Reply to mom accusing me of keeping DD away from her

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[quote=Anonymous]I can certainly understand how OP feels.  My MIL is generally not very helpful and tends to come visit and treat it like being on vacation.  Her idea of visiting with her preschool grandchildren is to play with them or read them a book for 10 minutes or so and then do something else for a while.  In an afternoon, she'll spend about 20-30 minutes total with her grandchildren and then do other things for herself including sometimes just sitting around playing computer games on her iPad.

At one point, I was getting very tired and suggested that my MIL come to visit a little less frequently.  My wife spoke with her mother and the next time she came to visit, she started helping a bit.  We come up with a list of things like errands that she can do.  We make a grocery list and she can do the shopping.  If we have things that need that need to be dropped off (like book donations to the library or when we have to drop forms somewhere).  Normally I have to do pick-up and drop-off because my wife does not drive.  When my MIL is visiting, I drop the kids off at pre-school, but my MIL can take my wife to pre-school to pick up the kids allowing me to work late a few times during the week.  The last time she came to visit, she even bought supplies and cooked us dinner twice that week.  In 16 years together (13 married), my MIL had cooked for us maybe twice prior to the last visit.

So, one suggestion for OP, if she can tolerate the stress of having her parents come is to suggest that they can come to see DD and the house earlier if they stay in a hotel and help out with some household errands like grocery shopping or laundry while visiting.  You can say that right now, with the stress of contractors around the house, that they just can't handle the additional load of visitors unless those visitors are willing to pitch in and help.  Then come up with a list of basic chores and errands that will help ease your stress, but don't involve childcare and get them to help with those.  It may or may not work for OP and her husband (sometimes the personality dynamics are too hard to overcome), but I found that even those little things helped to ease the stress for me and be more accommodating to my MIL visiting more often.[/quote]

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