Sorry to hear about this. It stinks, it really does. But from my own past experience, we preferred to stay home and have a "just us" holiday time, than to be constantly on tenterhooks biting our nails, wondering what our wayward kids would do next.
We found the relatives that were the worst, were the childless ones. Then when they finally had kids, they got to understand a bit better.
Or those relatives who DO have kids, but whose kids are "perfect" - sometimes it didn't matter what we did, they would find fault. My sis-in-law was a classic - when they finally had kids, they had very strict rules such as "you must not go outside with bare feet" when in our family, we all go barefoot around home, we'll slip on a pair of thongs (flip-flops) in summer or ugg boots in winter, to go any further afield. So when our kids were around doing what our kids do, it led to insubordination in sis-in-law's kids which she blamed on us.
One incident I remember, which should have warned me of easy child 2/difficult child 2's literal-mindedness but didn't - we'd stayed overnight at grandma's, easy child 2/difficult child 2 and older niece were snuggled up in bed under the bedclothes at 10 am, easy child 2/difficult child 2 reading a book to her younger cousin. It looked cute - but sis-in-law was appalled that the girls were in bed under the bedclothes while dressed. "Get out of that bed!" she told them. "Make that bed and stay out of it. You can read a book, but not in bed."
So the girls made the bed, then got back ON the bed to continue reading to one another. At home our kids often used their bedrooms as a place to read.
Sis-in-law was even more furious and took us to task for our disobedient, insolent daughter who she fely was being deliberately manipulative. "I told them to get out of the bedroom!" she fumed.
"Actually, you didn't," I replied. You told them to get out of the bed. easy child 2/difficult child 2 is literal-minded, it's typical of her age group. She is used to reading on her bed at home, it's a comfort thing. They obeyed you immediately."
No they didn't!" she fumed. "By getting back onto the bed, they are continuing to disobey, it's pure manipulation to try to twist my words to make it seem OK. and if you make excuses for this behaviour, it's no wonder she's like this!"
For easy child 2/difficult child 2, I knew she would follow rules but only if she had it made clear to her, what the rules were. I made it clear to her - "Your aunty doesn't want the girls in the bedrooms unless they're in there for bedtime or for a nap. If you want to sit together to read, use the living room. Sit nicely on the couch, then when you are finished leave the couch tidy as you found it, plump up the cushions when you're done."
It has to be spelled out.
When your kids are around other family members who are not usually in their sphere of influence, it can often cause problems. Some kids (boys especially, I don't know why) seem to be trouble magnets. My best friend's son was one such - a nice boy but always wanting to explore and work out how things worked and fitted together, usually by destroying them. When difficult child 3 was born friend brought her two kids in to see us in the hospital. Her teenage son got bored and went to look out from the balcony from my hospital room. "How do you get to that flat area down there?" he asked. I told him it was the roof of a wing several floors below, it was only accessed for maintenance to service the air conditioning. I probably didn't exactly emphasise that it was strictly out of bounds.
Next thing, about fifteen minutes later a security guard walks in with the boy. "We found him walking around down on the roof over there. He had gone downstairs until he found the floor that was on that level, walked through some private laboratories then he climbed over the balcony rail."
"I just wanted to see what was there, it looked interesting," he tried to explain.
His mother was horrified. "I can't take you anywhere!" she complained.
The security guard asked them to leave because the boy clearly hadn't got the message that it's not OK to go exploring, especially in a hospital. He was bored and would have slipped away again. He wasn't trying to cause trouble, he just wanted to explore, to see what was there or where this place led to. From his point of view, people just didn't trust him, he really intended no harm.
When that lad turned 21, instead of baby photos showing him passing each childhood milestone, his mother put up X-rays. "This is the broken arm, this is the fractured wrist, this is the leg with pins in from the motorbike accident, this is the fractured skull from swinging on a rope over the river then letting go at the wrong time..."
He's now a easy child, he got married two weeks after easy child 2/difficult child 2. Mind you, he has to part his hair carefully so the scar from the skull fracture doesn't show.
Marg