Ask Evie: I Want My Kids To Know Their Grandparents, But My Toxic Father-In-Law Despises Me. What Should I Do?

READER’S QUESTION: "Hi! I have what is perhaps an unusual issue in my marriage. My father-in-law is extremely toxic. He is rude, brash, and openly cruel towards me. Just last week he mocked me for having a bedtime for our 3-year-old son (which didn’t conform to the dinner plans he and my mother-in-law had set for us), and then spoke badly of me to his other son in front of me so that I would hear. A couple years ago, a big blow up fight happened where he told me I’m an obnoxious know-it-all and that he’s never liked me (my husband and I have been together since we were teenagers, so I’m hardly new around the scene). It was really, really ugly, and my son and I did not see or speak to him for over a year until he reluctantly apologized and said he “wants to be a family again.”