Me VS In Laws

Hey everyone.

My family and I have moved to my husband’s home country and the transition has been difficult. I believe that between the four of us, myself and our son are having the hardest time finding our place here.

I have never had any issues with my in-laws but over the past couple of months, a lot of things have been bothering me. I apologise in advance for the long read.

A little back story, at the height of the COVID pandemic, we moved back to Shanghai and lived with my father for a few months while figuring out our next move. My husband and I slept on the sofa bed in the living room while our son slept with my father. My father paid for the utilities, never asked us to pitch in for rent or groceries and never once complained about how we literally took over his apartment. Despite this, my husband had issues with how my father continuously spoiled our son with sweets and toys and told me several times to say things like ‘if you continue to give him sweets, we will not allow you to spend time with our son’ to my father. I did, not as rudely but the message was clear.

Fast forward to the present, we have been living at my husband’s parents’ house for a little over three months now and I have had constant earfuls and plenty of passive aggressive behaviour directed at me. I manage to shrug most of it off but what I can’t stand is when his mother and/or his sister make judgmental comments about how I choose to parent our children. Additionally, our son, who is 6 is often blamed whenever something happens during playtime with his cousins (they are 3 and 2) and is always expected to share or understand that if his cousins want to play with whatever he is playing with, he has to let them, no questions asked. Our son is expected to maintain the peace and essentially put his cousins’ feelings before his - I disagree with this wholeheartedly. As blame is directed at him, solely because he is the eldest, our son has began telling on his cousins whenever they misbehave (I know it sounds like my son isn’t at any fault here but any of you you met him, you would see that he is the most gentle and least confrontational kid ever) and because they misbehave often, my sister in law, her husband and my mother in law roll their eyes at my son or call him annoying whenever he goes to tell him.

When I tell my husband how I feel and what was said or done, instead of siding with me or standing up for me, he says that he doesn’t want to be put in the middle. I think he is being unfair, he thought is was reasonable to me to give my dad an ultimatum about sweets but a little support on this matter is out of the question. I do not expect him to fight with his family but they seem to fail to realise that although our son is years older, he is a child too.