Hi Everyone,
This is very long so hope you will hang in there while I give you some background.

In the summer of 2005, our son that had previously been married and divorced 5 years prior, Met a new girl and their romance blossomed.

Our son was very happy and excited for us to meet his new Girl friend. That happened the middle of August 2005. She appeared to be very pleasant and we could see our son was very happy too.

Late August they announced they were going to get married the following May. That was great. Then a week later they called and said they were pregnant and were going to move the Wedding to December. That was fine too by us.

They live 125 miles away and so we mostly visit with our son on the phone, which was and is a rare thing too except when they are coming to visit.

Anyway In September of 2005 they called and ask if they could come for the weekend. She had just miscarried and wanted to "get away" for the weekend. Not a problem, we let them come visit and we treated them to Rest and Relaxation while she dealt with the miscarriage. Mostly she just laid on our couch watching TV.

Well, they decided to keep the wedding in December and so Oct and Nov was a flurry of activity for them, not for us as they lived 125 miles away and so other than being invited to the Bridal Shower given by her family (she didn't have any weekends that worked for us to give her one up here for our side of the family), we only got to see and meet with them for the Shower and for Thanksgiving at our other son and daughter-in-laws home.

Now they were married the weekend before Christmas and so we went to their hometown for the wedding, pre, post (reception and dance) and gift opening on that Sunday. We left after that and then the next time we saw them was on New Years Eve.

Our family - my husband side celebrate the weekend after Christmas as my side of the family celebrates on Christmas Eve (at our home).

Well, with the wedding and all we had my husband's side - which consists of our Sons and their wife's as none of our parents are living. Our son and his new bride has us down there for this first Christmas. But then the following weekend they came up to our house.

Since one of our son's couldn't attend the Christmas celebration we exchanged gift s at the New Years Eve celebration. As the New Year approached and was celebrated somewhere we hit a "bad note". Our 2 other sons and wife/girlfriend left as one had a long drive and the other had to go to work early.

Anyway, Shortly thereafter - within an hour all of a sudden The New Daughter-in-law just had to go home. By this time it was 2:00 in the morning and very cold here.

She had a 5 yr old daughter (at the time) from a previous relationship and our son convinced her to stay put until daylight and when if they had problems on the road there would be more readily available help.

Well, they got up and left around 6:00 am. We never got to make them breakfast or really say goodbye. We could tell something was obviously wrong. But hadn't a clue what it was.

We found out a few days later when our son called to say - Couldn't you tell we were Pregnant? Now how in the world were we suppose to know. She had complained she didn't feel well when she was here and had told us she had been to the doctor and had gotten a flu shot. Well, we figured she was just under the weather from that.

They were 'mad' at us for not offering her any celebration drinks on New Year's Eve and she also felt slighted like we hadn't given her a expensive of gifts at Christmas as we did the other kids. (FYI - we have always given our Children - 3 sons and their wife's or girlfriends gifts that have always been within a few dollars _$3-5.00 at any christmas - the price we normally set for each person is around $75.00. Well this particular Christmas she was given more than the other girls or our sons. ) So obviously she felt we hadn't spent enough.

And as for the Drinks - she had taken some pain medications and our son said she shouldn't have any alcohol. Obviously we had forgotten to ask her if she wanted to celebrate with some Sprite or other soda beverage.

Anyway this set off some bad feelings and we didn't hear or talk to them for nearly 2 months.

Shortly after that I made a call to see how things were and slowly the relationship started to heal or so we thought.

Our Granddaughter was born during our vacation August 2006 - we go to a resort and ended up cutting our vacation (yep we had paid for the whole week and you don't get any refunds if you leave early) short as they demanded we come and see her RIGHT after she was born.

They came to visit us when she was 10 days old - again to get away. Again, something upset the daughter in law and so they left in a huff.

Over the next couple years - they would come to visit and mostly she takes control of the TV or Games or lately brings her Laptop and plays games or something I think on Facebook. Most often she commands our son to take care of the girls and also two puppies that they got this past year.

Well, August of this year we had been asked to care for the girls for part of a week as their daycare provider was having surgery and they needed someone to care for the girls for a few days. Well we said we would. We have a home based business and we said we could work part of the time - split shift so someone would be with the girls while the other one worked. We geared down our business so we could spend time caring for the girls.

Oh on a previous year (2007)- we were all set to care for them for a whole week. We had made similar arrangements for caring for the girls. The weekend they were to drop them off - they had wanted to spend the nights in our guest room. BUT at the time our Middle son and his wife were using the room as they had been up here doing some landscaping for us. I said they could sleep in the living room on the Queensized sleep sofa.

Well, All of a sudden they decided we couldn't watch the girls as there was too much activity going on and we couldn't take care of them. So we were bad because we had workers here??

Anyway, back to August of this year. We had a great 3 days with our granddaughters and then our son and daughter in law arrived on Friday evening - with in 15 minutes she was barking out demands and the girls were both crying. They hadn't even shed one tear nor been reprimanded at all while we were here alone with them.

Our daughter in law - is like that - yelling at the kids or our son to do this or that. He is a Mr Mom literally. He cooks, launders and cares for the kids - she sits and surfs the internet or plays games!

Anyway. On the Sunday morning our other son had dropped by and as my husband and he were conversing in the kitchen a commercial came on the TV - you know the kind - the ones that get progressively louder. Well, our Daughter in law was sitting at the kitchen table playing a card game with her older daughter and watching a movie at the same time. Well when the commercial came on it got really loud and our youngest son turned and asked her to turn the volume down. Which she did. BUT within about 30 seconds she got up and stomped out and next thing you knew she and our oldest son were yelling and screaming - In fact she called the cops on him!

Well, the cops came and settled them down - our son finished packing up their stuff and they left.

Now our son ended up making another round trip up to us to get a bunch of stuff they had forgotten. He said they were working things out. We told him that his wife had hurt us badly and has been treating us with disrespect for quite a while and after this incident we didn't want her to come back unless she apologizes to us.

Well, to make things worse the youngest son is getting married tomorrow. And originally the oldest son daughters were suppose to be flower girls but after the incident back in August they pulled out and weren't going to come at all.

Then they called our son that is getting married and said they were coming and did they still want the girls to be in the wedding. (no as they had now made other arrangements).

Needless to say we are all at wits ends and stressing as we haven't a clue how this is going to play out. Our Oldest son has requested we don't talk to him or them until 'they or HE' decides they want to.

Anyway, we are terrible hurt and have done nothing wrong. We have always treated her with respect just as we have our other duaghter-in-laws or 'to be'.

Any suggestions on what we should do or just give it more time? Have you have this situation? What did you do?

A sad Mom and Dad.
Pennykins

Wow!
She sounds like a piece of work indeed.

I think your best bet is to be cordial but not overly friendly.It sounds like she does not feel like part of the family and overreacts because of some imagined slight.

Thankfully,there will be other people around so you won't HAVE to spend time with her alone.

It appears that whatever you do ,you will be on the receiving end of her bad manners and over sensitivity.

I hope she can control herself on this special day of your sons.

It must be very difficult to feel like you have to walk on eggshells whenever she is around.

Be civil and polite and try to avoid her as much as is feasible,without being rude.

At some point in time,I think a nice long chat about all of this is in order.She sounds like she has some self esteem issues and that is why she is always feeling left out and over reacting.Just a thought.
Or she is just a spoiled princess who has a sense of entitlement ?

Good Luck!

Don't trip or freak out, just give them the time they need to get their own acts together and decide if they want to be social or not. They have a lot to adjust to, being young, and as sad as it is, they are not as ready or prepared to be part of your family social life as you would like. I think all families go through this at sometime or another, so understand and give them space.

Me, I never take someone attitude personally, nor expect them to change overnight. It could be years, and even then it won't change.

Doesn't matter if they are family, or not. Some people just will never get along, and that's okay. Just enjoy the ones you do get along with, and pray for the ones you don't.

That's what I do. Life is just to short to trip on what you have little, or no control over.

Been in your shoes, still in them.

Thank you both,
Art Lady and Talaniman,

My husband and I appreciate your input and thoughts.

We have already come to the same conclusions as both of you have stated. We just needed to hear it from someone else that we are thinking on the right track.

The wedding for our youngest son is today - in just a few hours. Our oldest son and his wife (the ones acting up) are suppose to show up for the ceremony at the least. Our youngest son and his bride are uneasy but our youngest son wants his brother there -but not his wife-.

We will play it cool and be kind and cordial - just as we always am.

And our plan is to avoid them, unless they speak to us first (remember that is our oldest sons request).

As to ArtLady comment is she a spoiled princess? I don't think so - not really, but definitely is someone that takes control by ranting raving and throwing tantrums like a 3 year old to get 'her own way'.

Thanks again to both of you. It is appreciated. I'll try to do a follow up to let you know how things went today.

Pennykins

Hi All,
Just a quick update.
Well, my oldest son and his wife (the naughty daughter-in-law) did not show at the wedding. They have not called our youngest son and his new bride either.

Our son that was just married did tell us that the older son had called him earlier in the week before the wedding to say that the flower girl dresses that the youngest son had purchased were not returnable. The groom said he didn't care if as he had bought the dresses for the 'little girls' had they been the flower girls.

So the oldest son asked - if the girls were still in the wedding and the groom said - no - not after you pulled them out a few weeks ago.

I'm thinking that since the girls were now not in the wedding party they just decided they wouldn't show. You know - again their mother- couldn't show off and be "important"!

Oh well, the Wedding was GREAT! We had a very good time once we knew they were not going to show up and cause a scene or uncomfortable company.

Not sure where things will go from here. But at this time we are going to honor our oldest son request - and have no contact with him or them until they contact us first.

Since his wife is controlling the whole situation - it most likely will be a very long time before he talks to us. Of course he had indicated to us a few weeks back that their marriage was very iffy and finances were 'bad' - bankruptcy bad.

It will be interesting to see what happens. In the mean time - we have two other sons and two wonderful daughter-in-laws that do accept us and we them - they are our 'daughters' even if we never gave birth to them.

We have good times with these couples and so we will accept things that we cannot change. Courage to change the things we can - and Wisdom to know the difference.

(That is part of the Serenity Prayer - for those that have seen those phrases before).

Pennykins