Wedding Woes

Give it some time before babysitting

Dear Prudence,

My husband and I are considering having his mom move across the country to live across the street from us. How can we set ourselves up for success, knowing how fraught this can be?

We are planning on having a kid next year (IUD removal is scheduled; we’ll go with the flow on fertility). We both like the idea of having her close by for a grandchild, especially since she’s fluent in Spanish and could provide a meaningful connection to my husband’s culture. We haven’t asked her yet, but she’s talked to me about this idea before and how she’d love to be closer to us. She’s quite lonely where she is now. Conveniently, there is a lovely 55-plus community across the street from our neighborhood that we could walk to in under 10 minutes.

Currently, I have a distant but friendly relationship with her. She has phone calls with my husband a couple of times a month and will sometimes speak with me during these calls, and we send each other texts on special occasions. We’ve never had any disagreements, but we also haven’t had much reason to ever disagree. She does speak English quite well, but haltingly and heavily accented; I do sometimes misunderstand her (I’m on a 260-day DuoLingo streak with Spanish, but realistically, I am never going to be able to hold down a conversation). Right now, we are aiming more for a grandma/grandchild relationship than asking her to provide consistent child care. But I could definitely see her babysitting or being a backup to daycare.

She immigrated to the U.S. as an adult, and there are obviously going to be different cultural opinions. I do know we will have differences ideologically (e.g., she hopes we will return to Catholicism one day—we’re agnostics) and parenting decisions (my husband was smacked with a stereotypical chancla). So we will need to talk with her about our parenting expectations (no secretly taking our child to be baptized, no corporeal punishment, etc.) and whether she’d be comfortable following those. Anything else we should consider so we don’t end up emulating that Everybody Loves Raymond life?

—From 3,000 Miles to 0.3 Miles

Re: Give it some time before babysitting

  • Wow this is a lot for things that haven’t happened yet. Take this in any steps. Jumping from you still have an IUD to parenting expectations of grandparents who live 3,000 miles away is- a lot. 

    Can she come out for an extended visit? Does she like the area? Are the other native Spanish speakers in the community? Great there’s a 55+ place- but do people only speak English? 

    Slow this train way way down. 
  • There are so many potential minefields in this letter, I was careful even just reading it.
    Wedding Countdown Ticker
  • oh god, I must have skimmed over that fact they don't actually have a kid yet. Just see how the move goes first, establish a relationship and go from there when (IF!) a kid comes into the mix
  • Cart before the horse here.

    Where is the H in all of this?   Also, it doesn't always work in the cookie cutter picket fence way you want it to as far as getting pregnant goes.

    Tackle the known at the moent. 
  • Why would you even want to invite any of this? Let her stay where she is. 
  • Jesus overplanning Mary and Joseph. 

    This all sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.


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