Gossipy MIL and 15 characters

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Could you restrict her, but DH communicates with her and sends her pictures?
 
Fine by me, as long as he doesn’t share too much personal stuff, but he doesn’t really want the responsibility of sending photos to his mother. That’s “women’s work” or something, I guess.
 
I think you’re being more than reasonable. Your poor mother.

Honestly, I think I would insist on restricting her. If your husband doesn’t like it, he can do all the ‘extras’ you used to do.
 
My husband could not give two hoots about my facebook feed, which relatives are in or out, so that is hard for me to imagine.

What about keeping your facebook pretty restricted and setting up an Instagram that is just for sharing a sub set of your adventures with the “broader” range of family?
 
It’s your husband’s job to deal with his relatives! Now that you’ve shared the fact that she has a real drinking problem, I can’t stress this enough!

It isn’t ‘women’s work.’ It’s family members work. Have you ever brought up alcoholics anonymous to her? Has she listened? Maybe you should attend Al-anon (for the families of people with drinking problems). Some don’t like it, I know, but it’s the only things I see suggested, consistently.

You and your husband should at least try Al-anon. I know that one thing it teaches is that you have no responsibility concerning her drinking. You didn’t make her start, and you can’t make her stop. That has to be her decision.

If it has been brought up often, with no results for her, when you’re desperate, you may even bring it up in public! (Just feeling s little nasty)! But, maybe try to make her see that your kids are not the ones in the family with the biggest control issues! Also, once they’re old enough, try and find an age-appropriate way of explaining this problem to the kids. Otherwise, they may begin to feel confused, and even responsible, concerning Grandma’s no doubt bizarre behavior, at times.
 
I don’t know if there’s a nice way to say this but, I’m kind of busy. I have three young children, a full-time job, lots of projects and hobbies, plus the time I’m always trying to scrape together to focus on spirituality. I just don’t have a weekly meeting’s worth of time to spend on this wacky lady. And frankly, I don’t know her well enough nor have a formed enough of a bond with her that attending al anon would be beneficial to me. I’m already aware on every level that I didn’t make her a drunk and even if I had the ability, I don’t have the time and inclination to fix it.
 
I completely forgot that you lived two states away from her. Again…I’d see this as a blessing! For those it does pertain to, I’m pretty sure that AA and Al-anon are helpful.

Again, sorry.
 
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A Venezuelan friend was sharing a joke that had been passed around her siblings. Something about how “Venezuelans have two different text groups— one that has the entire family in it, and one that has the entire family, except for ‘that aunt’.” And how they had all laughed and laughed, because it was true-- she and her siblings had a text group for everyone; a text group for everyone except their mom; and so on.

So you might set up a couple of group MMS’s… one that has “everyone” and one that has “almost everyone.” And you might post cute pictures and funny anecdotes to the group that has “everyone”, but you might post different information to the one with “almost everyone.”
 
Allegra said:
She didn’t say anything about it at the time, however, when we returned home from the trip, we found out that she had sent my mother a long text rant telling her that we were lazy parents and a 3yo that has accidents is “unacceptable”.
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I hate to break this to your MIL but the vast MAJORITY of us including myself still had some accidents when we were 3 years old.
In fact they happened from time to time when I was attending kindergarten and first grade and even second grade with kids 5, 6 and 7 years old.

I would ignore this woman’s baloney as I’m sure your mother will too. Your MIL is not living in reality. Be pleasant to her, make the dutiful family visits, leave it to your husband to deal with, and don’t tell MIL your business. If she wants to gripe then let her, and let your husband deal with her.

I can just imagine how my own mother would have reacted if she had gotten any communication from my MIL criticizing me in any way. She didn’t send messages to my MIL criticizing her son and she certainly would not have accepted one from MIL criticizing me without giving that woman a double piece of her mind. Fortunately my MIL was a kind and polite lady and I did not have this problem.

Edited to add, I see now your MIL has a drinking problem, so at least we know why she acts so inappropriately. All the more reason for you to just avoid her except for the necessary courtesy visits.
 
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Allegra said:
Fine by me, as long as he doesn’t share too much personal stuff, but he doesn’t really want the responsibility of sending photos to his mother. That’s “women’s work” or something, I guess.
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It does sound like communicating with his mom needs to be primarily his job from now on.

My husband does 90% of the communicating with his family, and I’m a SAHM and have a fairly positive relationship with my MIL.
 
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My husband contacted her and told her he didn’t appreciate her behavior. She proceeds to send me a facebook “apology” that included several more criticisms such as “once our diaper pail was too full” and “my son’s face sometimes has smudges on it”. I frankly don’t want to be around this person anymore, nor do I want my children around her. Especially my daughters because I know from dealing with my mother how hard it is on a little girl when the adult women in their lives do nothing but notice and criticize superficial flaws. I don’t need to “cut off all contact” or anything, but do to the fact that she lives so far away, practically any interaction requires a great deal of work on my part and I’m simply not feeling too motivated to do it. I guess that’s because I’m so lazy.
 
I’m sorry.

I have a critical mother in law. It’s sad, because I would have liked a good relationship with her. We are just cordial.

She goaded me once into hanging up on her ( I don’t have Facebook) then I was wrong for hanging up on her. I apologized for my part. Instead of apologizing for her part she just reiterated how hurtful I was to hang up on her.
 
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On the criticism of the diaper pail to full, I would say I know but for some reason your son doesn’t seem to think your way and it can wait on a bit. And the smudges on his face, I would just say, we are trying to teach him how to care for himself, you know it is never to early, and if you think this is bad good thing you didn’t see the before. Just take every criticism and turn it back on her, did that with my MIL, eventually she just stopped because it made her look bad in front of friends (before internet times). I relish the thought of how much fun it would of been to do this over facebook to her. I remember one time she fussed about me not getting to a dirty diaper fast enough for her liking. So next dirty diaper time when her friends were around, I just handed over son and said, I know you don’t like him being in a dirty diaper any longer then he has too, but I have to go to the bathroom and I know you don’t mind doing this. Took about a 10 get together s, but she got over herself and learned to enjoy things instead of controlling them.
 
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