u/allthewees_no_whoos

What to do with a back talking child?

Trying really hard to teach our oldest to respect us and her teacher. She doesn’t have a fear of saying no to us or being sassy. I know it’s our fault. I just don’t know how to teach her to not talk this way.

She’s an extremely sweet, academically gifted, beautiful girl but there are times when she acts this way and I’m not sure what to do. I tell her she can’t speak that way. To say yes ma’am and yes sir. She gets consequences and has things taken away. I’ve been told I need to get a handle on it or else she’s going to be worse as a teenager.

I get embarrassed because her teacher called me the other day and said she back talks and has a lot of sass. I have talked to my oldest every day about respect and how we should talk to our teacher. The teacher also tells me daughter is used to doing whatever she wants to do but when I look at our routine, it’s not like I give into her. She does her homework, she cleans her room but sometimes i do have to tell her multiple times. She loves to read a book at night. She bathes and brushes her teeth. She’s generally happy. I’m a little overwhelmed because I have a clingy baby too.

Where do I start?

Look, I know I already sound crazy. But you guys don’t know my MIL. She fights hard to get what she wants, she’ll harass you daily. I swear she could have been a lawyer because she can literally get whatever she wants and convince people to do anything. She terrifies me even though my husband and I have set boundaries and things look a whole lot different now than when we first married. My husband kids and I finally get to spend 80 percent of our time with ourselves. Before we would have to dedicate 100% of everything to my husbands family(his mom) holidays, weekends, special events, my mil would take over and expect everyone to fall in line with what she wanted and they did. Now that we’ve established our own life she hates it. She has tried to tell us it makes her want to die. My FIL threatened to hang himself basically. All because we refuse to be around their daughter and her husband.

So now here’s where I tell you things that will make me sound crazy, and I know I might be because my in laws give me so much anxiety that I can’t function. Okay here it is:

My MIL would constantly tell me about how she talks to this one friend I have. This friend goes to church with MIL and SIL, SIL wanted to befriend my friend and was basically competing with me in this friendship with this person who was my friend first for years. When I saw what was happening I basically threw my hands up and told myself I’m not going to compete over a person this is weird how did I get sucked into this?? Told my friend what I saw happening and she knows me and SIL aren’t on good terms and never will be. Friend tells me “oh, I’m always on your side!” I told her please be friends with whomever but I also apologized for my SILs weird behavior and I won’t be participating in whatever competition she’s throwing. So because of all that MIL would tell me every weekend : “ friend told me this!” “Friend said that today at church” “friend said I should get this insurance” and it was very random and like this for months. Mil constantly bringing up the friend and how she would be talking to her. I found it odd because I didn’t care if they spoke but MIL was trying to get a rise out of me. I finally break down and talk to my therapist about it because I constantly feel crazy about the things MIL and SIL do. Therapist helps me in the session, we laugh, I cope. Suddenly MIL stops talking about friend completely. I wonder what’s gotten into her because usually she doesn’t stop until I explode/give her the reaction she wants so she can tell SIL what happened.

Then last weekend MIL asks me if my mom is excited to retire and I was thinking how could she know that, my mom hasn’t posted on socials about retiring and no one’s told MIL about my moms plans to retire. I only found out that my mom was going to retire a few days ago. I told my husband and I asked him if he told her and he said no. And I was like how could she have known? Then he back tracked and said maybe he told her a few years ago that my mom would be retiring soon.

Then more instances kept happening with MIL knowing things before I said them. I told my husband it kept happening and he said maybe I wasn’t remembering telling MIL Things but the thing is that I don’t tell her anything. I can’t be vulnerable with her or else she weaponizes it against me later.

I can’t elaborate on the other instances without possibly giving myself away but know that she has known things before husband and I tell her. She doesn’t see our children a lot. They’re too little to relay exact info to her. My husband said his mom isn’t tech savvy so she couldn’t have put a device in our home or car but there has to be a way. I’m wondering if she could have gotten BIL to hack into our security cameras or something. Or maybe she’s a good guesser at things.

But my husband doesn’t believe me. He does believe that MIL wants to erase me basically from my children’s lives and be their mom but he doesn’t think she’s capable of this. It’s ok if y’all disagree but idk how to check if there are listening devices in my home. I don’t know where they would be, what they look like etc.

Has anyone else’s in laws ever bugged your house or car? What did you do?

Im kind of just venting my feelings here but also im really sad about this and wondering if anyone else has felt or experienced this. If you have please tell me how you’re coping or what you did.

My oldest loves my MIL a lot. There’s a lot of tension between MIL and I because I won’t do what she wants which is babysit my children constantly, have family dinners every week, or go to their church. We also went no contact with SIL(her daughter) and her husband and we refuse to be around them so that burns MIL up.

Any time I’ve tried to get vulnerable and have a relationship with MIL like she’s told me she’s wanted, she weaponizes anything I tell her against me and tells SIL everything I say. Then turns around and tells me that she and SIL think I’m jealous of their relationship?? Which is insane to me. But anyway back to my oldest. I told her she’d be spending the night with my parents because we have a surgery early in the morning and the next day she has school. Every time I tell her she’s going to go spend the night with my parents she tells me she wants to go to MILs instead. I ask why and she tells me MIL is more fun and I tell her well I can get you the same toys and things at my parents that MIL has but she just thinks MIL is more fun. It makes me very sad. She has toys, a grand movie theater room and an in-ground pool at my parents.

It bothers me so much because MIL has hurt me in so many ways and broken my trust with the relationship I tried to build with her that I thought she wanted. I’ve told my husband we should scale back spending the night with MIL because of everything and he says they(his parents) don’t really deserve it and that my oldest loves them. I don’t want to take any meaningful relationships away from my children but at the same time are they really safe with people who treat their mother so horribly? Should I encourage my parents to be better, or do something different?

Please just tell me how I should feel

Last year I started noticing how my spouses family would exclude me from things. Sometimes I’d think, maybe they didn’t mean anything by it but it just seemed to happen too often to be a coincidence.

First, we all went to a family farm thing for Christmas. SIL took photos of everyone including my spouse and child except me and posted them to social media. Sometimes I wonder in my head if people look at that post and think because I wasn’t pictured if my spouse and I aren’t together anymore or I wasn’t there. I got over that thought quickly but then my MIL posted photos on her social media for my child’s birthday, telling them b happy birthday even though my child won’t see it? All photos she used were of my child and my child and spouse. None of me. I just got this hurt feeling in my stomach and later she sent me the post and asked if it was ok to post and I told her I wasn’t in any of the photos and that kind of hurt and she told me she didn’t have photos of me even though that’s not true. Then we went on vacation with my spouses family and photos were taken there. I was in some of the photos and I know this because photos were sent to everyone in the group chat. SIL posted on social media again, my child, husband and everyone else but not me. I began to fear that they were just cutting me out of everything. My therapist said it’s like making a scrapbook but leaving me out of all the memories. When my spouse and I confronted SIL/BIL about excluding me and leaving me out of photos with my family they laughed at me and said I’m not on social media so why does it matter and then later called me pathetic and immature. My MIL also thinks I’m being over dramatic but if it’s happened 3 times is it not true? Also shouldn’t someone ask to post photos of your child to socials given this day and age?

If you could please be kind and let me know if I’m overthinking it because my therapist says I have a right to be upset but my spouses family acts like I’m causing problems for nothing