Twinkle: And Another Thing

My husband finally called me and was sympathetic, so that helped. Talking to him helped me realize something else.

It’s now 10:30. I wanted to get the kilts hemmed today. I need Eldest there, physically, to figure out the length of the hem. I have a few other errands to run. Middle and Yongest are both late sleepers. I think they’re fine staying home by themselves, but Middle doesn’t like it. I can’t leave and run my errands because if Middle woke up in a house without me, my husband, or Eldest, she would be upset. I know she’s 12 and she should be ok with it, but I’m not doing that to her until she’s comfortable with it.

Mr, Twinkle wants to explain all this to his father, how it throws off everything when I don’t know what’s going on. He thinks his father can handle it better than his mom did. CLEARLY neither of them can handle it. MIL has him brainwashed to think I’m a Megan Markle type who hates family. 

They don’t respect me as a mother, and they don’t respect my husband either. They think THEY are the parents and they can do whatever they want. When I said no and tried to draw a boundary, they acted like I was crazy, controlling, and domineering, and on some sort of power trip. 

If we did try to explain to them that it threw off the day, it would raise two questions in their minds: 1) why are the kids sleeping so late?; and 2) why doesn’t Twinkle think they can stay alone while she runs errands? “Gawd! She’s so controlling and she just HAS to be in charge of everything and baby them!” As I said, I do think they can stay alone. If I tried to explain all that to my in-laws, to get ahead of their criticism of me and my parenting for letting my kids sleep so late and not putting them in situations they’d find uncomfortable, my in-laws would 100% say, “Why was she so WORDY in her explanation? It didn’t need to be two paragraphs long! She could have said it in one sentence!” They criticize situations they know nothing about, and then call me crazy when I try to explain myself.

I cannot do anything right and they don’t respect me and they never will. They assume the worst of me on every single thing I do. And they clearly don’t want to respect my boundaries, and they don’t think my feelings or opinions matter. It’s a terrible feeling to know all this, and to have tried to speak up, and know that none of it mattered. I blew it all up and set a boundary for nothing.