Reply to Does anyone's out of town family actually help when visiting?

Forum Index » Family Relationships

Reply to "Does anyone's out of town family actually help when visiting? "

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]ugh.  for what it's worth, yes, some families do help.  others do not.  my mother is nearly pathological in her helpfulness.  she cleans everything.  I've never had such a clean house than when she was "visiting" after the baby was born.

my inlaws kind of want to be helpful, but end up being more work than help.  I eventually learned that the best thing to do was to either (1) let them hold the baby while I get other things done; or (2) give them a very specific, discrete and easy task when they offer to help.  if they say "is there anything I can do to help", don't respond with "oh sure, whatever you like" and don't respond with "oh, how about fixing a snack".  I don't give them diapers to change because they screwed it up so many times.  instead, I say "oh, thanks, jean, could you put the laundry in the dryer" or "could you run the dishes" or "could you toss those legos back in the box?"  simple, discrete and specific.

now, my sister's inlaws show and expect to fed dinner and cleaned up after.  she finally just asked them to start staying in a hotel.  for dinner, they ordered carry-out when ILs were around and would ask the inlaws to go pick it up.  inlaws were surprised and perhaps disgruntled to be asked, I gathered, but then very proud of themselves for "helping"[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics