Would you visit your m-i-l in these circumstances?

Parent Cafe
1

<p>My m-i-l would like my wife & I & family to visit them when they are “on vacation” at their vacation house this summer. They’ll be there for a couple of months while they are using their entire year’s worth of vacation time for them to spend there.</p>

<p>It’d cost us several hundred dollars, plus two days travel time, plus several vacation days for us to get over there. While we’re there, they have a long list of house repairs, so the correct thing for me to do would be to help the dad fix up the house, while my wife would spend time with her mom. </p>

<p>My wife and I are a bit hesitant. We’d rather they stopped by on their way to their vacation house, and they could see us and other family. My m-i-l refuses, saying they have too many things to repair around the house that they need every vacation day there. </p>

<p>I’m not real excited about using my vacation time to help someone repair their vacation house; I have plenty of my own projects that I usually don’t have the time for, and would rather get these done first.</p>

<p>I’d be more interested if we did fun things while we were there. But I can’t see how visiting some people while they are in the middle of home repairs will be a very neat way for us to spend our vacation time this summer.</p>

2

<p>Is it close enough that you could go for only, say, a long weekend, and not use up all your vacation time?</p>

3

<p>Is this a place where you have vacationed before? If so, and assuming you have stayed for free, then I’d definitely go and help them out.</p>

4

<p>They’re not “some people,” they’re your mother and father-in-law. How does your wife feel about it? Have you ever helped them with home repairs before? Do you feel that they take advantage of you, generally? </p>

<p>It is perfectly normal to pitch in and help one’s family, especially parents as they age. It’s not unreasonable for your wife to want to spend time with her mother while you are occupied with her dad - many people would actually find this pleasurable, especially in a vacation area. Clearly, you see it as a chore and an obligation. Unless your in-laws are unreasonably demanding and expect 18 hour days of free labor, I suggest you grin and bear it and try to be a good son-in-law. Your lack of cooperation will only place your wife in the uncomfortable middle between you and her parents - try to find it in your heart to do something nice for her, even if you don’t feel like doing it for her parents. </p>

<p>Perhaps you can all agree to work for a certain time each day, then take off in the afternoon for fun activities.</p>

5

<p>I’m very protective of my vacation days, so I would think this through carefully. Would all your time be taken up with home repair, or is it just a bunch of small things that could be knocked out quickly, leaving plenty of time for relaxation? </p>

<p>Do you have other uses for the vacation time that are more pressing?</p>

<p>Do you generally have a good relationship with the in-laws?</p>

6

<p>It sounds like you will be very resentful if you were to go under these circumstances, so you should probably decline.</p>

7

<p>I guess it depends on the relationship you have, or want to continue to have, with your in-laws and how important it is to your wife. My DH has taken vacation time to help both sets of parents with home repair, maintenance, move, etc. We wouldn’t think twice.</p>

8

<p>If this were my situation, I wouldn’t even attempt to call it a vacation. I would go and do my good deed. Period. If I end up with any R&R at all, it’s a bonus. But, this is certainly not a vacation. It’s just what children do for their aging parents. Plan your vacation for some other time, some other place.</p>

9

<p>DougBetsy, I agree. It won’t be a vacation.</p>

<p>The question is, what point is it right for me to say, I need my vacation time to relax and to recharge my batteries from stress at work, and I don’t find repairing homes to be relaxing. What point is it right to look out for my own interests, without being selfish.</p>

<p>I am exhausted from work, and do feel that I need to use my vacation time for fun things in life for a change.</p>

10

<p>Why is your work so exhausting? Perhaps doing something physical would be a nice change!</p>

11

<p>I sympathize, engineer. Due to far flung relatives, we spend our vacations visiting them. Depending on destination, we are either working on their property or paying for everything (or both). To make it worse, they are not easy people to enjoy for a variety of reasons. I love DougBetsy’s advice. Reframe this trip as a family obligation. Take a different vacation. One of the kindest gifts you can give your wife is to be kind to her parents, regardless of the family dynamics. Also, you will be modelling good behavior for your children. Some day, their generation will be helping ours.
I vow to live near my kids if at all possible. I want to be a part of their regular routine and I don’t want them to “spend” vacations on family obligations. Best of luck.</p>

12

<p>My husband helps my dad out, and my dad pays him! Hubby doesn’t ask or expect to be paid but my parents feel that they are taking his time when he could be doing fun things, AND they figure that if they have to pay to have the work done, they may as well pay him than a stranger. </p>

<p>Even with pay, sometimes he just doesn’t want to do certain jobs. YES, he does do plenty of things just to be nice. Whe they pay him it is for the hauling rocks and dirt and laying pavers and backbreaking sweaty jobs.</p>

<p>If you are going to use half or more of your time, and you will not get enjoyment out of it then I would not go. Being a relative does not make you slave labor. I have a feeling that if they can afford a vacation home they can afford a repairman. If the repairs are that extensive then maybe they really should hire a professional.</p>

<p>If the house is too much for them then they should sell it.</p>

<p>My husband is also over-worked in a white collar job. He needs his down time. He does plenty of labor around here with the lawn and maintenance. He doesn’t need to spend his free time doing more work and I wouldn’t expect him to.</p>

<p>When he DID work at my parents (he hasn’t in a while) it was not usually all day long. My dad was out there with him too. My dad also took him and my boys out fishing in the ocean (in his boat) and paid for everything. Hubby sometimes just stayed behind and worked while the boys went fishing with gramps. He did this for gramps and for the boys and because he didn’t love fishing quite as much as them. My boys are grown now and gramps pays them sometimes to work. He pays them quite well and for some reason they don’t jump at the opportunity every time. Kids…</p>

<p>Help out if and only if you have the time and energy. Plan a schedule of projects and playtime and let them know in advance. Just be honest. I can’t imagine they would WANT to take advantage of you if they understood that you need time to relax as well.</p>

13

<p>

Then that’s what you should do. </p>

<p>You shouldn’t just be free labor for the in-laws unless it’s something you actually want to do. If they need help fixing up the vacation house they can hire someone.</p>

<p>But do you know for certain that’s what it’d be? What does your W think?</p>

14

<p>In your first post, you mentioned that your in-laws will be using their entire year’s worth of vacation time at their second home. That sounds as if they are still young enough to be employed full time. Is that correct? </p>

<p>Also, it sounds as if the vacation house is a long way from your home: “It’d cost us several hundred dollars, plus two days travel time, plus several vacation days for us to get over there.” I don’t know if you’re talking about driving or flying, but either way it sounds like a long haul. </p>

<p>You mentioned that your in-laws don’t wish to stop by your home on their way to their vacation house. If your home is within dropping by distance on this trip (not far from the highway or an airport en route to their destination) and they’ve refused on the grounds that they are too busy, that influences my response, too.</p>

<p>You said in your initial post that you’re not the only one who is hesitant about going on this working “vacation” but that your wife is also. So this isn’t an argument between the two of you, right?</p>

<p>As both a DiL and a MiL, here are my two cents: decline the invitation. Actually, your wife should communicate with them; IMHO each adult child should be responsible for dealing with his or her own parents. Your wife could tell her parents that you’re both sorry that their schedule this summer won’t permit them to stop for a brief visit, as you’d love to see them, but maybe you can get together another time when you’re all not so busy with work and chores. If her parents press her about why you can’t come, she can tell them you already have plans. It’s really not their business if your plans are to sleep in a hammock in the back yard every day for two weeks.</p>

<p>I realize that my opinion runs counter to what some others have posted. This isn’t a case where elderly parents need help prepping the old family home to sell as they get ready to move into assisted living. I view second homes as a luxury ( yes, we owned one once) and think that your in-laws should budget for the expense of hiring out repairs and improvements if they are unable to undertake the work themselves. </p>

<p>The only way I can imagine asking my kids (& their spouses) to help me work on a vacation house would be if I was unable to find anyone to hire to help me. In that case, I would not only insist on paying for their transportation, meals, etc. during the trip, but would also gift them with enough to cover at least a long weekend at a nice resort to recuperate after helping me. Even then, I would understand if one of them said that they’d been working hard and really looked forward to a couple of weeks of doing nothing so they could recharge. </p>

<p>FWIW, my dh and I spent most of our vacations traveling to see his parents when our children were little. He often ended up doing chores and remodeling projects, and then would spend the following few weekends at home in bed with a migraine after getting over tired. So not only did I spend my “vacation” helping MiL cook, do dishes, etc., while caring for our kids, but for several more weeks I might as well have been a single parent.
That wasn’t exactly good for our marriage, or for my relationship with my in-laws. They weren’t bad people, just somewhat clueless.</p>

<p>You won’t be an awful SiL if you decline this request.</p>

15

<p>Suppose you decline but send them a slightly generous gift check saying you wish you could help, but here’s something to help them hire some local labor. Your W might know in advance if that’d be appreciated or considered very rude and insulting. Families differ.</p>

<p>I think your inlaws should be pumping up the economy in their vacation home town. I’ve lived and worked in several resort towns year-round. Those workers can really use some dayjobs! </p>

<p>If your wife misses her parents, she might fly in herself and no work seems to be expected from her, somehow. (I don’t quite understand that, but okay). It’s important that, if you don’t go, she still can; they’re her parents.</p>

<p>I think you should take care of yourself with a staycation at home and send her by plane for one week; take the other week together as a couple. JMO.</p>

16

<p>From your OP, it sounds like you will NOT be using all of your vacation time for this trip…just some of it. That being the case, you have to decide yourself whether you want to be helpful or not. Just view it as a “working vacation” and use the rest of your vacation time to do something for yourselves.</p>

<p>Either that…or just say no…but I would be discussing this with your wife first. If you are a handy sort, it might just be that you would be very helpful. It’s not like they are asking you to come year after year after year.</p>

17

<p>Just from the outset of it, sounds like they are taking advantage of you in a very obvious way. Are they unable to afford someone to work on the house? Are they incapable of doing it themselves? Why is your wife apparently not expected to work on the house? Honestly, I can see someone asking their kid to come up and help for awhile, but not request the kid to come visit with mom, and her husband to do their chores. That is complete BS.</p>

<p>Now sure, there may be much more to it. It would be one thing if you happened to come visit them and they needed a hand briefly. Or if they were broke (unlikely with a vacation home), had serious physical or mental problems that needed assistance. This sounds like they are being inconsiderate and you know it. My husband always gets hits up with a bunch of chores when he visits his mom, but they’re fairly minor. She hires people to do the big stuff. She never asks in-laws to do work. My parents would NEVER think of using my husband as slave labor, even though he’s volunteered and they’ve occasionally taken him up on it.</p>

18

<p>It really depends on the context…for what you are paying to travel, you could send a check and they could hire someone and you could enjoy your vacation time.</p>

<p>My FIL used to have a second home, he was doing a huge portion of the building himself and he had everyone come visit and enjoy the beach, but the projects were often quite unpleasant. More than handyman around the house. Many people declined the 2nd opportunity to have a weekend at his beach house, it was just not worth it to them.</p>

<p>Are they financially comfortable? Better off than you? Is this a vacation home they can just barely afford with no budget for repairs or are they able to pay locals?</p>

<p>If they are passing up the chance to visit your place and your place is in some simple manner “on the way” then they are making a choice. </p>

<p>We, too, have spent years visiting family for our vacation, because we moved away. Most of them rarely visit us, if ever, because when we go to their town, we are seeing everyone; that makes it easy for them.</p>

<p>If you have limited vacation days and not much flexibility with work, then you have to treat those vacation days as more important than someone who is self-employed or has a great deal of flexibility in their life.</p>

19

<p>It’s not a vacation since you don’t regard it as such. It’s doing work for your in laws. If you really don’t want to do this, then let your wife know and come to some sort of agreement as to how to handle it. If she wants to visit her parents, perhaps she should do so alone. Maybe you can go for just a day and return with her.</p>

<p>I always spent a week each year at my MIL’s that was NOT a vacation. It was just part of the package of being married to DH and worth it, even though it was not a pleasant week for me. The kids got be at his childhood home (of sorts) and be with their grandmother. I didn’t make any fuss about it because this was something that was important to him. Yes, I would have rather spent the time and money or more traditional vacations, as it was not a cheap visit with all we would end up spending on the old house and on her, not to mention the trip itself. Plus we would treat her and us to dinners out and vacationy type things the best we could in that setting. But no, it was not a rental on the beach on the Outer Banks or a condo in Florida like most of our friends and colleagues had for their vacations, and it cut into our vacation time and money. But it was what made my husband happy.</p>

<p>Now we spend our vacation time and money at our kids’ colleges, places they are living. We move them in and out and help them here and there. THe graduation in May will cost us at least $2K if the other kids come along, and much more if we squeeze in some local trips and some nice restaurants. Do I really want to spend my vacation time and money at that locale? Absolutely not, but under our particular circumstances, there is nothing I would rather do.</p>

20

<p>Thank you all.</p>