After they got married, my brother and his wife decided to buy an apartment with a foreign loan. And for some reason they decided to give birth right away. In order to save money, they moved in with my mother and me. The husband and wife worked hard, seven days a week. They only came home to spend the night. They even took their daughter-in-law to give birth from her place of work. The newborn boy was named Mark.
After two months of breastfeeding, my daughter-in-law lost her milk. The child was switched to formula. Her mother taught at school and worked until lunchtime. So they decided that the daughter-in-law would work half shifts. My mother would come home from work, the guard would change, and my daughter-in-law would run off to work.
I, then a high school student, helped my mother with all my strength and abilities. When Mark was one year old, my brother and his wife bought an apartment and moved in with us. Soon I graduated from high school and went to study at an institute in another city.
By then, my mother had already become a pensioner and could pay more attention to her grandson. So for the second time, when I went to work, my brother and his wife brought Mark to my mother’s house and took him back in the evening. Both mom and Mark were happy with their lives. When the boy was sick, he stayed with his mother. Why take a sick child back and forth? Mark was not sent to a kindergarten.
That’s why his mother raised her grandson until her daughter-in-law went on maternity leave for the second time two months ago. Her brother and his wife closed the mortgage, and they decided that this time her daughter-in-law would take the entire maternity leave. And when the daughter-in-law was at home, they stopped bringing Mark to his grandmother. This is where the complaints about the mother and her methods of raising children began: “How could a teacher raise such a spoiled child?
He doesn’t want to do anything on his own, ignores me, obeys only when I whip him with a belt or interrupt. You have spoiled the child,” my daughter-in-law complained to my mother. My brother supported his wife. If she dared to yell at my mother like that in front of me, I would put this ridiculous couple in their place in a heartbeat.
