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How to get along

Started by doormat, April 15, 2010, 07:26:42 AM

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doormat

I read this and truly thought it gave really good advice.  I haven't always gotten along with my ILs, but we've been able to compromise and while there are slip-ups here and there, we get along pretty well. 

Here is the link:   http://www.wikihow.com/Be-a-Good-Mother-in-Law


Also, in the interest of fairness there is this:  http://www.wikihow.com/Get-Along-with-Your-Mother-in-Law









Pen

These are pretty good, and definitely a start; thank you for sharing. I'm thinking the advice on both pages should be followed by both parties! MILs aren't the only ones that gossip, belittle, or give unwanted advice/criticism. In my situation it's DIL doing all the negative stuff mentioned on the MIL page to me. We put up with DILs antics to see DS, and buy nice presents for her, etc. as if the pages were flipped :)
Respect ... is appreciation of the separateness of the other person, of the ways in which he or she is unique.
-- Annie Gottlieb

Marilyn

Penstamen,I thought the same thing when i read that article.It should work both ways.
I know i'm not perfect,But i feel i have bent over backwards to try and get along.

Everbody is different,and there are good MIL's and good DIL's......bad MIL's and bad DIL's

Maybe one of the DIL's here can help me understand something that i have never been able to understand.

When my first Grandchild was born,i bought a very expensive camara for my DIL.I live so far away,i wanted her to send me pictures thru e-mail,so i could enjoy watching him grow.She sent pictures one time,then said it was to much trouble.

My niece just had a baby in March,and  lives 45min away.She does not know this story of my DIL.I never even ask her to send pictures,but i have gotten about 15 pictures,and she said she would send me pictures every week,because she takes lots of pictures.

My DIL took lots too,but just thought it was to much trouble.
How do you DIL's feel about this?

doormat

Quote from: Mominwaiting on April 15, 2010, 09:05:56 AM
Penstamen,I thought the same thing when i read that article.It should work both ways.
I know i'm not perfect,But i feel i have bent over backwards to try and get along.

Everbody is different,and there are good MIL's and good DIL's......bad MIL's and bad DIL's

Maybe one of the DIL's here can help me understand something that i have never been able to understand.

When my first Grandchild was born,i bought a very expensive camara for my DIL.I live so far away,i wanted her to send me pictures thru e-mail,so i could enjoy watching him grow.She sent pictures one time,then said it was to much trouble.

My niece just had a baby in March,and  lives 45min away.She does not know this story of my DIL.I never even ask her to send pictures,but i have gotten about 15 pictures,and she said she would send me pictures every week,because she takes lots of pictures.

My DIL took lots too,but just thought it was to much trouble.
How do you DIL's feel about this?

I don't have a definite answer for you, but thought I'd share what happened to me. 

My DM has a friend that I've known literally since birth.  She may as well be family, and as such, I've always sent her pictures of my DD and Christmas cards.  One time, while telling my DM how adorable she thought DD looked in the most recent pic I sent of her, she remarked that she gets pics of my DD more often than she does of her own nieces and nephews.  (She doesn't have any children and has never married).

So- if it helps at all, it's not just you.  Maybe some kind of online photo-sharing website with password protection would help?  We used to worry about what would happen if we lost all our pictures, so we use one to ensure that no matter what, our pictures are protected.  Granted, the one we use costs money, but it's pretty cheap (comes out to about $2.50 per month) and there are several free ones out there.  I believe Kodak has one.  Anyway, it's quite hassle-free.  You can upload pics, give the password to a select number of people- preferably people who can be trusted not to share that password of course, and then people can have them printed at their nearest pharmacy for around $.40 per print.

If your DIL doesn't know how to reduce the size of the file- some pics can be 5 mg and can actually take quite a while to download- maybe that's what her problem was with emailing.  For that issue, I'd download a free picture/software program called picasa.  It's made by google and even the most technically dense person can navigate thru it pretty well (unlike programs like photoshop that can be rather daunting).  Even things like removing red-eye in that program are really really easy.  (I've always had difficulty doing that in photoshop).

Wow- I didn't mean to ramble on that long.  Hopefully, that helps.


Marilyn

Yes that did help doormat,because she said it took so long to send them,but she was trying to send a whole camara full at one time.I ask her to try and send just a few,but she never did.Maybe there was some problems,i was not aware of.

Postscript

Anna I frequent a parenting site and the issue of photograph sharing is a biggie there, particularly on social networking sites like facebook. 

Parents today worry a lot about Pedophiles and child exploitation, the advice that is usually given is that if you share photos of your children online, make them private access only.  A lot of them report issues with their parents linking these photos to their own social networking sites in order to show their grandchildren off, which completely nullifies the private access/protection aspect.  The standard advice given is ask the grandparent to take down the photos, if they won't or continue to link back, inform the website company and have them forcibly removed from the grandparents page.

I don't know why your dil won't share photos, I'm just trying to offer you some insight as to why she stopped uploading them. 


1Glitterati

Anna...does she restrict the amount of photos you can take of the kids?  Can you make up for her lack of sharing by taking more of your own?

I would agree that it's extremely passive aggressive of her if your the ONLY person she restricts the photos from.  If she's like that with everyone...then you could just chalk it up to her personality and know that there's no real way around it.

1Glitterati

Quote from: Anna on April 15, 2010, 02:14:24 PM
Now that you mention it, dil doesn't like to share most things with anyone.  But especially me.  I do take pics of my gc which I happily share with my dil.  I don't mind sharing.  I love my gc, & I love giving dil special pics of them.  I hope she likes that I do this.  She never says.

Well...what about taking more of your own pictures?  Or is that bound to lead to her seeing one and then saying you can't take pictures of the kids?

Pen

'Way back when I posted about my dad and his wife forbidding us to come to the town where they were spending Christmas with her grown children and grandchildren. What they said to us as an excuse was, "We think of Christmas as a family time." Ouch.

Maybe we think we're part of a family but the others don't think of us that way.
Respect ... is appreciation of the separateness of the other person, of the ways in which he or she is unique.
-- Annie Gottlieb