Mother-in-law Trouble

Q: Stereotype jokes don’t usually grab me, but I must confess my mother-in-law is proverbial! She’s no sooner in the door than she starts shelling out advice. She knows everything about raising kids, decorating houses, buying cars and domesticating cats. The pity is, she knows nothing about listening. We can’t get away from her, so how do we get on with her?

A: It’s appropriate to feel guilty when we’ve violated our code of ethics or personal standards. In this case, guilt acts like pain. It registers discomfort because our conscience is injured.
With insight and awareness poor listeners do learn to give some time to others. In her eagerness to share her experience and wisdom with you, your mother-in-law may not be aware she’s monopolising the conversation.

Either your wife or you need to point this out to her so she can understand the difficulty clearly. She deserves a chance to change. If she will not learn to listen, she may have to forfeit your unlimited attention while you attend to other matters.

Here’s what to do:
Give your mother-in-law the amount of listening time you can comfortably afford. Decide how much this is going to be before she arrives.

Listen with patience and interest until the time is up.

Break eye contact and move away.

Watch for the end of a sentence as your cue to interrupt with a request to be excused or a statement of your intention to leave the room.

If need be, interject midsentence when you have an urgent or important matter demanding your attention.
Only return to the conversation when you can afford to give more listening time.

If you can find helpful information in part of what she shares, she will feel heard. This means she may actually stop talking so much about it.

If she continues to urge you to take her advice against your own choices, remind her that you’ve listened on other occasions (give examples) but you won’t be following her suggestions this time. She may stop urging.

A kindly attitude with firmness is a good recipe for keeping your relationship positive. In this way you can conserve your time, preserve your opinions and still have a mother-in-law who feels valued.

Extract from Signs of the Times, June 2003.

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