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[quote=Anonymous]I would sit down and tell DH:

1) I will work on not showing my irritation. You are right: she is a guest in my home, and I should do my best to be pleasant and to leave the room if I am starting to lose my patience.

2) What will help me with this is if YOU take the lead in entertaining her and cleaning up after her. She makes a mess in this house, and you either need to nip it in the bud by asking her to clean up after herself, or you need to do the cleaning. I will not be cleaning up her messes. I also need you to lead the conversation as much as possible so that I can just smile and mentally check out when I need to. I also am going to do chores around the house and run errands to try to get breaks, so you’re taking the lead and I’m leaving you to it.

So basically, give what you can.

A lot of this is so understandable about old people: of course she wants to talk about her memories, her relatives, family resemblances—this is common. This is her “imprinting” on you younger folks so that she won’t be forgotten after she dies. You being irritated with her about this is about as reasonable as you being irritated with a little kid for telling rambling stories or a teenager for sulking and withdrawing.

You nurse when you nurse. If she tells you baby needs to nurse and it’s not time, just “Mmm hmm uh huh” her. Don’t engage.

Her trying to get a reaction from your kids over gifts has nothing to do with you—the natural consequence of that irritating behavior is that they won’t like spending time with grandma as they get older. OK.

Like, a lot of this is purely ignore-able.

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