Boundaries Broken: How I Stood Up to My MIL and Protected My Son’s Tears

My MIL Comes over Whenever She Wants and Makes My Son Cry, So I Taught Her a Lesson

Have you ever sat there holding your breath and avoiding any windows in the hopes that the person pounding on your door will eventually give up and go away? I know that sounds horrible, but I really needed to find a method to give my little guy a couple of hours of sleep, and I myself could use a little relaxation.

I live with my spouse Frank and our 6-month-old son, Victor. Though there have occasionally been bumps along the road due to our inexperience as parents, overall, I think we’ve been doing a terrific job. Getting Vic to fall asleep is the only thing I still have trouble with. I have to put a lot of effort into getting him to nap during the day because he wakes up during the night.

Vic has been struggling to fall asleep, but I’ve been helping him by playing with him until he eventually doeszes off during the day and then putting him to bed. However, he doesn’t sleep well, and an unwelcome guest hasn’t made things any better.

You see, my mother-in-law, Sally, moved into the house next to us a few months ago. I had first assumed it wouldn’t be a problem because we weren’t involved in the transfer and it didn’t occur during Vic’s first few months. Frank also benefited from having relatives nearby. However, Sally saw our proximity as an open invitation to come visit us anytime she pleased.

Vic is our first child, so I made the decision to stay at home and raise Vic, while Frank went to work full-time. Sally is aware of this and has made use of my constant presence at home to see her grandson whenever she pleases. Since his grandmother was able to spend a lot of time with him, that would normally be beneficial for a small child.

But Sally was quite content to approach, knock on the door, and ask to be let in. even after Vic had just slept off. And this has been going on all the while. See, when Vic is awake in the mornings, Sally gets to see her friends. I would love any visits from Grandma during the early portion of the feeding and playing session with my baby boy. Sally, meanwhile, follows her own schedule.

Vic normally goes to bed in the afternoon, but as soon as he does, Sally gets the strong impulse to check on her little grandson. She doesn’t know exactly when Vic sleeps (it can be rather erratic, to be honest), but she never even considered asking when would be a good time to visit. And it would have been okay if it had just happened once or twice, but over the past several months, this has developed into a bit of a habit.

I had only been able to put Vic to sleep during her past five visits when she knocked on the front door. Being a light sleeper, my infant boy woke up at the sound of the loud knocking and started crying right away. That meant, of course, that I would have to try to lull him back to sleep for another two hours.

I’ve started locking all the doors and avoiding Sally, which has made me act like I’m playing hide-and-seek. When I hear the front door knock, I tiptoe upstairs to reassure Vic. After that, I either stay there and attempt to soothe him down, or, if he’s not too upset about being woken up, I sneak out to the backyard and play with him for a while until Sally gives up and leaves.

After I finally confided in Frank about my issue, he went to speak with his mother because he is a devoted husband. After spending nearly sixty minutes there, he told me upon his return that Sally would give me a call or send a text before she arrived. That made me happy because I could now tell her if now was a good time to visit. My elation was short-lived.

I’d just put Vic to bed for his afternoon nap the very next day, having kept him occupied for three hours straight, when I heard a notification on my phone. It’s got to be Sally. With a little, satisfied smile, I thought, I’m delighted she’s following through on her commitment. I opened my mouth to respond that Vic was asleep, but my baby boy startled awake, and then I heard the usual loud knock. With a heavy heart, I got Vic up and spent another two hours sitting in the backyard.

After about fifteen minutes of her knocking, I gave up. I went up to her and told her that Vic had to go to bed. Sally retorted, “I will see my grandson when I want!” after inhaling deeply.

Despite my shock, I maintained my composure. I locked the door, closed it, and bided my time. Frank eventually arrived home, and we had another conversation. When he spoke with his mother once again, she said that she had misinterpreted everything. I was surprised to find silence for the next three days. alarmingly so.

After putting Vic to bed on the third day, I watched some reruns of old comedies while I walked downstairs for a quick nap of my own. Vic slept for a while with the video baby monitor fixed on him. About twenty minutes later, I woke up and immediately checked the monitor app. I swear I left the screen on, but it was black.

I got out of bed and went upstairs to see how little Vic was doing. Turn the turn and go up the landing. I knew I had left his door slightly ajar, so I opened it and went inside. My feet turned into two solid bricks of concrete and my blood went cold. The figure of a person leaned over Vic’s cot, framed against the open window.

“Hey!” When I eventually found my voice, I yelled. With a start, the person looked up, and I knew it was Sally, looking back at me with remorse in her eyes. She began rapidly to explain that she had climbed through the second-story window to check on Vic because she was afraid that I wasn’t answering the door.

Obviously, I was furious. After evicting her from my home and threatening to call the police, I packed up my belongings and bided my time until Frank arrived. Upon his arrival at home, I informed him that Vic and I would be living with my mother until he could convince Sally not to sneak into my house once more. He was seething when he learned what she’d done.

After a while, Eugene, my father-in-law, messaged me to tell me that I had overreacted. Grant and Sally had separated a few years prior, yet she still raced to him and told him I was preventing her from seeing her grandson. In addition, Sally wrote on Facebook that we were preventing her from seeing Vic, which led a lot of her friends to support her.

Frank told his father what was going on, but Grant insisted that we were being petty. To be honest, I’m not sure if I overreacted anymore. How do you feel?

Here’s another tale of a controlling mother-in-law who refused to let a wife to prepare food for her husband’s birthday.

As the woman gets ready for her husband’s birthday celebration, her mother-in-law starts to criticise her. Ploy
Really, I love celebrating birthdays. They serve as our excuse to spoil the people we care about with cake and affection, much like personal holidays. I was therefore all in for a lavish dinner party at home, prepared by my husband Carl, and attended by the usual suspects: family and friends. I had no idea that, thanks to my mother-in-law Sally, this birthday would turn out more like a dramatic episode of a daytime soap opera.

Sally made the decision to visit a day early in order to provide her culinary skills for Carl’s special day. Since everything in our relationship had been going well, we were really open to her assistance. However, as they say, calm waters do not produce skilled sailors, and I was going to encounter a storm that I had not anticipated.

Sally and I were acting out our roles in the kitchen ballet, so the day was busy. Then, out of the blue, Sally started looking for some missing ingredients for the cookies. But these were no ordinary cookies. No, they were the mainstay of a birthday custom she said she had followed from Carl’s early years. Even though I had a tonne of work to do when I got back, the urgency in her voice made me run to the grocery shop.

At the store, I was racing against the clock, envisioning myself as Carl’s birthday boy. This delusion vanished the instant I returned to our yard, met not with appreciation but with Carl’s rage. He said that I had deserted the ship, leaving his mother to work alone in the kitchen.

When I returned to our house, Sally was nowhere to be seen, so confusion was my constant companion. As the guests started to come, I was in a physical and mental wreck. My confusion and sense of betrayal persisted even after my brief shower.

As the evening went on, Carl and Sally continued to treat me like I didn’t exist. It was a twist I didn’t see coming: Sally set up this drama to make herself look like the hero of the day and to make me, her daughter-in-law, look bad. Carl’s birthday had become Sally’s stage, and I was now the bad guy.

Once the birthday celebration came to an end and everyone left, Carl was still not persuaded by my version of events. I was alone in my own house because of his blind spot about his mother’s manipulations. However, destiny, or more accurately, karma, chose to take centre stage. Carl received Sally’s cocky message that was intended for a friend.

The necessary plot twist was the phone Carl was holding the following morning. It was an acknowledgement of Sally’s planning and her motivations, which sprang from her distaste for my ideologies. Carl and Sally’s meeting revealed long-standing hurts as well as the way to reconciliation and forgiveness.

Following the incident, Carl and I decided to celebrate simply the two of us in Bali the following year, without any fuss. Though it’s still unclear if Sally has really put our disagreements behind her, I’ve made a commitment to peace for Carl’s sake.

That’s the story of Carl’s birthday drama, which was less of a party and more of a Shakespearean tragedy. It showed me that sometimes, even the best-laid plans can backfire and teach us valuable lessons about understanding, forgiving, and the lengths we will go to, whether or not they are chosen. The theme for the following year is “No drama, just Bali.”