My son-in-law blames me for my daughter’s bad behaviour

With Agatha Edo, Email: womaneditor@independentngonline.com, gataedo@yahoo.com or agatha.edo@gmail.com Dear Agatha, Please help me resolve this crisis in my daughter’s marriage. My eldest daughter has been married for 12 years. She is blessed with four children but from all I have witnessed in her home, she is not a happy woman. Her husband, just like her father did to me, is unforgiving, arrogant and selfish. He doesn’t care about my daughter in the way a man should. He seems to think money is everything. He is never there for his children. It is so painful because I experienced all that she is going through in my own marriage. The only difference is that he is paying his children’s school fees while my husband didn’t even bother about our happiness and welfare. The funny thing is that he is always accusing my daughter of being arrogant and rude to him. I am a teacher. I brought my children up to be fearless; besides, my experience in the hands of their father has taught them to be independent as well as determined to protect their hearts from being hurt. As a woman you know how it is with children. Nobody sits them down to teach them how to react to a situation. I guess my struggles in the hands of their father influenced them a lot. My son-in-law is of the opinion that I haven’t really been fair to him; he is now blaming me for the way my daughter is behaving and has told me to my face that I am always supporting my daughter against him even when it is obvious to everyone that my daughter is rude to him. Given what I went through in the process of training and seeing my children succeed, there is no way I will ever support any man maltreating my daughter. I had enough of that in my time. And I have never hidden this from him. The latest is as usual, I went to my daughter’s house in response to her distress call on the latest challenges she was having with her husband. Since he wasn’t at home when I got there, I decided to wait for him. He came back at about 9 p.m. Despite seeing me in the living room, he greeted me casually and walked away. He didn’t bother to come out again even when I sent my daughter to inform him of the reason for my visit. The next thing I heard is his angry voice yelling at my daughter to pack out of the house if she so desires; that he is a man of his own and would not allow his home or himself to be pushed around. I couldn’t stomach the insults so I walked into their bedroom since they were already fighting only for him to turn to me in anger. He said I was the one ruining his home and that I should leave his home first thing in the morning. That night, I left to book myself into a hotel not far from their house. Now my daughter has packed out; her father and everyone else say I mislead her. I am fed up because I never prayed for this. Her mother-in-law also says I should keep and teach my daughter some manners especially on how to talk to people. Even though I don’t know how I am to be blame for all these, how do I make her go back to her husband and children? Adebisi Dear Adebisi, You allowed your experiences to blind you to the faults of your daughter. You blindly supported your daughter to the ruins of her home. You may have had the best intentions for her but your handling of the matter worsened the situation between your daughter and her husband. As an adult, you didn’t provide her with the benefit of your experience beyond the hurt you suffered from your own husband whose house you obviously are still in. You should have taught your daughter the secret of your staying power in her father’s house despite everything you went through. Your pains and disappointment in your own marriage unwittingly made you the third party in your daughter’s marriage. Granted, mothers don’t teach their children how to respond to a situation but it is the duty of every mother to protect her children’s future and homes from ruins. When your daughter started manifesting this trait of stubbornness, disregard for men and rudeness to the authority of the man at home, you should have called her to order, reminding her that if you are still in her father’s house, she should do everything humanly possible to manage the shortcomings of her man. No woman, who is rude and disrespectful to the authority of her man, will last in his house. That you went into their room uninvited to register your anger at what the man said about you to your daughter, really fingers you as the major problem in that marriage. You don’t order your son-in-law around. It isn’t done. He had the boldness to disdain you because you are lacking in respect for his person. Respect begets respect. Your place is in your husband’s house where you can play court, not in his house where your daughter is the mistress and not you. The lesson you didn’t teach your daughter is what is affecting her relationship with her husband. At the point you heard them in that hot exchange, you should have sent your daughter a text message to keep quiet and not go into trading words with her husband. As an elderly woman, that words you heard were enough to alert you into a pending danger; the kind that would implicate you as the source of all the problems in your daughter’s marriage. Whether you like it or not, you are trying to use your daughter’s marriage to avenge your own pains and disappointment. Unfortunately the target is an innocent man, who doesn’t understand what you went through or witnessed what your husband did to you. If you have a son whose mother-in-law is behaving like you, how would you react? That this man’s mother hasn’t come to personally throw your daughter’s things out before now shows that he must have kept his family out of his marriage. A good mother stands behind her son-in-law or daughter-in-law against her child. It is the only way to secure the marital happiness of her child. Coming to your daughter’s house each time she complains about her husband gave her the impetus to continue to misbehave. A man is the head of his home. He dictates how he wants things in his house. You are the least person to tell your son-in-law how to manage his home. Patience should have been your advice to your daughter each time she reported her man to you. If you weren’t patient, enduring, selfless in your own travails, you would have since left your home for another woman to take over. In your interest pray, your son-in-law is responsible enough not to bring in another woman to take care of him and his children. If he does that, you would have finally driven your daughter out of her home forever. Now that she is back, it is essential you debrief her properly. Teach her how to be a good wife and mother; the kind that puts the interest of her husband and children first; the woman who is willing to make the sacrifice for the peace of her home. The first thing to do is to teach her how not to talk back to her husband and how to keep you or anyone else out of their marriage. All her husband is asking for is respect. Once he has it, he will also be willing to accord everybody that has to do with her the same kind of respect. Also, it is essential you tell her the difference between her father and husband. If she has any issue with the way her father treated you and her siblings, she shouldn’t take it out on her husband. He is innocent of this judgment you and your daughter have sentenced him to. One way you can help her is to change your attitude towards your own husband by forgiving him of any wrong he did to you in the past. Begin to accord him the respect he deserves as a man. This way your daughter will learn from you. Prevail on your husband to send for your son-in-law as you have forfeited your right to arbitrate on this matter. If you can swallow your pride, go to see his mother. Appeal to her to talk to her son; if there is anyone who can make him change his mind, it is his mother. Assure her you will never be a problem to them again and that you have really talked to your daughter on how to behave from now on. As a mother, you need also to go on your knees for God’s intervention in your life as well as your daughter’s. Only a true spirit of forgiveness can change the ambiance of things around you. Invest love in your life and those of your children. This is very important to the joy of your children. Good luck.