My mom and I have been on the outs for nearly a year. Now, after and handful of Skype sessions and a few sterile emails, she and my dad are flying across the country for a 12-hour visit – to see my daughter, their granddaughter, baby smaje.
I’ve been in therapy for months, trying to sort out all of my issues with my mom and my family in general. I know that this weekend visit will likely not features any emotional breakthroughs; honestly, I just want to get through it without a breakdown.
Mom and Dad are renting a car and coming straight to our house, where I’ll be entertaining them for about 8 or so hours. I don’t want to leave them alone with the baby for a while (as my dad asked), but that’s probably just me being bitter. I know they can handle watching an 18-month old kid for a few hours.
My husband isn’t happy they’re coming to visit, but he’s agreed to put on a straight face and stick around for the day. My mother-in-law has offered to come over with my father-in-law to help break the ice.
So what are we supposed to do for 8 hours? I’m keeping all booze out of the house - things get nasty when my mom drinks - and I don’t want my parents to insist on going out to a nice dinner. I love to cook, but every time I offer, my mom insists we go out. She’s never really had my cooking – I think she just thinks that because I’m not skinny like my sister, that I will cook her something super fatty or force her to eat a loaf of white bread or something.
So I want to make dinner, but I’m not sure what to make. I don’t know whether to invite my in-laws. I don’t know if I should leave them alone with the baby and go out on a much-deserved quick afternoon date with Mr. smaje.
It also makes me super sad that I’m so dreading a visit from a woman I once truly loved. At this moment, my heart is completely numb to her. I can’t even remember what it felt like when I did love her.
Do you have time and means to ask your Mom and Dad what they’d enjoy for dinner? Maybe you could try to please them with something that is their favorite. Even if it doesn’t turn out the way they like most, it would show your interest in their happiness. If you do this, be sure to ask if they have any foods they don’t care to eat or are allergic to…if its been a while, their tastes (and health) may have changed since you last spent time with them.
One last bit of advice: If humanly possible, try to treat them (in your mind) as if they were * someone else’s parents*. I know that is a tough thing to do and to maintain, but just try to keep in mind that we tend to treat people differently and with more patience and tolerance, when they are not related to us. If you can fake that, you may be able to keep your cool if things go sideways during the conversation: just tell yourself (“If this was a friend’s mom/dad saying this, it would not matter so much to me.”)
Did you talk to your therapist about this step? If you’re not sufficiently self-guarded, it may set back your recovery and have you regressing in therapy. I’m curious why you’re allowing them to come at all, given that neither you nor your husband are happy about it. But! I realize it’s too late to tell them no now. Still, I just want to say that you don’t HAVE to let them see their grandchild if you can’t stand to be in their presence. It’s really OK to cut off toxic family members permanently for the sake of your mental health. <3
Preaching aside, your instincts sound good. Don’t leave them alone with the baby–frankly I can’t believe they even asked that; they expect you to leave them alone while they’re in YOUR house? :rolleyes: Do ask your in-laws to come and help break the ice–the baby should hopefully deflect your mother’s attention from you for most/all of the visit. If not, have something handy like a deck of cards for gin rummy or poker. Or do you have any fun, inoffensive board games?
Don’t *offer *to cook, as though it’s an option. It’s your house and they are your guests. So, have a menu pre-planned. Optimally you would start their visit with something already cooking by the time they arrive–like a stew in the crockpot, or a turkey in the oven (or whatever). Also, realize that your mom and dad *may *bring alcohol with them. It’s a common gift when visiting for dinner. What are you going to do if they bring a couple bottles of wine with the intention of drinking over dessert? It may be a good idea to cook up a cover story (if you can get your in-laws’ permission) about how they’re recovering alcoholics and you can’t allow any open bottles in the house whatsoever.
Good luck. And if you have any mild prescription sedatives, it may help to take one before their arrival.
I have no ideas re your issues with your mother, but (to be honest) it sounds like you are quite deliberately setting the scene for a major confrontation by trying to force your mother to play exclusively by your rules.
Using her desire to see the grand-kids as a tool to force her to your will end badly. If your mom does not like your cooking, and is a health nut, or fat phobic, or whatever making her eat your cooking as a condition of the visit is a bad idea. If your parents want to go to restaurant it won’t kill you to cooperate. Insisting she eat your cooking at this stage in order to see the grand-kids is petty, manipulative, and absurdly controlling.
You may never be best buds with your mom, but you really need to be as non-confrontational as possible as this point within reason if you want to move forward, and you are quite obviously aching for a battle based on how you are setting up this scenario.
Invite the in-laws and cook a nice meal, with multiple options. My family’s “celebration meals” involve a sort of “starters buffet”, so the people who like their fried finger foods can have them, those who prefer salads can have them, and those who like to try a bit of each do. It’s something like two salads, two other starters and a couple of plates of cold cuts, so it actually takes a relatively short time to set up. And as a main dish, something which will be ok as leftovers (does your mother like roasts?).
astro, Mommy Dearest has no idea whether she likes smaje1’s cooking, as she has never tried it. And taking her out carries a danger of Drunken Behavior.
The Gramps from Hell visited Middlebro’s house a couple of times; he’s been to their house a handful of times after getting married. He makes sure to only visit their house if there’s other relatives around, and to have other people around when they visited his. This means that Gramps was less likely to misbehave, that it was easier to make sure he was never alone with a person other than Grandma, and that there was more people who might strike up a nice conversation at any given time.
Based on her past posts her mom is extremely blunt in everyday life, and even more obnoxiously blunt when she has had a few drinks, she has not been described as an out of control alcoholic. The OP per her past posts is an extraordinarily sensitive person and her mom is not sensitive. This is not a match made in heaven. Trying to wrangle mom like this re “I insist you eat my cooking if you want to see the grandkids” will only cause her mother to have greater contempt for her. If mom is an insensitive asshole and always has been (which is what it sounds like) trying to force her to your will is not a workable plan at this stage of the game.
They may never be best buds? Smaje **has clearly been sufficiently mistreated through the years by her alcoholic mother that she has required extensive therapy in adulthood. That’s *not normal, *so she can’t approach the situation like a normal person would. Kowtowing to mom’s desires is not going to magically pave the way to mom seeing her daughter as a functional adult who is worthy of respect. It’s just going to make **smaje **feel like a dirty doormat. Likely *nothing *she does will make her mother happy, without simultaneously turning **smaje **into a nervous unhappy wreck. The best they can aim for is stilted mutual cordiality, which will not be accomplished by letting mom run the show.
While I must say that everyone is entitled to their opinion, *my *opinion is that yours is really bad advice. Did you miss the bit where she indicates her mother has never even tried her cooking? I also happen to think your portrayal of **smaje **as “aching for a confrontation” indicates you have quite a shoddy understanding of the situation. I don’t know you from Adam on this board, so I hope you’ll excuse the audacity of this question: what qualifies you to state that the best way for an adult to reforge a relationship with their shitty parents is to be completely non-confrontational and let their parents have their way in everything?
My personal experience as the adult child of an abusive alcoholic (and my communication with/research of others in similar situations) has taught me that the only way to begin re-establishing positive relationship boundaries in adulthood is for the child to keep things on their own terms. For years (if not decades) of smaje’s life, mom has run the show as an addict who was quite possibly hurtful, abusive, and/or neglectful on a regular basis. Nobody can reasonably expect **smaje **to approach this situation as though they share no negative history. But it’s not about inflicting revenge, it’s about reaping consequences. The consequence of being a shitty parent is that your child *cannot *have a normal relationship with you. And if mom can’t conduct herself civilly in a normal social situation, then precautions must be taken to keep her in line. Let’s face it, how is it horrible, rationally, to expect a mother to eat at her daughter’s house and be nice to her for eight hours? :rolleyes: Come the fuck on. If mom prefers making a scene over home-cooking she’s never tried rather than sucking it up and acting like normal human beings act, mom doesn’t *deserve *to see her grandchild.
Unfortunately, nobody is capable of changing their shitty parents. They might change on their own if they want to see their grandchild regularly, but even that is not a given. Frankly, your suggestion was misguided, tone-deaf, and outright rude. Moreover, you seem to have misattributed the adjectives “petty, manipulative, and absurdly controlling” to the wrong party. I think that, given their shared history, **smaje **should do whatever it takes to ensure that she gets through the day. Anyone else’s concerns are secondary. There’s nothing petty or manipulative about this, it’s self-preservation in its most basic form! Why shouldn’t smaje take charge of the situation and make sure herself, her husband, her kid, and her in-laws are happy? It’s sure as hell better than the alternative, where everyone is miserable just to maintain mom’s illusion of power.
Trust me, I will be thrilled if her mom shows up without a bottle of wine, is the epitome of stilted grandmotherly grace, and refrains from making a show of gagging at the dinner table. Unfortunately, this is probably the best outcome anyone can hope for.
I apologize in advance for any projection I have made onto smaje’s situation, and welcome further clarification for any incorrect assumptions on my part. Thank you, and go Cubs!
I’m with astro on the cooking. It is drama waiting to happen of you insist on cooking yourself, while she has never liked your cooking.
I’m the other way. I don’t want my mom to cook for us when I visti her house. In my image of her, she’s a food hoarder, and her fridge is full of stuff that has expired, and the odds of getting food poisoning at her place is high. So I just don’t like to eat there. I may be irrational, but that is how it is.
Luckily, I have convinced my mom that she should let me “take care of her” by me bringing food for us all to eat. It saves face for both of us and makes it possible for us to dine together.
So you could let her pick up some healthy take-out to her liking on the way to your house, and start off by sharing that. Then I would thank her for a chance to go out with your husband and let her alone for a while with the baby.
If you have a good relationship with your in-laws, and trust them to keep their cool despite your mother’s behaviour, then it would be very helpful to have them on the day. We did a similar thing when my parents met with my husband’s parents for the first time before our wedding - we had our best man and maid of owner come along too, to help the conversation flow and gloss over the social idiosyncracities of my husband’s parents.
I think the advice upthread to treat them like someone else’s parents is extremely good advice. It helps remove the ‘they are my parents and should be the way I want them to be’ thinking whcih we can all fall into, regardless of whether we have a good or bad relationship with our parents.
With regards the dinner, it’s your house so you cook what you like to cook. What do you cook when your husband’s parents come over? Bear in mind that if you do include the in-laws, you’ll have eight adults to feed, so you might want to simplify your usual menu to make it easy to cook for those numbers.
And you won’t be *offering *to cook, you will be *informing *them that you will be cooking dinner. With your in-laws there to support you, this should be easier as even if your parents suggest dining out, there will be four of you against the two of them.
With regards to not wanting to leave your parents with your child, make sure you’re not missing out on a great opportunity (to have some time with your husband) just to spite your parents. That’s a lose-lose situation right there, and I’m sure you know it.
I am the child of a serious chronic alcoholic who has since passed away. I grew up right in the middle of it as the oldest on site child when my father was away in the foreign service for months to years at a time. I learned early on that if I wanted have a relationship with my mother it would have to have real world limits and expectations.
Thinking that you are going to somehow corral and control someone who is an alcoholic is monumentally absurd. Their alcoholism is what defines them, if they do not want to change you have no power in that equation. You find small sober spaces to interact with them. Expecting them to reform or behave or be contrite because you want them to, or because they behaved egregiously when you were growing up is a fool’s game.
Insisting that someone who wants to eat out as a preferred scenario *must *eat your cooking on pain of not seeing the grand-kids is hardly “self preservation”, and to claim it is, is being a huge drama llama. The point at this juncture is to be non-confrontational and making a big deal about dinner does not achieve that end no matter how you want to dress it up.
There seems to be quite a bit of projection going on in this thread - the OP has not defined her mother as an alcoholic. She has said “I’m keeping all booze out of the house - things get nasty when my mom drinks.” Or did I miss something in the OP?
Not in the OP but in previous threads. The OP’s mom isn’t so much “not sensitive” as “completely insensitive”, one of those people who pride themselves in “calling a spade a spade” and who use that as an excuse to exclaim “oh my GOD you are so FAT!” upon encountering a woman who’s recovering from delivering twins. Adding alcohol to the equation exacerbates the behavior.
No you didn’t. The OPs mother (in OP’s view) says rude and and obnoxious things to OP after she has had a few drinks. She is not described as a hardcore alcoholic, just an insensitive asshole.
Whether Mom fits the clinical definition of alcoholism is neither here nor there. There is sufficient concern over her drinking and the behavior that she exhibits as a result of her drinking that smaje is unwilling to allow open bottles of alcohol in her own house. And that’s her prerogative. She doesn’t have to justify that to us, to her mother, or to anyone else.
Along this line, it’s smaje’s house, therefore, it’s her rules, and she has the right to control the situation. If she wants to cook, she should keep her mother’s preferences in mind (giving something trivial can also help keep her mother’s behavior tolerable), but she doesn’t have to ask; she can tell and if her mother doesn’t like it, her mother can leave.
That being said, however, it may also be helpful to have the in-laws over. My father-in-law is an abusive asshole who needs to be reined in every so often. One of the things that reins him in is having a third party present, because I know he won’t behave like an abusive asshole in front of someone he doesn’t really know. It may well be the same with Mom; knowing that there are relative strangers may keep her bad behavior to a minimum. And if she does act like an asshole in front of your in-laws, then it’s her problem, not yours. After all, you didn’t cause your mother’s behavior, you can’t control it (except by not allowing her to drink in your home), and you can’t cure it.
Finally – and this is the big part – *don’t give your mother the opportunity to create drama! * My mother loves to create drama, but I’ve learned to shut her down by refusing to be the second banana in her craziness. “Why do you want to know?” works well, as does “You know, you may be absolutely right”, after which, you blow her off. (Or at least I blow mine off.) Basically, the trick here is to make sure that you don’t leave any open doors that she can use to start a fight or create drama.
These are a lot harder than they look because you’re going against many years of habits and expectations. But it can be done. Besides, eight hours is not eternity; you can put up with it for that long.
First of all, set your expectations low, this is an 8 hour visit, talk about tense! Just as your getting loosened up it’s time to go. Been ther edone that with the inlaws. Speaking of which, don’t invite yours over, at least not to stay the entire visit. If they are near it woud be lovely for them to drop by for an hour to say hello then they should leave at all costs. Let the out of town GP’s have all the time with the grand baby.
Plan on serving snacks, healthy filling snacks instead of planning a meal. Maybe you should consider a brief getaway with hubby for a couple hours, let your parents have alone time with the kid. They will appreciate it…
Remain all light and breezy, but call out MOm out in a good natured way for any over the top comments. Then move on…
DOn’t over think it, the visit will be over before it really gets started…btdt.
If you believe your parents will properly care for your child when left alone, by all means take a break and get your mini-date. It’s just more time that you get to avoid the drama, decompress, complain openly about their crappy behavior, whatever, before going back in.
Maybe your mini-date should be going out to dinner, let your parents order in, they get to spend time with the little one, you get a nice dinner out, and you don’t have to fight over the arrangements.
It’s smaje’s house, and thus, smaje’s rules. You can’t think that if smaje went to Mom’s house it’d be any different.
Smaje, good luck either way and come back and tell us how it went. #1 most important thing - don’t respond to them. Don’t get in a shouting match. It’ll ruin YOUR day. If they seem to try, just say things like “You’re only here for eight hours, I don’t want to fight.” And don’t respond. I know it’s damn hard - as I always say, they know how to push all your buttons because they installed all of them.
