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Do we visit family with violent teen?
Several months ago our 14 year old nephew threatened to kill his 12 year old sister. He was sent to a mental hospital for 2 weeks of mental evaluations. He has been diagnosed with a slew of mental disorders and is on the edge. To keep his sister safe he has been living with his grandparents who have voiced concern for their safety. This is my husbands parents and he wants us to go visit them this August. We have two daughters 13 and 5. I have voiced concern to him that I don't want to put our girls in danger and that I don't want to go. He says he's been talking to his parents and they say our nephew is getting better, but I still don't want to take any chances. I don't want to hurt anyones feelings, but this could turn out badly if one of my daughters sets him off. I told him that we could stay at a hotel, but he said that would insult them. I don't know what to do.
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Maybe give some free advice about: Families?
Do not take children into this situation, at least not until you've had time and opportunity to assess this yourself.
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Which is more important your family's safety or him not insulting people. You're right tell him if he wants to see his parents to go right ahead but you will not allow your kids or yourself to go along. There's something wrong with his head if he's allowing young children to be around someone who threatened another child with death. Stick to your guns.
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Continue to push for the hotel, or a very short visit. Perhaps offer to divide the trip? Spend only the two or three nights in their home and the rest of the time as a half-family, half-vacation in a hotel.
It's understandable for you to be concerned, but backing out of a visit entirely is an extreme reaction and one that will likely cause legitimately hurt feelings.
It is not hard to explain to parents that you don't want to burden them, and would like to stay at a hotel. There are million of perfectly reasonable, true and polite excuses to offer.
If a hotel is absolutely not possible, I think keeping the visit short would make sense to keep your stress level low. Your parents-in-law do really deserve a degree of respect to determine if it safe for guests to stay over. Surely they wouldn't invite you if they were concerned for their grandchildren's safety?
Perhaps it's time for you and your husband to both speak to them, rather then you hearing things secondhand through him. Secondhand speech almost always focuses on the negative and fearful, rather than the confident and successful parts of life.
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