Mother-in-law vent

posted by Kandi

Well, this has been an interesting weekend around our house. We had our son's third birthday party. In having said party, this means my mother in law came into town. She stays with us and sleeps in our basement bedroom. Now, I really don't have a huge issue with her in general. It's just some of the small things that really "burn my biscuits".

Here are some of the scenarios:

1. Our youngest daughter is a **wee** little bit mischevious. I know this, her Dad knows this and well, most of our family knows this. She isn't really into sharing things right now (as most 20 month olds are). She has this, let's call it a quirk of stealing her big brother and sisters toys out of their hands. When they grab them back and tell her NO!, she comes running yelling "MIIINNNEEE" and crying to either me or Chuckie. We figured out fairly quickly what was going on and have explained this to my MIL. She though, will go and get the toy back from the bigger kid and give it back to the baby, OR "baby" the baby. This drives me coo-coo!!!

2. The next thing I would like to take issue with is discipline. We discipline our kids in the manner we feel is good for our family. The thing is, when we tell or ask our kids to do something, she feels this "need" to repeat us. Or, she'll just go and do it for them. Making their bed is a good example. The older kids are 4 and 3 (almost). I think that one of their chores should be to pull the covers up on their beds every morning. Now, I don't expect it to be perfect or even close to it. I applaude the effort and they feel like they accomplished something on their own. When my MIL is here though, she will go behind them and remake the bed to look like a maid did it. We have ask her not to do it, but she does it anyway.

The discipline thing isn't something new. She has done it since our first one was born. Chuckie and I both have ask her not too. I'm not sure if we need to just write it down or constantly remind her. At one time Chuckie sat down with her and explained that we don't do things the way she does and to please stop confusing the kids. She just said, "oh, I'm teaching them a new way to do it". While that may be true, they are still kind of young and need to be consistent with one way before learning a new one.

Maybe I'm just being way too Monica (you know from Friends...**anal retentive, type A**). Does everyone have a MIL like this, or is it just me????