Reply to "Giving" MIL

Forum Index » Family Relationships

Reply to ""Giving" MIL"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Feel free to tell me I'm a b****.  I totally feel like one.

My MIL is one of those who always has to give us something every time she visits or we visit.  Food AND other gifts.  Our house is small and we are already totally stressed from the clutter.  I feel like I constantly have a wall up with her, having to reject so many things.  The past several visits she has given our DD (6 months) clothing that she's at least a year away from fitting into.  She also gives me things like hideous pajamas "because [I'm] always cold."

With the food at her house she'll ask if we want it, I'll say no, then she'll ask again, then I'll ask DH and then say no, then she'll ask DH herself.  It's this whole stressful production and it ends up adding a ton to what we have to put in our car.  This time she even emailed after we left saying she froze X for next time!  Making DH responsible for it won't work.  DH just kind of acts lazy about it all and will end up conveying ambivalence, at which point she just forces as much as she can on us.  So lately I've taken to just accepting one or two things for the sake of it, and if I think there's any chance we'll use it, and firmly but politely reject the rest (and occasionally get overruled by DH's ambivalence).

But in the end, I get that this is a minor annoyance, and she is trying to be thoughtful and I think it makes her feel good because she wants to "give," so is the answer that I should just deal with it?

If it makes a difference, I am concerned about 2 things, and not sure how legitimate they are. (1) that down the road, she'll insist on sending us home with a bunch of junk food and once the baby and any future kids are old enough that will put us in the position of having to be bad guy.  I wouldn't mind them eating occasional junk while they're at their grandmother's, but seriously, she wants to send us home with weeks worth of sugary stuff - (2) that she has no $ - her kids are already increasingly supporting her - and she's spending what little she does have on things that we don't need or want.  [/quote]

The baby is only 6 months. She is very excited right now and it's all new.  Wait a year or two and see if it die down. [/quote]

Well, the issue has been going on for far longer than that DD has been in existence :)  The first few times I met her I thought it was kind of endearing how we always had to leave her house with several bags of food and stuff, but given our living situation right now it's causing a lot of stress.  I am absolutely certain this will continue, I just need to figure out the best way to manage it before DD gets old enough that MIL is asking DD if she wants the food, or giving DD a bunch of stuff directly.  I have no doubt this will happen - once she asked DH's friends' kids if they wanted lollipops without asking the parents.  The parents said no.  She then CONTINUED to offer the kids lollipops, but the parents continued to say no.  The kids were like "but the lady said..." and the parents were like "I don't care what the lady said, you aren't having lollipops."  And MIL was like "really, they can't even take one for later?" And the parents were like, no, not unless you're going to be around to deal with them after they eat it.  At that point it becomes kind of a respect issue to me, but I am open to the perspective that I'm overreacting if it's the kid's own grandma.  [/quote]

I think you kidn of need to take this one as it comes.  You can't predict how the future is going to go and you don't even know what type of personality your child is going to have.  This just isn't one of those things you can manage pre-emptively.  Obviously you know it could be an issue so you keep an eye on it, but with the amount of energy you are putting into it now you are risking turning it into a problem when it never would have been one.  [/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