Please help! My mother-in-law is driving me crazy! She has always smothered my 30 year old husband
and thinks that my 21/2 year old daughter is hers! She comes over after the baby's bedtime and keeps
calling my daughter "her baby"....she knows this drives me crazy!
I told my husband last night that she
was trying to compete with me over our daughter, of course his response was that she just loved our baby....
when she's around her she repeats "I love you, at least in every other sentence! I think she's looney
sometimes.....I'm expecting a new son in 8 more weeks I do not want her present at his birth (or anyone else)
and I'm afraid that if I hear "my baby" one time with this new baby I will loose it and say what's on my
mind, "This is my baby and not your's. Stop trying to posess my children!!!!!!!"
My daddy passed away 2 months ago and this baby will be so special to me, a part of my daddy because
he never had a grandson....please offer some advice to me because I feel like I'm fighting a losing battle.....
Yes, my dear, you ARE fighting a losing battle. Those babies are indeed her grandchildren and she looks
upon them as hers. There is nothing you can ever do about that except be thankful that she loves them
and hope she continues to love them when they get older and do all sorts of things that might dismay her.
She not only loves them, she feels that they are part of her - when she is long gone they will be here on
earth - she feels they are something she has contributed, through her son, and incidently through you - but
we wives are only the carriers of her genes I suppose, in her eyes.
When she says "my baby" to YOUR children, you know of course that they are really yours, and not hers.
When they need all the million things that you do for them and will continue to do for years and years,
everyone will know they are yours - or is it really that YOU are THEIRS? . As the years roll by it can not
damage them in any way to know that they have this doting grandmother who seems to get great pleasure out of reassuring herself constantly that she loves them.
I'm sure you've noticed that the people who really love don't have to keep repeating it over and over again. (Just imagine if your husband had to keep saying that over and over again to make you realize that he loves you!
It would be so unreal you would have to wonder what he was really hiding!)
Back to grandmother. Let her say and do what she will - just steel yourself against it and know that she NEEDS
to say and do those things to accommodate her own insecurity. If she "smothers" your husband, let her do that
too. Please stop fighting it. Just let it be. You have a long life ahead with those babies and a husband who you
really do need and love, so don't let it become ruined because of the needs of one mother in law who doesn't understand her role. That's her problem, not yours.
Be bigger than this whole situation and for goodness sake don't let it ruin your happiness with the children. Bite
your tongue whenever you find yourself about to explode on the topic of your mother in law. You've written a good letter - I hope that helped get some of your anger out of your system. If it gets too hard to bear again, write another letter. But try as hard as you can not to talk about it to your husband, to your friends, to your mother in law, to
your own mother, or anyone. Write another letter to Great Granny if you think I'm being too difficult, but otherwise,
keep it to yourself.
I only want the best for you and I truly believe that you will never, ever - not in a million years - be able to change
your husband's mother and her need to "possess" your children, so all you can do is somehow improve your own attitude towards her.
Pity her if you must, but don't fight her. You will lose.
With much affection and understanding,
GG
Return to Granny's Query index
