MommyBizCentral

Darlene · Wed Jun 25, 2008 12:37 am Question for June 23

Seeing I missed yesterday for our question, I marked it for the 23rd.
Its a different type of question.

Okay, if you had a problem with a family member and wanted to clear the air, so to speak, how would you go about it without causing hard feelings or any problems?

I mean say someone is a lousy housekeeper and you hate visiting because it bugs you to see it such a mess. The pet smell is terrible. The kids more or less do what they want. How would you handle ths situation?

How can you tell someone to clean up their act without it causing problems between the spouses or hard feelings?

kjdama · Wed Jun 25, 2008 5:15 am

Yowzers... I have no idea what I would do. I'm in that situation right now, with my SIL as well as my own mom. With my SIL however, it's harder because she is temporarily living with me- I'm not happy with how she is treating her 3 kids (1yr, 2.5yrs, and 10yr) but based on past problems with her, I don't dare say anything to her. She always has ended up turning the conversation around and putting things my kids do and they way I react to them into the spotlight (and I don't do anything remotely close to what she does with her kids, yet she tries to make it sound just as bad or worse if possible...)

My mom is another story completely....

InfertilityMom · Mon Jun 30, 2008 8:18 pm

Wow, that is a doozie. I usually try to find something about myself that needs improvement and bring that up in conversation to lead into trying to broach the issue that's bothering me. But that's backfired on me too - once the family member I was talking with agreed that I had a problem in X area but didn't feel she had a problem in that area at all. The other time a family member agreed that we both had problems in these areas but still nothing changed on their end. So I guess I don't really have any input!