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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Hi - Your mom sounds EXACTLY like my mom.  Some things that work for making visits more bearable for us:

Limit our visits to their house to just a few days.  3 max.  We have found that things always turn sour by the end of day 2, so it is great to leave on day 3.

At our house, we have moved our guest room to the basement.   My parents go to bed early, so it feels nice when they retreat to the basement for bed at 8:30 pm.  We can then relax and have the rest of the house to ourselves.

Try to eat meals at restaurants.   Then you avoid the stress of cooking and cleaning up with your parents.   My mom will tell me that I am doing everything wrong, and it is super annoying.    We avoid the conversation by going out to eat.

Seek out activities outside of the house.   This is a hard one for us because my mom hates leaving the house and doing things.  But I have found that time passes more quickly if we leave the house, and she somewhat manages to control her temper in public places.

Don't engage in the fight.   When they say something rude or insulting, try as hard as you can to just ignore it.  I either outright ignore her, or I turn it into a joke/game with my daughter.  For instance, when visiting my parents, my mom will walk into our room, notice that we didn't make the bed/pick up our clothes/turn out the light.  She will then come downstairs and start to berate me like I am 6 years old and lecturing me to go fix it.  I cut it off by turning to my young daughter and saying "come on DD!  Let's race upstairs and see how quickly we can make the bed/pick up the clothes/turn off the light"

Don't leave your kids with your parents for extended periods of time.    It is sad that I will never be able to take the two week couples only "vacay" to Europe, while leaving the kids with grandma and grandpa.  But, it is what it is.   My mom is too mean and I wouldn't trust her to have patience with my kids for more than a day.  It is just a reality, and accepting it makes things easier.

My primary childhood memory of my mom is of her yelling.  My friends were all scared of her, and she gets worse as she ages.  She isn't particularly nice or patient with my children and she says horrible, insulting things about our parenting.  I have made an affirmative decision to not be like her with my daughter (my mom actually pales in comparison with her mother (my grandmother)).   Knowing that I am taking active steps to break the cycle also helps.

Good luck![/quote]

Not OP but I read this thread because my mother sounds a lot like hers and yours. Thank you for sharing your wisdom. I am headed out to a weekend with my family and you have given me a lot of reason to be hopeful. If nothing else, now I will view it as an experiment to see if your techniques work. Thank you![/quote]

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