Heard a discussion on radio on Tuesday morning about living with in-laws, and I knew I had to blog about it. And this is going to be long.
I’ve been living with my in-laws since the beginning of my marriage and there’s been ups and downs. Mostly, I’m referring to my mother-in-law because my father-in-law comes home pretty late everyday and I don’t really get to spend a lot of time with him.
The upside is of course that we have someone to help keep the house clean and do the household chores. Don’t misunderstand us, we didn’t ask my mother-in-law to help us do anything, but because she enjoys doing household chores, and we don’t do it frequent enough, she steps in to do them! Haha..
In the 1st 3 years of our marriage when the kids haven’t come into the picture, things were pretty normal and we actually don’t see each other much in the house. Isaiah & I were busy with our work and came home late usually, and my mother-in-law had her own business to attend to. Thankfully, she has always been a modern and Godly woman who believes that once a person gets married, his/her closest person is the spouse and therefore, she always reminds her son that his wife is his most important person in his life. Amen.
When the kids came into the picture, things became a little different. We now co-owned ‘something’ – the kids. They were my kids, no doubt, but they were her grandchildren as well. And that’s when ownership rights come into play. (I’m sure those of you who live with your in-laws know what I’m talking about.)
My mother-in-law has tons of experience under her belt. She was a full-time baby sitter for 10 years, no joke, and she raised up 2 fine kids. But who was I? An inexperienced young lady who thought the world about myself. And generally, people of my age don’t like to be told what to do because I’d rather trial and error and fail badly than to be told exactly how I should do it. You know how it is.
So you can imagine it was pretty rough in the first few years of Joey’s life, not for Joey but between my mother-in-law and me. Joey had people fussing over her day in and day out and enjoying the best years of her life conquering milestones like crawling, walking and yakking. I was mostly frustrated because of the nagging, not because my mother-in-law likes it, but because I kept doing it wrong. Ha!
Now with Baby Jayne, things got better, or maybe my mindset changed for the better. Instead of being bitter and angry all the time, I tried to see the perspective of my mother-in-law and it’s become way easier now. Even though living with in-laws will never be a bed of roses, it has now become more enjoyable. My mother-in-law helps take care of the kids when I need help and helps monitor Joey’s nutrition by brewing soups for her and reminding her to drink water everyday. It’s been great help to me because I’m quite a careless and forgetful mummy. =P
Now my mother-in-law still nags at me everyday for not doing something I should have done or doing something I shouldn’t have, but my heart is lighter nowadays. I know mummies sometimes nag because they want to show their concern. And whenever I think about how my cleanliness freak mother-in-law has to put up with my messiness and tardiness, I think she has so much more to put up with than me. And THAT puts me right into perspective once again.
