Call Us When You Get Home...

Well it is better than the family who was missing for nine days and the husband died...they were stuck in a blizzard.

No one started looking for them until day 3...

She cares, that is a good thing.

Do what I do with my parents - call or text about 15 minutes before you're actually home. Tell them that you're fine, you're pulling into the driveway and that you've gotta go and take the kids to the bathroom. Have a great night. Then hit send or say bye. Works like a charm. :)

Just call her when you are almost home...like 5 minutes from home and tell her, hey, MIL, we are 5 minutes from home. We are going to get everyone settled when we get home and we will call you tomorrow. Thanks. Bye. She gets her phone call and you get to take care of the kids and dog.

T., what's the big deal? Just text her back. Nothing could be easier.

Just wait till your kids start driving, and then you will finally have some empathy. Then you will understand what waiting and worrying feels like. It has nothing to do with how old you are.

They love you guys, just be kind and reassure them. And don't dare tell her to back off.

I don't text, but why don't you just text her first at the 2 hour mark?
"Wanted to let you know we're fine....we had a lovely visit. We have to haul everything in and let the dogs out, get the kid to bed. Talk to you in the morning! :)"
Then, go about your business.

SO FUNNY! I know what you mean when things are SO OBVIOUS, yet not to some people!!! Sounds like you'll have to take a big breath, put on a big smile, pick up the phone and in a nice, strong voice, say, "By the way, It actually takes us 3 hours to get in from the trip after potty breaks and stuff, so don't call us before the THREE hour point, and anyway, we'll call you, I MEAN IT, we're never home yet when you call right at the two hour mark, that's why we haven't called." Like anything else, if you say it clearly a few times and they choose to ignore you, just ignore them and make you husband field the call. God knows, every single CLEAR announcement I've made to my MIL has gone totally ignored....

Or just text at the two hour point even if you're not home yet :)

and "ahem" to some patrolling the worthiness of others' questions; issues don't have to be "One's big beef in life" to qualify for being asked. Personally, I love in-law issues on this site :)

Give her your husband's cell number.

A different perspective.
When my first son was 3 weeks old I went out with my now husband and we had a horrible car accident. My parents were called at about 10pm by the hospital saying that I had been in a wreck and they needed to get to the hospital immediately. My parents asked about my son. The hospital would tell them nothing. They were brought to a small white room while the doctors told my parents that I was okay (although I was busted up with a ton of stitches) but that my son had been airlifted to the trauma hospital in our area. My parents took me to the trauma hosp. after I got released and we were told that my son had died in the helicopter but they brought him back. They told me he was going to be a vegetable. That he would die. My mother could barely hold herself together and I was literally a pile of snot and tears on the floor. I had a cell phone. I didn't call my parents because trauma doesn't take a minute to let you make a phone call.
My parents have asked us to call them when we travel or have long drives. I ask the same of them. It's really no skin off your nose to answer the phone and say, "I know you love us. We are okay. See you next time!" Then she can get a good night sleep and not worry that you are battling for your life.
JMO
L.

How about tell her "We don't use our cell phones to talk or text while we're on the road. If you don't hear from us by x:00, call the police!"

Send her a text when you are Almost home, easier than calling when you are unpacking the car and getting the kids in to the bathroom. Say "We're pulling onto our street now, sorry I couldn't take your last 8 calls or texts because I was busy keeping 2 small kids happy in the car, I'm sure you remember that! What a great visit, love, T." (and if it makes your life easier I used to take a potty chair and just use it in the parking lot or by the side of the road to make those potty stops faster!)

I think you need to accept the fact that it does NOT take 2 hours to drive home with little bladders. It takes more than 2 hours, depending upon the number of stops.

So, tell her the new time frame, she probably hasn't factored that length of time into her waiting to call you.

She clearly loves you all, is concerned about your safety, and honestly why you become even the slightest upset or irritated is beyond me. If the phone is ringing when you walk in, teach your 3 year old to pick the phone and say 'I love you Granny. We are home. Bye-bye." click....

It also sounds like there are 2 adults in the car, so the other easy option is the non-driving parent should call her at exactly the 2 hour mark, she won't know where you're calling from, but you will certainly be closer to home than her place. Thank her kindly, tell her the good news and be on your merry way.

This is nothing to become so emotionally irritated about and lose this amount of time on. Simply say "Hello, we're home, gotta run. See you next time...kiss,kiss"

Like Jaimee said below. If you leave at 2pm tell them if they have not heard from you by 5pm then they can call you. You just have to remember to call them by 5pm with an update.

That's what I do with my parents. When we lived two states away and were driving with two kids and two dogs a usually 10 hour drive could take us 12-14 easily. I would say, I will call you at such and such time and let you know where we are at. Slowly they go the idea that we would call if we needed anything, and that I called when I said I would.

Sometimes we have to "train" our parents to do what we need them to do.

I hate "call me when you get there." That's the last thing on my mind. I would always forget and my mom would guilt me about waiting up to hear from me. I put a stop to that with "No news is good news. We have 2 cell phones in the car. We will call if we run into any trouble." It works beautifully.

She is just concerned. If it bothers you, set your phone to silent and glance at it when you stop. Don't even read her texts if you don't want to. IMO, this is one of those pick your battles moments. This is not one I would pick, especially since it really is coming from a warm place on her end.

Give her a note with what time you want her to call. Ask her not to call before because she has been filling up your answering machine and that makes you feel uncomfortable.

Each time you go, make the time a little longer. Finally, at some point, tell her that you will call her once you settle in. And make sure you don't forget.

Hope this will work.

Dawn

Just text them two hours after you left and tell them you are home. They wont know either way :-)

Tell her you'll call her when you get home.
After you've had chance to hit the bathroom.
There may be pit stops along the way so you are not sure exactly how long it will take.
AND you will be turning your phone off until you get home so don't bother trying.
As nicely as possible:
Don't call us.
We'll call you.

Don't answer your phone while you are driving??? I don't. If it annoys you set it to silent. Remind them gently what the routine is when you first get home and about how long it usually takes, in the end they are just concerned...

I would turn off the phones.

My mom would always do this to me if she knew I was coming home from college. It drove me nuts. I agreed to just turn off my phone and was done with it!

My in-laws do this too...in fact, they even do it when we are on trips not having anything to do with them. It is quite annoying, but we just realize that this is how they are, and how they always will be (we've tried telling them to cool it and we'll let them know when we're home.) Now I just reply with a text saying: "Still on the road--we're all fine. Will text u when we get home." Takes about 30 seconds, and then we get on with our lives.

Tell them you will call them in 2 hours or 3 hours.. whatever you think it will take..

Have her call your husband.. You can let him deal with it..

Also as moms, lets all remember this when our own children have our grandchildren in their cars on THEIR way home to not drive them crazy like this.. ..

My mom did some of this in the past and I just told her. mom, I know you are worried. I promise to call you when we get home.. If we do not call you by (insert time) call and check on us.. We may stop for a potty break, or dinner.. whatever..

This is exactly what my MIL does. If we don't answer, she has FIL call and demand we stop ignoring the MIL. Ridiculous. I calmly and not calmly talked to them and now it is husband's job to deal with them. Otherwise he has to hear it from me.

Turn off your cell phone. When you get home and hear the phone ringing, ignore it or shut off the ringer. The more I ask people what not to do, the more it feeds it and they do it. It's a battle for control. No more. Simply take it away from her buy doing, not debating the issue. You can change your behavior and it will force a change in your MIL's behavior. Then when you can breathe and get everyone settled, you can call her and let her know everything is fine. Limit your exposure and don't allow her to take away your peace.

You can tell her that you'll call her by 3:00 or whatever and give yourself 3 hours etc. If she starts calling/texting, then ignore them until you're ready to call her. I'm so tempted to do this with my son but he's a new driver and just started going places by himself. I restrain because I don't want him answering the phone while he's driving. I keep telling myself that I'll get used to him driving and stop worrying so much. But after reading your post it makes me wonder...lol

Call her when you exit the highway and are almost home. Tell her we are about 5-10 minutes from home, I'll call back in about a half hour. That way she knows you made it and will call again.

How long does it usually take you to get home...with stops?

I would tell the dear MIL that you will make contact when you get home. Ask her to give you three hours...if you don't make contact by then, she can start worrying.

Put the phone on silent or vibrate and ignore it.
THen call her at your convenience, be that when you are almost home or after you let the dogs out.
Or let hubby deal with her and keep your phone off the whole ride home.

Or you could be ornery. Call her every 10 minutes to let her know where you are and say, we are passing the 7-11, we're passing milemarker 115, there's a cow in the field at milemarker 135.

I make myself sound completely agitated with everything and unable to focus so people usually say OK I'll talk to you later.

Have you nicely asked her to stop? Have you told her what you told us? Just explain it to her. I'm sure she'll understand.

ETA - your DH should be the one discussing it with her, not you, since she's his mom.

My mom was the same way. Our trip from Iowa to Illinois was 3 hours. I think she must have sat by her phone wringing her hands until she got the call. This was before cell phones.

Now when I travel to Iowa to visit family and then come home, nobody asks me to call and nobody would know if I drove off the road into a ditch until days later probably when somebody found me.

I miss having somebody to call. I miss being worried about. Someday you might too.

Incidentally, it must run in the family because my 23-year-old daughter lives 2 miles from me and I always have her text or call when she drives home from my house. I want to make sure she's inside and the door is locked. I do call her if I haven't heard from her in a reasonable time. I guess I'm as annoying as your MIL. And I intend to continue.

It is not ridiculous! They care about you. I always called the moment we
walked in the door because I did not want my folks or in laws worrying about us. My kids now do it if they are traveling long distances. (They all
live close by so getting home is never an issue). Trust me, when your
littles ones are traveling long distances with their children, you will do the same thing. Why get worked up about it, just call when you are in the driveway before you get involved with everything else.

I understand your pain. Our drive to my parent's house used to be 1hr 15 to 1 hr 30 minutes. Now it can be upwards of 2 hours, with the almost obligatory rest-stop and snack mid-way. We even have "our" rest stop.

The key is just to tell her "I know it takes you two hours, and you start to worry, but it takes us 3-4 hours to get home, depending on the stops. Please don't start to worry until at least 4 hours have passed, and I promise we'll call the minute we get home."

I also now make a VERY quick call from the car in the driveway. That way they know we can't chat.

Haha sounds like my MIL. We live 45 minutes from them and she does the same thing. Call when yall make it home. Ok sure. As soon as we are in the house or unpacking the car the phone rings. We don't pay any attention b/c we have 3 kids to settle down and put stuff back and so on. She leaves a voicemail saying I was checking to see if yall got home. Kinda gets on my nerves. She does the same thing at night. My husband works 4pm to 1am and she knows if he hasn't call her on his lunch break before 10pm she will call at exactly at 10pm a few times and leaves a voicemail again. He's in his mid 2o's,so its not like we are that young but we been living on our own since 6 years ago. She once call his work b/c the two days he didn't call her b/c we didn't tell them that we signed on our house and that we were moving those two days and she call his work asking if he was there and if he was working and so on. That pissed me off b/c his boss seem aggravated at the fact she did this. She always worried when she can't get ahold of him or whatever and she thinks something happened to him or us. We told her that we have my mom and stepdad,brother and sister that lives in the same city that if something ever happened they will let her know. We tell her this over and over again. My mom doesn't even do this to me. Ok. Yall becareful heading home or whatever and she doesn't even call to check up on us. We have our own life and my mom understand that. MY MIL doesn't seem to get that threw her head. It must be something with MIL'S.lol.

My mom used to do this to me when I was coming home from her house when my husband worked, or if she just knew I was out and he was working. After trying to make it reasonable for a few years (and a few freakouts on her part), I just said "no more." One time I was leaving her house at bedtime-ish, and she asked if I'd call when I got home. I said no, I'm going to be putting 4 kids to bed by myself. After saying no a few more times, she stopped asking. I live 25 minutes from her!

If it bugs your husband too, then have him say next time "we just can't. We'll have to get the kids in, unload the car, get dinner together, we'll have to stop probably 3x for potty (hahaha!) and I've got a big day at work tomorrow, so it's going to be a rushed evening."

From your post: "I am about to tell her not to call us and that we WILL call when we get home and settled" - Just Do It!!

It is fair to ask her to wait and that you will call her. Tell her you understand her concern but that your trip generally takes more than 2 hours (for all the reasons you stated) and that when you do get home, that you need to take care of some immediate needs (like the kids and dogs) and that you will call. You DO need to follow through though. This will be critical.

My folks ask us to call once we get in and settled. It is a reasonable request.

Good luck.
~C.

Why don't you turn off your cell phones while you're on the ride home? Don't answer calls or texts (especially if you're driving) until you're settled in at home and then call her on your time table. I don't see the big deal.

First suggestion - turn off the cell phones for the ride home. Who needs to reach you in those 2 1/2 hours? Of course, if you're a doctor, midwife, doula or other oncall professional, then this would be a bad suggestion. If you're not, let them know you're turning off the cell phones because calls during the drive are a dangerous distraction.

Have you actually spoken to the MIL about this? I mean, actually told her frankly that when she is calling, you are not at home and that while she might like to hear the minute you are pulling into the driveway, the fact that you need to unload the car, put kiddo's to bed and let out the dogs takes priority and you simply will not call (OR ANSWER HER CALLS) until then. Have you been very clear in making her aware that it does not take you almost two hours to get home, as it might take her after visiting you, that it takes you closer to 2 1/2? If you haven't been clear about it, I'd get right to the point, that she cannot be your first priority and you are sorry if she worries every time she knows that you are on the road, but that you can't and won't do what she wants, sorry. If you've just been telling her, "We're still on the road, not home yet," that may not be spelling it out clearly enough that every time you visit, you need 2 1/2 hours or however much time to get to your house and then another half hour before you are available to make or receive calls, that you can't keep the dogs in and the children up to make calls or send texts

Sounds a little like an inlaw I knew - DH's father's girlfriend. Every time we saw her, she'd demand a call when we got home. We were not in the habit of doing that with people. When years earlier, my MIL asked if we'd call when we got home, we told her no. We had to tell the girlfriend the same thing - because like your MIL, she would start calling, "worried," because she hadnt hear from us. We had to tell her that we could not accommodate her worry, that we drive around all the time without letting anyone else know our whereabouts, that we had already given her our time by visiting and that when we got home, we had other things to do that hadn't gotten done because we were travelling to see her, spending time with her and travelling back. She didn't like it but had to accept it and was surprised to learn that we'd never called the other parents when we got home from seeing them.

I also had to have the discussion with my MIL that she didn't have to call to "check" on us everytime there was a snowstorm. Here in NY, those are not unusual as you can imagine and we'd be busy digging out. There was nothing unusual to report. If there was an emergency, we'd be busy taking care of it, not chatting with relatives.

Good luck, I hope you find a solution that works.

T.,

How about just as you're turning onto your street or driveway, you send a "quick" text letting them know that you just got home and need to do all that you said you need to do and let them know you won't be checking your phone for quite a while, if at all. They will know you are home and won't be expecting you to call.

I always thought it was funny that people ask for that. After all, they don't ask during the week when just as many things can happen when you're driving right? lol. Anyway, good luck, I hope you work out something to satisfy everyone.

Moms worry no matter what age you are. Be thankful you have in laws who care so much. Tell them when you leave that you will call them in 3 hours, 2 to drive and another for stops and unloading the car. Then be prompt and call right before the 3 hours is up. My mom would be frantic if I didn't call the minute we get home. I'm not upset by this because she has lost 2 children to tragic accidents and she can't help but worry. I owe it to her to call. Give your in laws a break.

Before you leave them the next time let them know how your trip home goes - just like you did above and tell them light heartedly if they don't hear from you in xx hours to start worrying, otherwise you're just making your long way home :) Then turn off the phone until you are ready to call.

Also, can you give them a quick call when you are a couple blocks from your house - cheating a bit - but good enough. Then you don't have to worry about remembering after getting settled at home.

just remind her it takes longer with two small children. be gracious. dont repeat yourself you loose ground.
i would turn off your phone and text her once you are close to home. there is no reason to give her a blow by blow