I am 45 years old, a mother-in-law, and the grandmother of a five-year-old grandson. My story is somewhat similar to that of the author of the confession about the sloppy daughter-in-law, so I understand the author’s feelings very well. But my situation has managed to go further, and now I am rebuilding a broken relationship with my son. To do that I had to do a lot of “work on my mistakes” and figure out what got me to where I am. I’ll share, maybe I can help in some way.
My son’s family was also living in an apartment my husband and I owned, only it was not an inheritance, but a purchase for which my husband and I took out a mortgage. My son was supposed to partially pay for it, but that never happened. Lockdown, work problems, there were always quite real and valid reasons. But the fact remained that my son’s family was living in property we owned and actually at our expense. Then events unfolded according to the familiar scenario. My outrage and my attempts to “help” led to a deterioration in relations in the young family and practically stopped communication between my son and my husband and me.
My conclusions:
I had committed i trespass on a young family (never mind that they were living in an apartment I owned, the house was theirs). Coming and making remarks about the cleanliness of the house is unacceptable. And it doesn’t matter what form it takes: a joke, a question, an advice, an offer of help, “doing good” in the form of unsolicited help. It is all a violation of other people’s boundaries.
I have not been psychologically separated from my adult son. Instead of recognizing him as an adult capable of taking responsibility for his life, I simply included his wife and child in my area of responsibility as well. However, if you think about it, my sister-in-law is also an adult and her standards of purity have just as much right to exist. And the conditions in which my grandson lives are his parents’ responsibility, not mine.
I have not examined the impact of regular financial assistance to adult children on the relationship with the parent family and on the ability of grown children to earn a living on their own. And this usually leads to a worsening of the relationship and prevents the grown child from achieving his or her own financial success. Financial assistance is acceptable, but only rarely and in a situation of force majeure. The fact that children live in real estate we own is destructive, corrupting, and infantilizing help.
