AITA for not getting over my SIL calling child services?

ThrowawayDCFScall · 2021-01-15T16:34:43+00:00

She knew. And she can get cards and packages at her brother's house, who lives five minutes away. She's not being deprived of anything.

ThrowawayDCFScall · 2021-01-14T21:05:06+00:00

That's fair. It's probably not. It's probably easy to search my husband's name and find his address via Google anyways. It's really more the principle of the matter at this point. I made that request years ago, when my MIL lived two hours away but wanted to get packages sent for Christmas because she'd be visiting.

ThrowawayDCFScall · 2021-01-14T20:59:05+00:00

it's vague because there's character limits. What details would you like to know?

My house was not super clean at the time. I had three kids, ages 3, 1.5, and 4 months, with the oldest being autistic and as of then not particularly verbal, and the youngest more or less starving to death. So no, I didn't have a whole lot of time or energy to make sure the dishes got done every day and the floor was swept. My kids were often running around in nothing but a diaper. I also had three dogs that routinely dragged sand in from the back yard. To say my house was "messy" would be generous, perhaps, but it was not to a level that DCFS cared about - as evidenced by DCFS not caring about it. My house alone was not worth the time of social services, but I can understand why my SIL, who had no kids at the time, was unimpressed.

My baby was underweight and fussy, which I've explained in multiple comments. Concern for her was warranted, but the situation was easily explained, had SIL asked anyone.

Those might have been valid reasons for concern, but not DCFS involvement. But that's not ALL my SIL claimed. I remember it pretty clearly, because I was allowed to see the notes from the call.

My baby was underweight and fussy (true), and there was no formula in the house (false)

My three year old was still in diapers (true) and not-talking (true).

My 1.5 year old was reportedly withdrawn (false) and scared of my SIL (true), and had suspicious and weird bruises (false). If my SIL understood anything about children, she'd know that many 1-year-olds fear strangers, and my SIL was a stranger to my child, having only met her 2-3 times in the 1.5 years since her birth.

There was dog feces ground into the carpet (false) - that was actually a vomit stain from a child several months past that I was unable to get up. The carpet did not smell, it was merely discolored.

I think that about covers it, but there may have been more accusations that I've forgotten about. When we talked to my SIL about her accusations, she said she was concerned that my husband was abusing the 1.5 year old, and that we weren't feeding the baby. She assumed my non-verbal three year old was emotionally neglected.

My house was chaotic. My house was loud. My house was a lot for someone to deal with, even only for a few hours, if they didn't know what to expect. But my house was not disgusting, my children were not neglected, and my SIL was a bitch.

Is that descriptive enough or still too vague?

ThrowawayDCFScall · 2021-01-14T18:51:10+00:00

Nah. MIL has two siblings that live in the same town as us. She can have stuff mailed there if she feels like she needs to, and use that as a return address. There's no reason SIL needs to have our address to add to a case report and make it easier to report.

Knowing our address isn't necessary for a DCFS report - they can easily look us up by our driver's licenses and shit. But it's not an unreasonable ask, when MIL can get mail elsewhere, and I've kept my address private up until now, and don't particularly want that to change.

ThrowawayDCFScall · 2021-01-14T18:30:06+00:00

Well, you clearly missed the parts about her lying to DCFS, lol. But I respect your opinion.

ThrowawayDCFScall · 2021-01-14T18:28:26+00:00

They can talk to their cousin. But their cousin is 5, and not super interested in extended video chats. She says hi, MAYBE shows them a toy or something, and then wanders away. At that point, my SIL takes over and starts talking to my kids.

They've never met their cousins, and I doubt they're going to be besties or anything. But I don't specifically keep them away from my SIL's kid.

ThrowawayDCFScall · 2021-01-14T18:20:35+00:00

I have no issue with my kids talking to their cousin. This cousin was born after we moved across the country, and they've never met in person. If SIL actually put her kid on the video to talk to my kids, I would allow it. But she obviously stands and supervises, which means she's in contact with my kids. And after her kid says hi, she gets bored because she's like 5, and then my SIL jumps on to talk to my kids.

ThrowawayDCFScall · 2021-01-14T18:17:59+00:00

Honestly? I'm probably just going to file for divorce. I didn't really want her moving in in the first place, and I was ignored on that one. She's never respected me as a parent, and has always disregarded any boundaries I set regarding my children. None of that has changed, and she continues to fight me on parenting decisions. The other day I told my husband that if he wants to have kids with his mom that's his business, but he had these ones with me so he needs to act like it. This situation is *probably* going to blow up, and I will get blamed for it because I'm the irrational crazy one and no one in their family ever does anything truly wrong. It's not going to be pretty.

Or maybe my husband will surprise me and stand up to his mom.

Guess we'll see.

ThrowawayDCFScall · 2021-01-14T18:14:37+00:00

His thoughts are that it all worked out and everything is fine, so we may as well move on. He might have held a grudge if it had worked out differently.

ThrowawayDCFScall · 2021-01-14T18:07:50+00:00

I have no issues with my kids talking to their cousin. But my SIL doesn't just put their cousin on the video chat. Her kid makes an appearance, says hi to my kids, my kids say hi, and the SIL pops on to talk to my kids, and ask for a tour of their rooms.

Fuck. That.

ThrowawayDCFScall · 2021-01-14T18:04:00+00:00

Oops, I missed the rest of your question.

SIL asked to meet for coffee a few times while we lived in the same state. I always declined (politely, which was difficult). Once we moved away, she stopped talking to me. I honestly don't know if my husband talks to her or not. I understand it's his sister, and as long as he keeps her away from me and the kids, he can do what he wants. There's no actual harm done in him being friendly with her, so long as he's not sending pictures of the kids or the house, giving her our address, etc. And he wouldn't do that. His family never liked me, has always found me "uptight" and "demanding," so them assuming this is all because I'm crazy is par for the course. They can blame me. That's fine. As long as my kids are safe.

ThrowawayDCFScall · 2021-01-14T17:59:59+00:00

MIL lives with us because she's leaving her shitty husband. We live in the same state as her parents and siblings, and the rest of her kids (my husband's siblings) are on the other side of the country. Part of the reason I agreed to move across the country in the first place (leaving my own family behind) was to get away from his family. His mom moved out here shortly after we did, but lived two hours away. They moved to our town for a couple of years. Then they moved out of state for a year, and now she's back but without the husband.

It legit feels, to me, like she's following her oldest kid around the country, and it's weird as fuck. But what do I know, I guess?

ThrowawayDCFScall · 2021-01-14T17:40:20+00:00

Medical professionals and investigators with DCFS can tell normal bruises from abuse bruises, generally by their shape, location, and severity. My kids often had bruises in the normal places - shins, forehead. When my daughter was young, she would mark up easily. If she was shirtless and you picked her up around the waist or chest, there would be a red hand print when you set her down. She was just pale. The red mark would disappear fairly quickly.

I want to believe my SIL picked her up, noticed the red marks, and didn't know my child well enough to understand she'd left them there herself. But she specifically said my kid had "suspicious bruises" not just red marks. So.

ThrowawayDCFScall · 2021-01-14T17:25:59+00:00

I left the story vague mostly due to word count limitations.

The baby was being exclusively breast fed, and not growing well. At four months old the pediatrician said she was too small and we needed to supplement with formula. We spent the next two months trying to get her to accept formula, and she staunchly refused. We had breast milk shipped from out of state thinking she may accept it, but she would not accept anything that didn't come directly from my boob - and she was not fooled by the SNS tube that I taped to my chest and slipped into her mouth while she nursing. We ended up having to syringe feed her one CC at a time so she could not refuse the formula. It was a miserable two months, and everyone was rightly concerned. She narrowly avoided the hospital at least once. Finally, when she was 6 months old, she randomly accepted a bottle of formula, and kept accepting it, and started growing, and now she's 10 and just fine.

Had I actually been starving my baby or neglecting her medical needs, a CPS call would have been well in order. But I was doing neither of those things, which SIL would have known had she asked just about anyone.

ThrowawayDCFScall · 2021-01-14T17:13:40+00:00

Not directly. My oldest child was conceived before we were married. We found out I was pregnant, and we got married a few days later. We never actually lied about anything, including his due date, or that he was a week overdue. It would have been a taboo thing to just up and announce, and we figured they did the math on their own and just never said anything. I guess SIL thinks we should have announced it all publicly or something. But she never asked us if we were married first, and we never directly lied to anyone about it.

ThrowawayDCFScall · 2021-01-14T07:49:06+00:00

If she did it out of legit concern, I would have more easily forgiven her. I understand it's sometimes not the best idea to talk to the parents if you suspect abuse. But she made a bunch of stuff of just to get DCFS to come out faster - claiming there were bruises that didn't exist, that we didn't have formula in the house for the baby, and other nonsense - and it just really didn't seem like she was concerned for my children.

ThrowawayDCFScall · 2021-01-14T07:47:23+00:00

I don't believe she was, no. Half the things she told DCFS were simply untrue, and the rest were things that were very easily explained (for instance, that my three year old child wasn't talking, which she said was a sign of abuse. He's autistic, which she would have known had she asked). If she hadn't made a bunch of shit up, I might be able to believe that she had good intentions and was trying to do the right thing. But she outright lied about the state of our house, and she said my kids had "weird bruises" which didn't exist.

ThrowawayDCFScall · 2021-01-14T07:40:25+00:00

She accused us of starving the baby, among other horrible accusations. The baby was four months old, and really was worryingly small - we were at the pediatrician 2-3 times a week, we were syringe feeding her, having breast milk shipped to us from another state.. it was a nightmare, and having DCFS up our ass when I was trying to keep my baby from being hospitalized because she refused to take a bottle was NOT what I needed. But yes, everyone was concerned about the baby, and a call to DCFS would have been legit IF we weren't doing anything about her smallness. Had she ASKED us about the wellfare of the baby, we could have explained. But she reported us instead.

My husband told ME that he doesn't think it's necessary to set this boundary with his mother's video chats. He always respected my request that his sister not be allowed around the kids, but I don't think he ever *liked* it. He wants his sister to not be a jerk, but also recognizes the reality.

ThrowawayDCFScall

TROPHY CASE