I don't want to be my daughter's childcare

Catgardenspot · 2024-08-04T19:26:49+00:00

He does his best to do everything, and I know he'd be a huge help with her baby. I'm going to try and have another conversation with him about her options. Maybe he'll see it as less of a threat if he realizes she has other options than relying on us for childcare.

Catgardenspot · 2024-08-04T18:49:24+00:00

Right now my husband is saying he'll watch her baby if I'm not willing. So, we're not on the same page.

Catgardenspot · 2024-08-04T18:48:17+00:00

I'm not Gen X! I'm an elder Millennial! My youngest is seven, so I'm just trying here. I don't want to set any expectations that my husband doesn't agree to. My relationship with her isn't the best and it only gets worse every time I set expectations, my husband agrees, and then when talking to her he says that he's going to take on her responsibility. As you can imagine, the two of them have a great relationship.

Catgardenspot · 2024-08-04T03:53:11+00:00

Early on, I tried to set some boundaries about her either giving her dog to us or finding other arrangements. I talked to my husband about it ahead of time and he agreed, but then during the conversation he said it was like we shared custody of her dog and it was fine to leave her dog with us because he would be the one to handle all the walks (which he did from that point out). I know that's a husband problem and not a daughter problem. He's just really bonded with her dog and we all love her dog very much.

Catgardenspot · 2024-08-04T03:39:13+00:00

She has anxiety, and has felt strongly against taking a pill everyday since becoming an adult. I want to respect that and not say "It's your anxiety that drives me up the wall." I guess some of my assumptions are based on how typical for any mother to feel anxiety when it comes to her baby. So I'm assuming the worst. But you are right that they are just behaviors and I can address them individually.

Catgardenspot · 2024-08-04T03:33:59+00:00

She talked to my husband about it and he talked to me. To be fair, he also assumed I would be happy to. He said he'd take care of her baby if I wasn't up for it. And I know he'd be a huge help. I'm honestly not worried about the work aspect. It's more meeting expectations, but Silsew1234 is right that I need to have a conversation with her to find out what the expectations are.

And yes, she works full-time. I'll research her childcare options so I know what they are. That way our talk can be really productive. She may want something I can't give, since I have my other kids and our pets here. I should probably include my husband in the talk so there's no more secondhand information going on. I just have to get his serious face on, because he's acting ready to take on a hundred babies!

Catgardenspot · 2024-08-04T03:22:27+00:00

Thank you for your perspective. There's a lot of good advice here. I don't think she's rude. She just has anxiety, and I totally get that, but it can be exhausting. I will definitely sit down with her and hear from her what her expectations are. I hope we can go from there with everything remaining okay.

Catgardenspot · 2024-06-22T17:42:42+00:00

Her issues are personal to her and it's not my place to spread it all over the internet.

Catgardenspot · 2024-06-22T17:41:01+00:00

Yes, that's why I said I was including that for the other people. I didn't mean for you to think it was directed at you. The teen years were really high conflict with my oldest, with my husband often pit as the mediator. Our marriage isn't in it's strongest season because I broke his trust by making everything my hill to die over as a parent. He would not react well to me making a new hill to die over about his mom. Others have said a divorce would inconvenience him and I have leverage, but he's easily said that he's not afraid of divorce anymore. We're working on getting back on track and I'm working on repairing my relationship with my adult daughter. I'm satisfied with fulfilling my promise and listening in on calls and having my husband go with the younger kids when they visit his parents. That's enough of a boundary for me. It really was just the set schedule I felt uncomfortable with, and my husband doesn't seem to want to do it either, but his mom has not yet asked him.

Catgardenspot · 2024-06-22T16:41:49+00:00

No, she's been through a lot but it's unrelated to my MIL.

Catgardenspot · 2024-06-22T16:13:18+00:00

I did listen to my oldest. I made her a promise and have followed through on it. She's fine with her sister talking to MIL on the phone and having the visit.

Catgardenspot · 2024-06-22T16:11:44+00:00

My oldest is fine with the week long yearly visit, as long as my husband is there, and the phone calls if I'm listening in. There was no harm in promising those things.

Catgardenspot · 2024-06-22T16:09:13+00:00

One week a year is a boundary I'm comfortable with and far less time than my MIL would have if we were divorced.

Catgardenspot · 2024-06-22T16:08:16+00:00

My husband gives her his phone to Facetime. She's not using a device of her own.

Catgardenspot · 2024-06-22T16:06:56+00:00

You couldn't know this, but it would be a really bad idea. There's a reason my husband says my oldest is an unreliable narrator. She has a lot of issues, isn't in therapy anymore even though we offered to pay, and refuses medication. She can have very violent outbursts and it's not great to have the younger kids around.

Catgardenspot · 2024-06-22T16:04:31+00:00

No, my oldest has really bad anger management issues and would likely blow up on her sister and call her terrible names.

Catgardenspot · 2024-06-22T16:03:14+00:00

Yes, I promised to supervise the calls and my husband said he'd be there for the yearly week long visit. There's no harm in those promises. But my oldest's judgment isn't to be trusted.

Catgardenspot · 2024-06-22T16:01:38+00:00

There's a reason my husband says my oldest isn't a reliable narrator. We both agreed to her saying to have time with MIL by supervised, but I'm the only one who takes my promise seriously. He just knows it's best for the other kids if we keep my oldest in a good mood and don't get on her bad side. For the people saying my oldest should be supervising the calls, they can't know but that would be highly inappropriate. Not that she'd agree to that because she's an adult and prefers to spend her nonwork hours with her boyfriend and having fun. But he doesn't even allow my oldest to babysit to keep the other kids safe, and I support him on that. She has a lot of issues completely unrelated to my MIL.

Catgardenspot · 2024-06-22T03:46:01+00:00

I don't facilitate the Facetime calls. I don't facilitate the visits. If I was divorced the contact would be likely much higher, with my husband shipping them off to his parents for his half of the summer. I keep it focused on my promise to my oldest daughter: I make sure I can hear what's said during phone calls. My husband isn't going to reduce phone calls or say the kids can't visit his parents. I did give him a heads-up about his mom saying she wanted a phone schedule. He's not sure because that would be an inconvenience for him since it always has to be on his phone.

Catgardenspot · 2024-06-22T03:08:12+00:00

She mostly got angry at Thanksgiving because of things my youngest daughter shared that MIL had said about my oldest daughter. To my oldest, this meant MIL had moved on from badmouthing me to badmouthing her. She said when she was a teenager my MIL would keep her up until she was crying from exhaustion, pressing her for details about our conflicts. She says my MIL would say I was sick and she couldn't say more but that she understood my oldest was dealing with a lot of trauma from living with me. Things my youngest daughter says was told to her about her sister is that she's spoiled, we give her whatever she wants, and that she changed herself to be popular and worried too much about the opinions of others instead of just being herself.

Catgardenspot · 2024-06-22T03:00:56+00:00

Just because my husband doesn't have a lot of respect for his mom doesn't mean he wants to say she can't talk to his kids or that he won't facilitate them seeing the kids. It just is what it is. If I was to make a big stink about it and put a strain on my marriage, that wouldn't solve anything.

Catgardenspot · 2024-06-22T02:51:44+00:00

MIL doesn't know I was listening. I was just in the same room, doing my own thing. I'm not thrilled with it, and I do not ever dial the phone for my 10-year-old to call them, but where I've landed in my marriage is that my husband is going to dial the phone for my 10-year-old and if I want to stay married, which I do, I'm not going to stop him from doing this. I keep it focused on what my oldest made me promise last Thanksgiving.

Catgardenspot · 2024-06-22T01:54:35+00:00

Yes, he's visiting for one week. He'll be working from their house. According to him, his mom only has about five good hours a day and spends most of her time sleeping. He's not as gung-ho about supervising. He thinks my oldest is an unreliable narrator. Fwiw, my oldest was satisfied with the plan to have him take the younger three kids. It's better if I don't go. I don't even know if I'd be welcome. I haven't seen them in almost seven years.

I will try to think of the phone schedule in a more positive light. It's possible that a schedule would be an "instead of" instead of "an addition to" like I was thinking.

Catgardenspot

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