I have come to the conclusion that my MIL has BPD. The more I read about it, and how to deal with people who have it, the more I am convinced that is exactly what she has.
We have a toddler and another baby on the way. We don’t feel right about letting my MIL babysit because we worry for our child’s safety. She loves our child very much and would never do anything to intentionally harm our child, but she has no attention span and gets lost inside her own head, so we have witnessed many occasions where our child could have gotten hurt if we weren’t there to intervene.
We have come to terms with the fact that we just can’t let her babysit. As nice as it would be to have a babysitter, the parental instincts won’t allow it. It sucks, but it is what it is. What I am struggling with, is how much exposure should the children have in general? I would like for her to be a part of their lives, because she is their grandmother after all, but the way she acts and especially the things she says to our toddler and around our toddler… I worry what effect her nonsense will have on our children. They are too little to understand. They are too little to shrug off the crazy things she says. All the time we find ourselves saying "Don’t tell her that" or "Don’t say that" because of something she said to our toddler. Toddlers believe everything their parents and grandparents tell them. It’s only a matter of time before she says something in a moment of acidic manipulation & drama to try to turn our own children against us. Not only that, but she is always saying crazy things that I fear will make our children neurotic. She projects her crazy onto everyone else. She is convinced the dog is hungry/constipated/has false pregnancy all because the dog looked at her as she walked by. Now with our child, she lends these ailments to our child and keeps asking our child if her tummy hurts or if she’s cold or if she has an earache to the point where our child all of a sudden complains about this supposed illness that never existed until grandma drilled it into her head.
It is always drama with her. She has already convinced her side of the family that she is the victim in all this. They live about an hour away, so they don’t see her as often, and when they do it’s usually in a large gathering where people are not really paying attention to just her. They don’t know the extent of her behavior, they just think she’s kinda weird or full of drama at times. She tells them all sorts of nonsense about us. She tells them we never let her see our kid even though we invite her over all the time and she is always "too tired" or has a "headache" or just has "too much stuff to do" like tanning and nail appointments and hair appointments and shopping trips because something somewhere is on sale. We invite her all the time, and 90% of the time she turns us down. After a week or two of turning us down, she complains to everyone that she never gets to see our kid.
Anyway, I could go on all night about all the things she does and says. She is like a textbook example of BPD. But my question is, should I keep her away from our children as much as possible for fear of her screwing with their heads? If she says something, lashes out, or otherwise does something to screw up my kids’ heads, I will feel like I should have prevented it. The thought has crossed our minds that she could, at some point, try to run off with our child. Her brain would be telling her that kidnapping would be a good idea and her brain would tell her we deserve it for trying to keep her grandkid away from her or something, and then it would end in a murder-suicide or something scary like that. We know that the odds of that happening are fairly small, but still…
Should we take that chance so that she can be part of their lives? Should we risk their sanity (and ours) so that she can be part of their lives? Or should we just keep a lot of distance between her and them so that we can minimize such risks? Should we keep them away from her altogether? If I have to choose between her or my kids, I pick my kids. They’re way more important to me. I want them to be happy and healthy, both mentally and physically. Am I risking all that by letting her hang around? Is it in their best interest to kick grandma out of their lives or will that be a bad thing to do?
Don’t kick grandma completely out of their lives. Visit often. Just don’t leave them alone with her.
this summer i will do a lot of tanning and i was wondering if i should tan naked or not. i already know all of the safety issues behind tanning nude i just want to know what women prefer