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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]What problems do you see when she stays with you? Is it anything that you think can reasonably be changed or just an ingrained part of her personality?[/quote]

OP here.  It's ingrained but if she could just bring herself to stop talking when I say "I don't want to talk about this" then that would go a long way.  One example is that the last time she did stay with us, she saw the wooden scoop we keep in the sugar bowl and said that she wouldn't have thought that we would be so unhygienic.  I told her that it is completely safe.  She kept going on and on, for (literally!) 20 minutes, all while I told her I didn't want to talk about it, chance the subject, etc.  She finally stopped when I lost my cool and started actually fighting with her, then ended the whole thing by saying "well I thought it was a reasonable thing to point out to you" as she walked out in a huff, only to later return and accuse me of making her feel unwelcome in my home.  The thing that gets me is that these situations are so stupid and petty.  And yet they turn into these big deals that completely ruin my day.

I'd say that a benefit of her visiting is that she tries to help, but when she does, she doesn't really help.  She'll ask over and over what she can do to help.  I finally say that she can weed, and then she'll decide that she needs my old weeding shoes to weed and pester me until I find them for her (all the while with me telling her to forget about it and just sit down and relax).  Then she'll weed for 20 minutes, come in, sit down and say she is too old for this and she is tired and needs to rest and how could we possibly expect her to weed the whole house (which, of course, we didn't).  Then she'll decide to help by opening windows if it's a nice day, but she can't figure out the storm windows, so she bugs me until I do it.  Etc.  I just don't really find her help to be worth the hassle or the cost.
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I have a mother who drives me nuts. She is actually here right now to help out with spring break. We can easily afford help but we allow her to "help" us with the kids even though she causes me a lot of stress and probably doesn't help me all that much. My mom still nags me. She will ask me how she can help. When I tell her, she complains about it and then says that I treat her like a maid. We have even tried having my mom here while we have paid help. She drove the help crazy by following them around and micromanaging even though our paid help knows exactly how I like things.

That being said, my mom came to "help" with the baby. She nagged me to death about the baby being cold. She would put the baby to sleep on his stomach even though I told her not to. She put things away so I couldn't find them. She couldn't figure out our fancy stroller and commented every single day what a waste of money it was that we bought a complicated fancy stroller. My dad eventually broke our stroller but thankfully we were able to replace it at no cost.

The point is that I let her visit and "help" me even though I would probably be better off alone or with paid help. She is the grandmother and I want my children to have a relationship with their grandmother. Unless your mom is abusive or has a substance problem, I would probably let her visit her new grandchild.[/quote]

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