Justified in being upset that my Mom works while she visits us?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Your mom would say - “We live 8 hrs from my daughter and she has not visited us in the past 6 months so we made the trip despite being busy with medical appts and work. Now she’s mad I can’t be available to her every second despite us coming all the way to her”

They have a 1 and 5 year old. Packing, driving and entertaining two children for this vacation - while mom apparently works the entire time - is much more difficult than two adults driving to visit their grandchildren. You sound completely unreasonable.

[Anonymous]

No. Doesn’t seem justified.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Your mom would say - “We live 8 hrs from my daughter and she has not visited us in the past 6 months so we made the trip despite being busy with medical appts and work. Now she’s mad I can’t be available to her every second despite us coming all the way to her”

They have a 1 and 5 year old. Packing, driving and entertaining two children for this vacation - while mom apparently works the entire time - is much more difficult than two adults driving to visit their grandchildren. You sound completely unreasonable.

How did OP saying “during her downtime” turn into mom working the entire time?

DCUM has to have to have the most selfish people in the world.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Your mom would say - “We live 8 hrs from my daughter and she has not visited us in the past 6 months so we made the trip despite being busy with medical appts and work. Now she’s mad I can’t be available to her every second despite us coming all the way to her”

They have a 1 and 5 year old. Packing, driving and entertaining two children for this vacation - while mom apparently works the entire time - is much more difficult than two adults driving to visit their grandchildren. You sound completely unreasonable.

No one is saying op needs to drive to them. Point was that her parents have the bigger effort here and she is mad at them for not paying her constant attention.

[Anonymous]

Next time take off work for a real vacation, and invite your parents to join.

That way, it won't seem like such a waste of paid leave if your mother decides to stay in the hotel room instead of enjoying herself with everyone else!

If your parents want to visit you again at home, keep working. They can help with before or aftercare.

[Anonymous]

OP, I don’t know if this applies to your mom but - my mom is like this. It’s how she has always been. She takes family for granted and runs ragged meeting external obligations like work, volunteering, church. It is disappointing but I have learned not to expect much from her anymore. It’s who she is. I don’t expect more but I also don’t give more of myself so that I get in these situations and wind up being hurt and feeling like my high school boyfriend rejected me or something. It’s very triggering as I spiral into all the other times she did this so I anticipate these situations more and am less flexible with her and with my time with her.

[Anonymous]

PP here. I’m also very up front with her now after multiple trips where she begged us to come visit and then had her own plans almost the entire time (and they no longer live where I grew up so I have nothing to do). Now, before accepting or giving an invite, I confirm her other commitments during that time and reschedule if she has things. I also make it clear that we are there only to see her so she needs to be honest about it and we need to reschedule if she’s already booked. She used to be sneaky about it but has gotten much better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you took the week off work to be with them then you have the right to feel irritated. I get it, I know how hard it is when your parents say they want to be grandparents badly and then don’t help out.

WTF!
Is that a grandparents job, ‘to help out’?

[Anonymous]

Parents and ILs were retired or didn’t have jobs that were remite when DC were young. However, my FIL always needed some downtime to read the newspapers and MIL/mom would take down time to do emails and reach out to friends and other families during the day. This all seemed very reasonable and is no different than taking some time to answer some emails from work.


DH and I always worked when they were in town. If we took a day off it was for an event.

[Anonymous]

You need to change your expectations OP. Your mom isn't retired and needs to work. You're not supporting her in any way are you? Maybe you can bring her lunch or the kids can come swim at the hotel. Try to meet her halfway

[Anonymous]

Get over yourself op

Maybe she could not visit if you demanded she do zero work

[Anonymous]

In the future, don't let yourself be guilted into taking time off by you mom insisting she wants to spend time with the kids. She can come along in a vacation that you're going on anyway, or she can visit on days when you're already off. If she's not really available for whatever reason, that's her business, but you have limited PTO as the parent of two young kids and you shouldn't be spending it hanging around at home being available for grandparents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In the future, don't let yourself be guilted into taking time off by you mom insisting she wants to spend time with the kids. She can come along in a vacation that you're going on anyway, or she can visit on days when you're already off. If she's not really available for whatever reason, that's her business, but you have limited PTO as the parent of two young kids and you shouldn't be spending it hanging around at home being available for grandparents.

+1

[Anonymous]

I would be annoyed. It sounds like she’s using “work” to titrate your access to her and her availability, a subtle way of imposing boundaries in a house which isn’t her own.

[Anonymous]

^^ It’s a subtle way for your mother to communicate: “hey! I’m not just a grandma”