Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Too good to be true??

Yeah, I've never been good at reading between the lines either. Never one of my strong points -- why can't people just say what they mean??

It would feel nice for DH and I if we felt support and actually got some help from our families... many times I feel as though we live on an island.

I read this thread to my DH because I knew he'd get a laugh out of MY giving advice on reading people. His only comment: "Scary!"

Yeah, it's bad.

I wish you got more help, too.

HoosierMommy, I've got to admit my own MIL drove me crazy when my kids were little, OK, she still drives me crazy, but now I blow it off as we're really different people. The worst was when my children were small and she'd always say she wanted to watch the kids. I was a SAHM, so I never needed her much but EVERY TIME I needed her she'd always hem and haw around like it was a huge imposition! It drove me CRAZY, but I think I already said that, haha!
Anyway, I did my best to get past that and the relationship between my kids and their grandma made it worthwhile for me to bite my tongue. And now we even can share a few things like the symphony and ballet a couple times a year.
It's odd, her own MIL helped raise her kids, but she just wasn't the kind to be able to help with her grandkids on any regular basis.

Hi there,

I am hoping I can post here without coming across as a know it all OR hurting your feelings.

My MOTHER sounds like your MIL, to a "T" I am 35 and I still don't deal with her ideally at times.

1. Your DD is first priority. You need to place her in whatever school you feel is best for HER.. not your MIL..
you can work out the travel issues...

2. Your MIL sounds very passive aggressive. She cannot say what she means, but makes herself loud and clear through actions. ( ie. doesn't want to tell you to put DD in a Church based school, but I bet if you decided to send her there, she would change her mind about driving in winter.) She is manipulating your decision ( or trying ) by her actions. You won't get her to voice an opinion, because she can't.

I agree with some of the above posters, as you get more experienced in parenting, letting other's opinions slide and putting your own first gets easier. Just keep putting DD needs ahead of everyone elses!

JBR

It seems like I'm either frustrated with my own mother or my MIL, usually at opposite times so that I'm frustrated a lot of the time! My mother isn't big on babies, little kids in diapers, kids that get cranky when they need naps, etc. I'm not exactly sure how she raised two kids of her own, but I guess she was fine once we get out of diapers and became self-sufficient, which we did pretty early on. So if I ask her for help, she usually acts as if it is a huge imposition (I've called her out on it and she even admitted it). She doesn't understand what it's like to have high-maintenance GT kids (I was a laid-back GT kind of girl) so she seems a bit overwhelmed with my little ones. Since DD3 is older, DM has been better, but the last time she watched DD-then-6mo, she basically told me she can't watch her again for a long long time. Sigh.

DH and I try not to ask people to watch our kids often, and with the baby's stranger anxiety, I would never hire a babysitter just to put her through hell with a crying baby. Since my MIL watches the kids twice a week, we don't feel comfortable asking her to watch the kids for a little bit while we go to dinner or something.

This kind of adds to our frustration with my MIL... I tried thinking of all the different possibilities that would not involve her having to take DD to preschool. I even said I would take a different lunch-hour, pick up DD at school and drop her off at MIL's house so MIL would only have to drop her off in the morning. But apparently that was no good either. To make matters worse, I briefly talked to one of the girls I worked with about switching our work-days around and now she's not happy about switching days (if MIL doesn't drop off DD, I HAVE to switch my work days so I don't work on the days DD has school -- there's no other choice). After the fiasco with MIL, I almost threw a stapler across the room when my co-worker told me this (keep in mind, last week she told me she'd do anything she had to to make my situation work).

I didn't really throw a stapler; I just got really quiet. Many times I believe it would be a lot easier living in a cave.

Thanks for the support, JBR. When I talked with my MIL about the school, she kept putting it down. When I mentioned I would LOVE to send DD there for K, she told us we could send her to public school because we can just work with her after school on her other needs.

I finally looked at MIL and said firmly, "DH and I feel strongly that DD will need to be accelerated. And it's going to be a lot easier and better for her to go to the private school versus battling with the public school."

MIL acts like DD isn't really that smart when she talks with us, but then she'll brag about her to other people. It's confusing. She doesn't understand her needs, that's for sure. She thinks DH had an easy time in school when in fact, he's very dissatisfied with his school experience -- something we're trying to avoid with DD.

I think that it's really hard when the grandparents don't support the decisions we make for our children. My parents believe that
(a) the school will never do anything for my child
(b) DD8 just needs to learn to deal with it
(c) She is not as unhappy as she says she is
(d) Grade acceleration is always wrong

With parents, I think it comes back to a bias towards the decisions they made when they raised their children. They're not living with our children so they don't see the frustrations up close, and it's been a long time since they had kids in school. I just hope that the testing we have done will give our concerns some unbiased validity. It hurts to have your own parents not support you, but relationships are even trickier with in laws, especially when you need them for help with child care.

Perhaps if you stand strong in your decision she will come around to accepting it in time.

MIL is just going to have to accept it eventually and she should know by now that DH and I don't always do things conventionally. For instance, she was really upset we didn't get married in a church (we did it at a botanical conservatory) and she thinks we're too hard on DD3 (but DD understands what we expect of her, even if she is just 3) and we have different educational views about our children.

My mother is surprisingly very supportive about DD3 and her educational needs. Once DM saw what DD can do, she was shocked (I am GT, but I didn't do early stuff as a preschooler like DD so this is all new to DM). So at least I have one parent on board with our decisions.

In the grand scheme of things, MIL just needs to get with the times. She's only 56, yet she acts like she's 96. In fact, I've had 96-yr-old patients who act younger than her. She does not adapt to change very well at all -- they still have a console TV, no internet (they only have a computer because we gave it to them), e-mail is unthinkable, etc. It takes MIL a LONG time to accept anything new, if she ever does. That's a tough way to go through life, I would think.