When you get older and become a parent, having your own parents around to give you a hand occasionally is super helpful. Not only does it allow you to have a break, but it strengthens the bond between your kid and their grandparent.
One woman is frustrated with her mother-in-law, who keeps making excuses why she can’t babysit her child but is always babysitting her other grandchild.
She and her husband live about 30 minutes away from his mom, and they have a young daughter who is almost two years old. Also living near them is her brother-in-law, his wife, and their toddler.
She or her husband will occasionally contact her mother-in-law and ask her to babysit their daughter. However, more recently, her mother-in-law has been saying no every single time. To make matters worse, her mother-in-law says no because she’s babysitting her other grandchild.
“The last three times we asked, [she’s said no] because she’s with our nephew,” she explained.
“It sounds like she babysits him quite often, like several times a week. We ask her maybe once a month or so. The most recent [incident] happened yesterday, when I couldn’t send my kid to daycare due to illness, and I had an important appointment at the hospital. [My mother-in-law] couldn’t take her because she was with her other grandchild because their mom had a dentist appointment. I had to cancel my appointment because we had no one to babysit.”
While she can understand her mother-in-law needing to cancel on her because she’s with her other grandchild occasionally, this has been happening every time she’s reached out, making her very frustrated.
She’s especially frustrated because her sister-in-law is a stay-at-home mom, so she doesn’t understand why her mother-in-law is responsible for her nephew so often.
Additionally, her mother-in-law loves to boast about being such an awesome grandmother, telling everyone their child is practically hers and bragging about how she’d do “anything” for her.
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