I actually think you’re pretty hilarious in your own unique way.
You schooled us all. You’re hilarious cowboy! We can only hope you found our interactions with you entertaining, because I can certainly assure you, that you thread has been entertaining for me.
Clowned, actually. That substance dripping off you is the filling from a delicious banana cream pie. Mmm pie.
Yum. If russian heel’s MIL made that pie, I can see why he wants to keep her close.
But she can’t. What she can do, IF at some point her parents can no longer look after themselves, and IF at that point she is the one responsible for making decisions for them, is to insist that they move into a facility close to where she lives, so she’ll be within easy reach of them.
And, in those hypothetical circumstances, that would be a perfectly reasonable thing to insist on.
While your in-laws are still willing and able to make their own decisions, however, anything she says about what she would do about their living arrangements if the decision were up to her sometime in the unspecified future is not really relevant. So I don’t see why you’re tying yourself into knots over it.
Okay, so your SIL has served notice that if and when her parents are unable to live independently and if and when it is up to her to decide their living arrangements, they’re gonna be living near to her. Sure, it’s kind of bossy, but it’s hardly monstrous. In the meantime, any less excusably bossy attempts on her part to talk her parents into moving while they’re still perfectly able to look after themselves can be politely but firmly rejected.
This is a good point that bears repeating. I noticed the OP says a lot that the SIL or the kids are “coming home” or she’s “bringing them home” for a holiday. I don’t understand why he keeps saying this. They are not coming home, they are leaving their home. They no longer live in PA; they are not going home. They are travelling away from their home. When I go visit my mother I am not going home. I am going to her house, even if it’s the house I grew up in.
But yeah, SIL needs to grow up and shut up about her parents moving.
I did read the whole thread and here’s my opinion (which matters NOUGHT in these things, but it’s mine).
And it’s b/c of this:
I have a very good friend who has a sister (technically half, but for most of their lives.) They are very different people and don’t get along. My friend is M and her sister is S. M is older than S and much more earthy, pragmatic, is the person with children etc. S is flighty, booksmart and better educated but though married has never lived with her husband for more than a month at a time (I’m not making that part up at all), has lived with her parents almost all the time.*
About 10 years ago, the parents sat down with M while they were in great health (it was their idea, but it’s not a bad suggestion) and signed papers that gave her POA. Just in case. No one ever told S. Then Dad had a stroke out of nowhere and they dealt with it. S was pissed off, but she had absolutely nothing she could do about it.**
S is EXACTLY the person that would attempt to take stuff to court to get control. She can’t. At the point all the papers were signed, both people were healthy and working full time jobs.
tl;dr It’s when people are healthy that one plans. The in-laws sound happy and healthy as horses. Try to help them ensure their wishes stay their wishes.
*She is in her mid forties now and does have a decent job. M is mid to late fifties:Married, not a great job but succesful at it and seriously, I’d want her fighting for me.
**The dad was recently involved in an awful accident where he was sitting in the passenger seat of the minivan while his wife (She just retired this year to take care of him) was pumping gas and they were run into while hooked up to the pump. No fire, but he was injured again b/c he wasn’t belted in. I had always reccommended that M try to make friends with S. After I saw S’s self-centered behavior in the hospital, M’s folks made the right plan.
Unless your SIL has duct tape, a black bag, and some useful contacts, she can’t make anyone go anywhere they don’t want to. Relax.
So let me get this straight: Your wife’s sister has packed up and hauled their entire family of 6 to Pennsylvania for 2 of the 3 major holidays each year (Easter and Thanksgiving) for eons, but because she’s now decided that she’d like HER family to actually wake up in her own home for Christmas, she’s in the wrong.
Oh, that’s rich.
If it breaks your in-laws’ hearts to not spend Christmas with their grandkids, then it sounds like they should make plans to travel to NY for Christmas moving forward. If that makes you or your wife unhappy, then you can either travel to PA as well (and get a taste for how fun it is) or you can sit home and stew about it. Either way, your SIL is perfectly within her rights to do whatever the hell she wants.
If you really don’t like that your SIL doesn’t have a comfortable bed for your MIL, that sounds like a great Christmas present. If you can’t swing it, then give her a gift card to a nearby hotel.
Problem solved!
P.S. If the SIL showed her in-laws a house nearby, then so what. Even if she is trying to manipulate them, one can only be manipulated if you allow yourself to be manipulated.
So this issue has reared its ugly head once again, with SIL being as outrageous as ever.
This July, my FIL was in the hospital for 4 weeks with a potentially life threatening condition that required two surgeries; while MIL had to go in for two days for a serious but not life threatening emergency, at the same time. Everyones back home, recovering, but wouldn’t you know it, like a vulture after everyone is recovering SIL calls them and my wife, doing the “See? I told you so! You need to move up here to a retirement community so me and my husband can take care of you!” routine.
Here is where that is SO insulting. My wife was at the hospital every day, checking on the in laws and also sat with them at home when FIL came back to help out around the house. I filled in where she couldn’t.
SIL? Came down for ONE day, and instead of rescheduling an easy to re-book camping trip with the kids, pulled the "I can come down if YOU REEEEALLY want me to . . . " routine, which of course my in laws declined.
Now, I don’t expect them to cancel their vacation EITHER, but if you care SOOOOOO much about your parents and want to make a case they should move up near you so you “take care of them” I don’t know, maybe Id teach the kids a lesson about family, reschedule the camping trip to visit Grandma and Grandpa, who is dying in the hospital?
I also don’t want to be that “I live closest to Mom, so I have to do all the work and take care of her while no one else helps” person, because I understand she lives 4 hours away.
But, as a teacher who has off ALLLL summer long, again, if you want to make the case that you are going to such a good caretaker of Mom and Dad, maybe more than a day quickie visit to visit your dying father would help make your case?
Oh, and if you AND your husband would be such great caretakers, why didn’t he sign the get well card to FIL?
Let’s be honest now, SIL: you are trying to manipulate your parents into moving to a city they hate so you don’t have to drive to bring the kids to see them, or their other grandparents, who by the way, live down here too. YOU decided to relocate. Not US. NO ONE wants to live in the shithole of an area you relocated to. This is YOUR problem, not OURS.
Any way, my wife laid into her , said they just don’t want to move to that area, they like it here. Im waiting for the grandchildren to be held hostage again, though my wife made a good point to her: in 3-4 years they will all be in HS or college, and there won’t be much time to see them anyway. Checkmate, Bitch.
So, stop playing your mind games, Sis: your just trying to con your parents into moving closer to you so you don’t have to travel to bring the kids to see them. This has NOTHING to do with how much you care about your parents. How dare you try yo turn these recent illnesses to your advantage to get your way. Everyone sees through your con. Give it up.
If the “kids” are just 3/4 yrs away from high school (or college!) why does their mother have to drive them? Surely that’s old enough she could put them on a bus for a couple days visit with grandma now and then.
If I were your in-laws, I don’t think I’d want to be around any of you. All of you sound like spoiled brats.
This, right here, is so petty that it serves as an excellent encapsulation of the situation. Your general feelings are valid, but way, way, way out of proportion. The lion’s share of the blame is on your parents-in-law, whom you totally excuse. This is why the situation will never change and never stop frustrating you.
Quite telling that you don’t give your parents-in-law a voice in this conversation, and that your wife doesn’t just say “that has nothing to do with me; talk to them.”
The key phrase here is “my in-laws declined.” They are responsible for this dynamic. If they declined, and their decline made it harder on your wife, you need to tell them that. Your sister-in-law is not the cause of everyone else’s passivity. Yes, she takes advantage of it, and no, she shouldn’t, but she’s not 100% to blame.
It may be that, with kids, she can only be an effective caretaker if they are close. Probably she is just using it as an excuse, but it sounds like neither you nor your wife nor the parents-in-law have actually explicitly asked for what you want; you just resent her for not doing it.
No, it’s your wife’s parents’ problem. They can end this discussion once and for all. Their refusal to do so is what’s causing your problems.
I adore mine. I like my sister-in-law, too, though she’s occasionally bratty and whatever my wife stands to inherit is being whittled away because their parents keep bailing little sis out. We don’t need the money, and I enjoy her company, and my wife doesn’t want the money anyway.
russian heel, that sucks. I had a somewhat similar, although maybe less hostile, situation in my family between my mother, grandparents and aunt. There’s just no reasoning with some people. A normal person would understand if their parents didn’t want to pick up and move to a new town in a different state.
Clearly the only solution is sitcom-style shenanigans: have you considered painting a white line across the middle of her parents and declaring that this side is “yours”? Or pretending that due to a gypsy curse you and the in-laws have swapped bodies?
Truly, they are the worst people in the world.
Ah the old sister in law that doesn’t like driving her kids to see their grandparents rant. Never gets old.
I hope someday to live a life so charmed I have to take on other people’s problems as my own out of sheer boredom with my own no-problem-having days.
I would, however, be insulted if someone thought me so incompetent that I was incapable of making my own decisions with out a gallant [del]son-in-law[/del] knight in shining armor swooping in to champion my cause.
You’re missing the point. He’s not worried about them being unable to make their own decisions. He’s worried that they’ll make a decision on their own that he doesn’t like.
You just don’t get it, do you? THE HUSBAND DIDN’T SIGN THE CARD!!! This is a terribly serious situation, here.
OP, I suggest you challenge him to a duel.