Grandmother Hasn’t Seen Her Grandchildren For Two Years, But On Her Visit All She Wants To Do Is Clean, And It’s Making Her Daughter Feel Disgusting
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If you speak to previous generations of women in your family, there’s no doubt that we have things very different today. After all, your grandmother’s generation were likely stay-at-home mothers, keeping the house clean and tidy, the cupboards stocked, the laundry done, the kids bathed, and dinner on the table, all during the time that their husbands were out at work, earning the money. Or if you had a working grandmother, at the very least your great-grandmother likely lived that way.
Nowadays though, even if we have children we most likely work too. Because one income just isn’t enough to sustain a couple any more, let alone a family. And besides, most women actually want to work, to have their own financial independence, and contribute equally to their family as well as their home. But sometimes, the older generations forget that, and expect us to do everything we do, on top of everything that they once did. Or at least, that is the case for the mother of the woman in this story, anyway.
Read on to find out more.
WIBTA for not allowing my clean freak mom into my home?
My mom (64, female) is visiting my (39, female) home from across the country.
When she visited two years ago, the day she was supposed to leave, she started frantically cleaning rather than spending time with my son (now four, but was two at the time).
I naturally asked if anything was the matter, assuming there may have been a big spill I missed or something.
She just said that it was a mess EVERYWHERE and I should clean more if I know my mom is coming over.
And now, her mom is at it again.
She did the same thing on this visit, despite my having warned her that this is extremely hurtful to me because I feel that she’s insinuating I am a bad/unclean mother.
Ideally, instead I’d like her to focus her time on bonding with her grandchildren (two grandsons aged four and one, and a one-year-old granddaughter).
I work 50-60 hours a week as does my husband, and the one year old twins have a lot of bottles and diapers which are time-consuming.
Yes, my house isn’t the cleanest, but it’s the cleanest that it’s been this year.
Let’s see how she’s feeling about it all now.
My mom has two days left in her visit, but I feel so on edge when she’s around that I don’t think it’s healthy for her to be around.
I do have the next two days off work and am considering a quick lunch with her at a restaurant before taking my kids home for quality time with just myself and not my mom.
WIBTA?
Honestly, if her mom’s behaviour is making her this anxious, you have to question if it is worth her visiting the home.
Because she has asked her mom to leave the ‘mess’ and just focus on her grandchildren again.
And since she only seems to see her grandchildren in their home every couple of years, you’d think she’d want to be more focused on the kids.
Let’s see what folk on Reddit had to say about this.
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This person could absolutely relate.
While others thought she was doing a great job, and didn’t need to add a spotless house into the mix.
If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a daughter who feels hoodwinked after finding out the sick father she’s been supporting has plenty of money of his own.
Meanwhile, this Redditor thought there was a way to use this situation to her advantage.
The truth is that if her mom’s comments and cleaning are getting to her this much, then she really shouldn’t be visiting. It’s not worth the knock to her mental health, nor all the anxiety that such a visit brings. Because she’s right, you’d think that the grandma would be wanting to spend time with her grandchildren, not spend her time cleaning things that were fine to begin with. Because the reality is for a working couple in the twenty-first century, there is barely time to clean the house if you don’t have kids to care for, let alone if you do.
Maybe the grandma thinks she’s being helpful by cleaning the things that aren’t up to her standard, maybe she even thinks she’s protecting her grandchildren, but honestly, it’s totally unnecessary. And it’s actually insulting to her daughter, who is hurt by the implication that she lives in a dirty house that is unsafe for her children to be in. Because of course she doesn’t, and despite what grandma might think, the kids are going to be just fine.
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