@mom2collegekids - I still think of a holiday mailing list as a larger scale communication than sharing with a few close friends.
MotherOfDragons, I believe that the V word is fine. The P word, not so much. Obviously, it’s a microaggression against people who prefer talking about the latter.
At thanksgiving, I sat with the parents of one of son’s best MS and HS friends. She spoke openly about her current DIL. NEVER would she share such info with the general public. It was clearly,info FOR MY EYES only. On FB, she is quite pleasant to all. There is a clear respect for,privacy.
I love my mother but she always sends out a Christmas letter with pictures of her grandkids and she never asks. It annoys me and I’m pretty sure it pisses the hell out of my brother’s wife. Mom and SIL have a rocky relationship and Mom, like the OP here, doesn’t see how much she’s to blame.
This: “But there is a PATTERN that’s very evident from the totality of the OP’s posts.” So each time some say, but its just photos or grandma’s just doing what others do, you have to remember the rest of the (apparent) story. This sounds like one of many straws on the camel’s back.
If I were the baby’s mom, I’d have to hold myself back from saying something pretty darned direct.
You notice OP is writing to her? I wouldn’t be answering the phone, if it were this sort of relentless.
Do you think that this is a generational issue? Before social media sharing family pictures wasn’t a big deal and I don’t think anyone would have questioned it but now in this day and age where information is shared so quickly especially on facebook it is a cause for concern. You can post a photo and sometimes you don’t realize it but just by someone liking your photo their friends can see it. Also times are different now where perhaps parents are not comfortable sharing pictures of the children not knowing who is seeing the pictures. (with all the crazy stuff that happens out there)
I personally don’t like to post kids pictures online or send out photo cards during the holidays. It is a matter of personal preference. However I did take notice of my father taking the grandkids pictures with his Ipad this past Thanksgiving and now it’s got me wondering who he is showing those photographs to. Something I wouldn’t have thought to question before. In my family my parents try to over ride my rules for my DD. It happens all the time.
I think as grandparents they should respect the wishes of the grandkids parents. If they have rules about what their kids are and aren’t allowed to do then grandparents should respect those rules or wishes and not do anything against a parents will. I think posting three photos on a card when DIL reluctantly agreed to only one would not be the right thing to do. Also if she was uncomfortable with even posting one photo then the MIL should respect her wishes.
I can also understand grandparents wanting to share grand kids photos with friends but I would hold back on a mass holiday card mailing with grandkids photos without DIL’s permission. I would just say as a mom I want to send out my own family card over the holidays and grandparents should respect that wish.
If our children are happy then we should be happy. There is always going to be some issue of one grandparent seeing the grandkids more than the other but one has to get over it and deal with relations in an amicable way.
^279
Held my S more accountable than DIL when they had G’Son was unplanned.
And they were Young.
Why? because he had been raised with total openness as to BC and his responsibility towards a child.
And he was adopted due to an unplanned pg.
DIL was raised with religion and no hands on information.
I still see him as the most responsible person in their situation for the decisions they made.
But a baby is a baby and as a G’ma I have shut up and made good.
I adore my DIL and I think that she likes me.
I give NO advice and I try to treat her as another special D–we do pedis and I buy her clothes and always send them with $$ to go to dinner while we take care of G’Son.
I would NEVER post them on line. Yes, do share the pics they send to my friends via cell when we have lunch or such but know that would please them. They, themselves, have very few pics of him on facebook and such.
I am on the receiving end of a bad relationship with my mother-in-law. She is basically a nice person, but when my kids were little, she vacillated between ignoring my children, criticizing my parenting and telling me how much more wonderful/advanced/perfect her son (H) had been at the same age. As a result, I have not spoken to her in the last 15 years.
So, I have learned how NOT to be a grandmother. In short, I plan on praising my children and their spouses on their wonderful parenting, supporting their decisions and offering to help only when wanted. I would not share any pictures of grandchildren unless the parents shared them first (posted online). I already ask permission from my adult children to post any pictures of them online - except for the baby pictures I posted on S’s birthday to embarass him :). I believe that as a MIL, you have to be extra careful about hurt feelings, etc.
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and telling me how much more wonderful/advanced/perfect her son (H) had been at the same age
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oh wow. Did you ask her why her finely-raised child didn’t grow up to be a perfect adult?
^ believe me, I tried. She wouldn’t hear of it. Not her perfect angel. This is the mother who stormed the principal’s office after H had been caught smoking dope in high school. She was convinced that he wasn’t actually smoking, he was just standing there at the wrong time, wrong place. H was mortified, esp. after he had already confessed to the principal. haha
She also complained when H was blackballed from the National Honor Society for said dope incident and other disciplinary infractions. And she turned a blind eye when he stumbled home drunk, night after night, even after driving. No wonder I didn’t take parenting advice from this woman. She told me, We never set limits for H so that we wouldn’t give him anything to rebel against." How’d that work for ya?
@megpmom, my MIL wrote in an email just yesterday that DH is still her “perfect baby boy…just as perfect as ever.”
GAG. I love DH, he is indeed a wonderful person, but perfect? No way, no how. 99% of the time she is a great MIL, so I just laugh to myself and roll my eyes when she says stuff like that. DH was always easier to parent then his older brother, and he still is easier for her to deal with, so I can see why she thinks the way she does.
Gag!
Rule #1 for women choosing future husbands: Do not pick someone whose mother thinks he’s absolutely perfect!
jk…kinda
@mom2collegekids, when DH got sick with cancer, my MIL went kind of crazy. She tried to act as his next of kin at the hospital, gave him all kinds of bad advice after his surgery (I’m an RN and she told him not to listen to me, that no one could care for him as good as she could) until I had the doctor intervene and tell her she was wrong about most of it, etc. She had never behaved like that before. I was trying to get him to get out of bed and walk, and she kept insisting he needed his rest. She put her hand on his forehead and said, “My perfect baby boy, you need your rest. You don’t have to get up if you don’t want to, in fact you should not be wearing yourself out.”
I was ready to strangle her.
Thank GOD he recovered and she calmed down and went back to normal.
But yeah, if my Ds told me their boyfriends’ mothers were calling them “perfect baby boys,” I’d probably have a heart attack.
Oh, come on. I know my S is far from perfect, but if he were lying in the hospital with cancer, I think I would want to embrace him and call him my perfect baby boy. Just remembering when he was born and I held him in my arms and he was everything to me. And perfect.
Of course, this is different from a person who actually believes that their child has no faults. 
@Consolation, she pretty much believes he has no faults. Fortunately that belief rarely causes problems.
My problem with her behavior wasn’t that she thinks he is perfect (that’s just wryly amusing), it was trying to keep a post op patient in bed (risk for blood clots), feeding him his favorite doctor pepper after abdominal surgery (oh yeah, and can we talk about excruciatingly painful gas by adding carbonation to a patient who won’t ambulate), and insisting he not do his breathing exercises because he needed his rest (which resulted in atelectasis, a fever, and fulminating pneumonia), in the face of a wife who had years of experience as an ICU RN, because merely being a mom gave her special healing powers.
Wait - being a mom DOESN’T give you special healing powers?
Would that it were true…
I can’t imagine telling my s to ignore his healthcare provider spouse’s advice!! Just-- NO.
@Nrdsb4, I totally get you.
Of course… didn’t that mommy’s kiss on the forehead heal everything?
I think our role as MIL is just to smile, tell our kids and their spouses that “they’re doing great” and bake cookies. At least, that’s what I see as my role. And try to get to know and respect D-in-law or S-in-law as people. Is that so hard?