. I do think there is a real value in adults-only vacations or weekend breaks. My husband and I have been together more than 15 years and we are still very much in love (and I mean romantic, passionate love, not just the doing-dishes-together-and-chatting kind). And that is because we have been able to carve out regular time for just us, and my parents are the reason we could do that. When we had a nanny, that was for work hours and maybe errands. My parents always provided couple time. And I'm reluctant to lose that.

Oh, FFS. Then geeeet a jooooob. "My husband spends 20 whole hours a week looking for employment! No wonder he's exhausted!" I don't know or care your age, but you guys are the (often wrong, but not in this case) stereotype of the lazy millenial. You are not bring in income. If you are not going to get paying employment, then he must, now. A full-time job. No waiting for the "perfect' job with the "perfect" requirements. It may involve longer commutes or other things you/he don't like. Too damn bad. Two adults not bringing in income while raising children is asinine, unless you are trust fund babies (which clearly you aren't, since you can't afford a nanny).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

OP here. That's exactly what I was looking for - to figure out whether to go along or give up the free babysitting. It's a really hard choice.

My mom really loves the grandkids (a bit too obsessively, I guess) and there is a lot of good in the relationship.

BUT ALSO she's been manipulating and undermining me forever and that's never going to change. There is no job I could have, no life choice that I could make that will ever be good enough. We might have a good month or two, but then it's back to judgment and control and emotional extremes.

BUT ALSO, her own mom treated her this way and it's all she knows, so it's not really her fault. My grandma is still alive and I see her treat my mom much worse than my mom treats me. So I feel really sorry for her

BUT ALSO, she refuses to get therapy and set boundaries with her own mom and fix her behavior. And soon my kids will be old enough to start noticing and being affected by it.

BUT ALSO, free childcare is nothing to scoff at. And I know people keep commenting like "deal with it, that's adulthood". But not really. The idea that raising young children needs to be exhausting and miserable is a social construct. Our society offers no support to parents, and that's not normal. I don't think we should wear our exhaustion like a badge of misery. Look at all the posts on these forums about sexless marriages and affairs and having nothing to talk to your spouse about. That's what happens when you spend all your time working and taking care of kids. I do think there is a real value in adults-only vacations or weekend breaks. My husband and I have been together more than 15 years and we are still very much in love (and I mean romantic, passionate love, not just the doing-dishes-together-and-chatting kind). And that is because we have been able to carve out regular time for just us, and my parents are the reason we could do that. When we had a nanny, that was for work hours and maybe errands. My parents always provided couple time. And I'm reluctant to lose that.

The first bold is bullshit. Your mom's behavior was all you knew and yet here you are able to imagine and at least partly enact something that isn't that. She could have done the same and didn't.

The second bold is facially true but not relevant. You can't produce a society that offers support to parents (including you) by tolerating totally inappropriate interference in your boundaries as an adult. Nothing you do in the sack is going to make up for the unhappiness you will visit upon yourselves by raising kids who see you accepting this interference and failing to protect them as all they can expect from you. Get on care dot com and hire a sitter.

[Anonymous]

Advice you will not take because you've clearly made your choice and trying to justify it here:

Call her bluff. Say she's not taking the kids to the doctor or even seeing them anymore if she continues to meddle like this. I guarantee if you stick to your guns she will back off.

[Anonymous]

You have competing priorities in your life and need to choose.

1. Finding fulfilling (and paying) employment
2. Staying within a family budget (due to lack of paycheck)
3. Providing a safe and loving environment for your children
4. Maintaining your romantic relationship

Everyone here has stated what they think those priorities should be. You need to decide for yourself. It sounds like your kids are small, so just keep in mind that whatever your life looks like now, it will look totally different in a few years, so what things are now is not how they always have to be.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've posted a few times in this thread. I feel for you, OP. My mom is manipulative and borderline and is completely incapable of having healthy relationships. I am an only child and didn't have the tools to establish boundaries, so I always just tolerated her manipulation and emotional abuse.

She behaved in some really frustrating ways within the first few months of my wife and me becoming parents. My wife suggested we talk to a therapist to figure out how to get on the same page with regard to dealing with my mom. We didn't go to many sessions, maybe 5-8. But it helped tremendously, and I have far more control now.

By all means read some books, but you should probably talk to someone, too. Establishing boundaries will be very hard, but you will be so glad. Otherwise you will be in these patterns until your parents pass. They will manipulate your children, and you won't know how to stop it.

Thank you! I have been to therapy about it. I even tried therapy with her but that blew up.

I absolutely need to do a better job with the boundaries. But it's so hard to give up the free childcare plus they do really love the grandkids and the grandkids love them (but you're totally right, soon enough she will start manipulating the grandkids too, I'm already starting to see it and it terrifies me). We were actually making progress but then COVID happened and then we didn't have any other childcare options that we felt safe with so we fell back into it. And then my husband lost his job and so getting paid childcare became a financial challenge too.

One challenge is that everything will be great for like a month and I start thinking, "Ok, we're good" and let down my guard and then out of nowhere, the manipulation and control reappears. And then I try to pull back, then everything is good again and the cycle happens again.

Sounds like you’ve made your choice then. Yes to romantic evenings, yes to grandparents controlling your family.

Exactly. Nothing more to discuss here I suppose.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Op absolutely is missing something. There is no reason dh should be so exhausted he can’t provide childcare and needs grandparent help. In my household one of us has been out of work this whole pandemic. Guess what he has been doing??? Childcare!!! We have never had any need for a sitter or grandparents or whatever. Sounds like OP and her husband need to figure out how to live life as adults.

OP here. It's easy to write anonymous snarky posts, but if you're really in the same situation, how about some constructive advice?

My husband is actively job searching, which is taking upwards of 20 hours per week. Between searching for jobs, writing cover letters, reaching out to people to network, working with recruiters, interviews and prep for interviews, pro bono projects to develop skills and make contacts, it really is like a job. So it's not like he's just sitting on his ass. To get concrete, here's how our day looks:

Morning: he is on kid duty, I work frenetically to get a full day's work into 4-5 hours.
Afternoon: I am on kid duty, he does his job search stuff and catches up on groceries, bills, house repairs, mail, all that "adulting" fun. He makes dinner while I watch kids.
Evening: we eat dinner together, then bedtime routine. After kids in bed, we finish the work we didn't get done in the morning. We pass out from exhaustion and then get up and do it all over again.

Are there other families with young kids and similar workloads and no childcare? I'm sure. I know some of them. They are always tired and their romantic lives are nonexistent. I'm not really interested in living like that. I like having romantic evenings, spending time with my husband and having regular sex. I like going on vacation just the two of us every year. If you are satisfied being with your kids 24/7, all power to you, but there are plenty of families that do use sitters and grandparents to get much-needed time away from kids.

Wow. You are either a troll or raised with immense privilege. What you are describing is normal and yes, many -- most -- other parents do it every day. You're "really not interested in living like that?" LOL!

You don't stop working for pay and start a business that you *hope* will support you in a year (but not until) with a spouse who isn't working. If you don't want to deal with your own kids full-time and yes, be exhausted (welcome to adulthood, again), then you need to stop playing house and one or both of you get a PAYING FULL-TIME JOB. Then you can afford the "breaks" you so desperately have convinced yourself you need.

Agree with the PP. Some people are not cut out to be parents and maybe OP is one of them. The only people who have the privilege of "support" are those who give up control of their lives and those who can pay for it. Since OP can't pay for it, then she either needs to adjust her expectations about life or give up the control that her parents are demanding in exchange for the support she believes she is entitled to have.

If OP really wanted free time for romance, then she would learn to multitask. There is no reason that you can't take your kids on errands and to the grocery store. There is no reason that you can't cook dinner and watch your kids. If she actually did what most of us do, she would find that time for evening romance after the kids go to bed.

And, no, most parents don't go on annual vacations without their kids. In fact, I don't know any personally who have ever taken one without kids except us and in the 2 decades that I've been a parent (kids spaced far apart), we took one.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Op absolutely is missing something. There is no reason dh should be so exhausted he can’t provide childcare and needs grandparent help. In my household one of us has been out of work this whole pandemic. Guess what he has been doing??? Childcare!!! We have never had any need for a sitter or grandparents or whatever. Sounds like OP and her husband need to figure out how to live life as adults.

OP here. It's easy to write anonymous snarky posts, but if you're really in the same situation, how about some constructive advice?

My husband is actively job searching, which is taking upwards of 20 hours per week. Between searching for jobs, writing cover letters, reaching out to people to network, working with recruiters, interviews and prep for interviews, pro bono projects to develop skills and make contacts, it really is like a job. So it's not like he's just sitting on his ass. To get concrete, here's how our day looks:

Morning: he is on kid duty, I work frenetically to get a full day's work into 4-5 hours.
Afternoon: I am on kid duty, he does his job search stuff and catches up on groceries, bills, house repairs, mail, all that "adulting" fun. He makes dinner while I watch kids.
Evening: we eat dinner together, then bedtime routine. After kids in bed, we finish the work we didn't get done in the morning. We pass out from exhaustion and then get up and do it all over again.

Are there other families with young kids and similar workloads and no childcare? I'm sure. I know some of them. They are always tired and their romantic lives are nonexistent. I'm not really interested in living like that. I like having romantic evenings, spending time with my husband and having regular sex. I like going on vacation just the two of us every year. If you are satisfied being with your kids 24/7, all power to you, but there are plenty of families that do use sitters and grandparents to get much-needed time away from kids.

Wow. You are either a troll or raised with immense privilege. What you are describing is normal and yes, many -- most -- other parents do it every day. You're "really not interested in living like that?" LOL!

You don't stop working for pay and start a business that you *hope* will support you in a year (but not until) with a spouse who isn't working. If you don't want to deal with your own kids full-time and yes, be exhausted (welcome to adulthood, again), then you need to stop playing house and one or both of you get a PAYING FULL-TIME JOB. Then you can afford the "breaks" you so desperately have convinced yourself you need.

+1. OP sounds very spoiled. Taking care of children is for the common people, not OP.