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Dear Prudence,My husband and I host the weekly family dinner ever since my in-laws sold their house for a retirement community. We are the only ones with the space to entertain since we have a lovely enclosed deck, grill, and fire pit. My sister-in-law is going through a divorce. My sympathy is gone because she uses family dinner to dump her three children, ages 3 to 9, and go out and party. My in-laws both use walkers and can’t really watch the baby, let alone keep the two older kids from acting out. I am running ragged trying to cook and keep the kids from killing themselves. My husband usually works right up to dinner in his home office so I am left to shoulder the burden. This wasn’t a problem when both the parents were there to parent. But my brother-in-law is off screwing his coworker while my SIL wants to get her own hot and heavy in.
Recently, I was trying to cook while holding the baby when the other two kids got into a fight in the upstairs den and the younger one hit his face on the glass coffee table and lost a tooth. It was a baby tooth, but the screams scared us all to death and my mother-in-law nearly fell trying to get to the stairs. My SIL decided to ream me out for not “properly” watching her kids. I decided to say I was “sorry” and the solution was her kids wouldn’t be over unless she was there to watch. And that put the fox in the hen house. Everyone is upset with me, especially my SIL who is sulking about my lack of support. My in-laws say they will miss the kids, and my husband thinks I am going too far. I am ready to end it all with the dinners.
—Dinner Disaster