You aren't understanding my point. leslieW has identified a single, confirmed, negative influence on her children and that is her MIL. She can control the amount of influence on her children by her MIL by limiting the amount of times her children can see the MIL. I said absolutely nothing about trying to limit all of the *POTENTIAL* negative influences that her children will face every day.

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http://trainingoferic.blogspot.com/

There are situations where you have to eliminate/limit contact - no other choice exists. My father, at the age of 55, developed a bade taste for heroin. Seriously. I had to cut him out of my life and told him that he was in no way welcomed in my soon-to-be-born child's life either unless he cleaned up. Well, he did clean up, but it took 2 years and our relationship is still not the same. It's good, but not as good as it used to be before he became addicted. My mother is so absent minded she has nearly burned her house down several times (kitchen fires). Thus K is not allowed to stay with her alone for more than oh an hour or two. It's sad but I have to limit the contact.

Re: the BIL, there's no question contact must be eliminated. I do believe in "innocent until proven guilty" but not when kids and sexual predators are involved.

AP

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"How bad could it be?" - SimpleS

There is a lot of good commentary here and suggestions, I'm going to make a little bit of different commentary however. My dad is pretty much nuts and if I was as passive about him as your husband is about his mom, we would be in the same situation you are in. However, I think that is completely unfair to my wife. I'm my dad's son, I take it upon myself to step in and control the situation when his personality begins to impact my households personal happiness. I've learned that I can say anything to my parents and they might not like it, but they will respect it because they know that I will follow through with any threat I make and they respect me. My wife and I had a small wedding and when they told us that they could not keep their side down to the allocation we gave them, I told them they had two choices, determine who could come based on their allocation or I would do it for them, their choice. Your husband is not stepping up and you are letting him off the hook too easily. My wife is a very nice person but if I did not step up when necessary we probably would have serious issues in our relationship. You need to put some of this back on your husbands plate. It's his mom, she is driving you nuts. Yes, I think here you might be over reacting and looking for a fight, but he has to play referee and go to bat for you. You are being put in a bad spot, unfairly.

I've got a buddy who mom is totally intolerable. After visits, she sends my friends wife thoughts on how she could be a better parent and detailed lists of things she should change about her self and her parenting style. My buddy just shakes his head and looks the other way. It's bad for his relationship and how his kids are raised. If I was him the situation would be handled very differently.

I really like what you said.

(I sat here for a long time trying to figure out a more intellectual way to say that!!! haha it's too early in the AM)

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Come crawling faster