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Expert Q&A

	By John C. Friel, Ph.D. Psychologists

I'm having trouble with my mother-in-law butting into my relationship with my daughter. Overall she's a terrific grandmother and I know her intentions are good. But she's making so many excuses for my 16-year-old's behavior and disagreeing with me -- behind my back and also in front of me -- and undermining my daughter's respect for me. She likes to be the good guy while letting me play the bad guy. When I grounded my daughter after she lied three times about her whereabouts (I use a "three strikes you're out" rule), Grandma pushed for a visit and then took the kid out on the town! Bought her dinner, clothes and CDs and even let her visit a friend I don't approve of (a girl that's a liar and is hiding from her parents her relationship with a 24-year-old man. This "friend" even used our phone once to call the guy, after asking to use the phone to "call her parents.") My wife agrees with me, but doesn't know how to talk to her mother about it. When I talk to her about it, she gets mad. How do I solve this?

This is a marital problem, not a parenting problem. In a healthy family system, Mom and Dad are the primary and most important unit. They must care for and nurture their relationship and keep it healthy at all times. If they don't, whatever dysfunction they have will be acted out by their children. We remind our clients about the safety announcement on airplanes: "If the oxygen masks drop from the ceiling, put on YOUR OWN mask first, before trying to put the mask on your child." In other words, if the marriage doesn't come first, the children suffer.

The problem you describe is a serious one, and will end up hurting your daughter, you, AND, believe it or not, your mother-in-law more than perhaps any of you now know. Your daughter is learning: 1) to divide and conquer; 2) that there are no limits in life; and, 3) not to respect you and your wife. Furthermore, your mother-in-law has no respect for you or your wife and is therefore in your marriage 24 hours a day, eroding the very foundations of your relationship. Because it is a marital issue, it is your and your wife's job to have a healthy conflict over this until it is resolved, even if it heats up so much that you both require professional help, which will probably be the case. In that therapy, you may learn why you fear your wife's anger, and your wife may learn why she is afraid of her mother's manipulations.

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