Reply to Seeking productive advice for how to deal with ‘always on’ houseguests

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[quote=Anonymous]My mom could be your ILs, OP. She has this whole concept of “visiting” that made sense during her childhood when her entire extended family lived in one neighborhood. They would drop in on each other on Sundays after mass and would just sit and make conversation. Kids would sit still and play quietly in the same room as adults. But it only happened for a few hours once a week, so it was tolerable.

Unfortunately my mother has had trouble translating her vision of how visiting should work to multi day visits that require a cross-country trip. Her first few visits were 12 hours/day of conversation. If she ran out of steam she’d grab a packet of save newspaper and magazine clippings to talk about. If, as the week went on, we ran out of little treats to go with our nonstop coffee, she would say that I must not have had time to get ready for her visit. We set boundaries on her visits (maintaining our normal routine, getting out and about), she gradually got more frustrated and huffy, and she started scheduling shorter visits and seeing my brother for the rest of the trip, and finally not visiting at all.

Now she just throws occasional phone tantrums about how we never visit and is mad that I won’t pull my kids out of school for long stays at her house. They’re just not interested in sitting quietly for a week at someone else’s house, so I say “come to us but we’ll have a busy schedule so be ready to come along to practice, meets, school pickup, etc.”. My mom always says that’s not a proper visit or a proper invitation, throws a tantrum, and doesn’t talk to me for weeks. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Set boundaries and think ahead to how you’ll handle their reaction.[/quote]

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