Dear Queenie,
A lot of the time when we go to a special event, especially a family one, we pick up my mother-in-law on the way and take her with us. Almost always, when we go to pick her up, she is in the middle of doing some household chore, even though we have told her what time to expect us and we have come at that time, or even a few minutes later.
If we wait for her to get done with what she is doing, we are late for the event, and sometimes we have even missed one entirely because of how long we had to wait for her. She apologizes, but next time it is the same thing again.
We talked to some of her friends and they said she never does this when they come to take her somewhere.
Queenie, what is a good way to deal with this?—Always late
Dear Always late,
The fact that your mother-in-law does not do this to other people, only to you, seems to indicate that she does it on purpose as a way to control you, and as long as you let her get away with it, she will continue to behave the same way.
From now on, tell her what time you will come to pick her up and that you will only wait a few minutes (specify exactly how long you will wait) if she is not ready to go when you arrive. Then stick to that time limit. Hopefully, if she misses an event (or more than one) that she really wanted to attend, she will learn to be ready on time and stop playing the waiting game.
