We're the parents and now we need advice on how should we treat our daughter in laws or how should we treat our son in laws?

There’s a interesting extremely relevant concept in psychology called triangulation.

This is really what's going on at the heart of in law issues.

So you have a set of parents. Mom and dad. Right now, mom and dad have a kid.

And mom and dad have a kid and there is a rift between mom and dad.

And so the son almost like, not in a gross way, but almost becomes the second spouse to his mom, right?

I see this quite a bit where that pressure is there and then because of that initial failure of the parents to have a good relationship or talk amongst themselves.

The mom is very dependent on the son and the son starts playing this role where he's like, hey I'm gonna have mom's back. My poor mom she's in such a difficult marriage I have to be there for always right and then the guy gets married and so the mom is like wait shoot this is my support person.

And so now, you as a parent have to realize that, A, as difficult of a position as you were in. If you're the mom in this position, or if you're the dad in this position, that wasn't your son's responsibility, that wasn't your daughter's responsibility in the first place, right?

That's what you have community for, you have friends, you have other peers. Or go to a marriage counselor fix your marriage. Instead of putting it on that child because that's honestly at the root of a lot of this in law stuff.

Behind the whole mother in law being like wicked and critical and so on is that because she became critical because she lost her son. And she had no other coping. She had no other relationships.

She had no other backup. Right and so now this other woman has taken my coping skill