u/HotCryptographer7243

Hello! Sorry for the lengthy message your about to read in advance if you choose to stick around 😉

A little background information, I’ve been with my husband for almost 10 years (yes high school sweethearts) we have been married for almost 6 years. We have a 3.5 year old son with level 2 autism (recently diagnosed, still learning and trying our best to help him) and I’m 20 weeks pregnant with a little girl.

We bought our house in February of 2018 and have been here since, we love it. Great starter home, comfortable, big back yard for my dog and my son to play in and on a quiet street. My in laws at the time lived about 4-5 minutes down the road in a townhouse. In spring of 2021 my in laws jumped at buying the house right next to mine, and I mean literally right next door. Overall we’ve always been civil, would hang out on the patios, have family dinners etc. the dynamic took a turn after I had my son in January 2023. They are very involved grandparents and my son loves them dearly which is great but it’s also a lot. Our back yard is disconnected from our house as we have our driveway and a big tree with rocks around it so we have to walk through our driveway, through the rock area, a small area of grass and then we have our fenced in big back yard. The moment we walk outside to go into the backyard to play my in laws are there without skipping a beat. If they hear my son crying (again level 2 autism, non verbal he gets frustrated easily when he can’t tell us what he wants) my in laws will run out of the house saying “my baby, my baby! What’s wrong?!” Simply, he just wants to go to the swings and he was upset I wasn’t understanding that. We really can’t walk outside of our house without them coming to intervene in one way or another. We will talk a walk with our dog down the street as a family and they will either walk a few feet behind us or wait in the front yard until we have to pass their house again to talk to us. My husband travels a lot for work so it’s pretty awkward during those times that I just want to walk in my backyard to let the dog go potty or let my son play on the swings and have to be watched and have comments made. There’s a lot more examples but I’ll spare the details. But I will say my husband is finally picking up on how invasive his parents are on our lives. Usually if I leave the house with my
Son and we return home they start asking us where we’ve been, what we did, did we buy something… again I’m a wife and a mother and don’t even report to my own mother like this let alone my husbands parents. I’ve explained to my husband in the past that my parents were very hands off with me and my siblings and maybe that’s why this feeling of getting smothered by my in laws is so weird and off putting? My parents would let us basically do whatever we wanted, no curfews, would let us go anywhere just made sure to know that we needed to be safe (no drugs, no drinking, etc) I never had to check in with them or explain where I was going but they always knew me and my siblings were being safe. It brought a very strong level of trust for me and i really appreciated that.
I don’t know really how to try to set these boundaries with my in laws that every aspect of our lives we do not need to share with each other. Everytime I bring it up they get very offended and will *try* the boundaries for a day or two and then go back to their normal behaviors.

* I will add my husband is their only child together, my husband has 3 other brothers but they are from his parents other relationships and there is a significant age gap from my husband and all his brothers (13 years, 20 years and 24 years apart)