AIBU to feel my son is unfairly comparing support?

Your son is 41. He needs to let all of that go. And no amount of money or self-flagellation will help you, OP.

I actually would not stop babysitting for your daughter.

I understand he is probably hurting. But is he going to punish his sister and you forever?

I would also stop lending(giving) him money every month.

Tell him that you would like to try family therapy to try and work through the issues.

He is being completely unreasonable. Do not keep giving into his demands. You have apologised countless times and can’t change the past. He is just trying to get what he can out of you and hurt you.

You’d have to be blind or severely lacking in emotional intelligence not to realise this isn’t about the shoes

What that man needs is therapy.
He isn't a child anymore, he's very much an adult. And I feel he's using his childhood to manipulate you financially.
And because you carry some guilt you're accepting it.
An open and frank conversation surely is needed.
As a grown man you'd expect him to be able to view his childhood from the point of view of an adult and not the confused child he was then.

Im not judging but this is probably true. Deep down he thinks because your DD always lived with you and he had to live with your Mum even after you completed your degree and had your DD, that you have never loved him as much. What happens to a child in their childhood has life long consequences. I'd have given them the £50 per child for shoes then he wouldn't have felt your daughter's DC had more. Can you try to spend more time with him to compensate for him not living with you as a DC when your DD did.

He’s hurt/hurting however that is not an excuse to financially abuse and blackmail you.

I thought this. Grandparents raising grandchildren while their parents work, oftentimes abroad, is very normal in a lot of countries.

OP did what she thought was best under the circumstances she was in. It is what it is, and she can’t change the past. It doesn’t sound like the son particularly wants to build bridges with his mother, but to destroy the relationship between his mother and his sister. He’s not looking to heal, but to inflict hurt.

I voted you are being unreasonable.by mistake.
Stop beating yourself up about your son, many people make mistakes, and you own yours.
Plus don't listen to those enjoying sticking the knife in in this thread
You can only go from here, you were young when you had him alone.Where was his father and why is he not being pillared for his lack of help at the time?
Just do the best you can tell yours on that is what you are doing.He needs to get on with his life and enjoy what he does have.

Clearly he's hurting from his childhood. However, this is also cultural. In my culture - kids being brought up by grandparents while parents go out to work especially if they have shift work or are single parents is pretty standard. I guess most often the grandmothers move in with the parents to help out. Nonetheless, the kids are effectively brought up by the grandparents. My parents were, as was my cousin and lots of friends. kids do not end up growing up resenting their parents as thats the norm.

Am not entirely sure how you would have managed your training and shift work while being a single parent of a small child. So it made total sense for the grandmother to help. Though maybe it would have been better had she moved in with you or you her.

So yes you both need therapy. He probably should understand the context you were in. He is now an adult. You didn't abandon him and tried to spend as much time as possible. He need to understand your circumstances and what it meant to be 21 and studying to be a nurse. Would it have been better if you just went on benefits and raised him like that? Obviously you were older and circumstances were different by the time your daughter came along. You didnt privilege her as much as life was different.

A lot of these posts are pure bullying and those posters should be ashamed.

Seems we’ve learned absolutely nothing about online bullying - some of which has caused death!

OP please ignore these judgmental virtue signallers- most of whom know nothing about either the difficulties you face or single parents in general.

I said it again but I’ll say it again - do not give him money - he is emotionally blackmailing you.

I think you’ve probably done a lot of damage to your son and he’s lashing out.

It’s understandable.

It’s not about the school shoes etc. it’s about abandoning him as a child while you moved on with new partner and child.

Her 41 year old son had told his mother he is earning £50,000 per year, so regardless of his background he has obviously managed to get a good job and should be able to support his own family without handouts from his mother or grandmother. I have adult children in their 40s with their own children so I know that mortgage costs, car loans, child care and holidays, clothes and food shops cost the earth, but other families have a lot less to live on today even with 2 parents working.I would be asking him where his money is being spent before subsidising him further.

Having read more of your posts, I think what’s happening is that he’s partly articulating what he wants but then pushing you away and making it hard for you to achieve that because it allows him to protect himself from what he sees as being let down again, and allows him to continue to express the anger he feels towards you about his childhood. He will push and push and push to test you.

“You can look after my children.”

”Great I can do that at the weekend.”

”No, you can’t come at weekends.”

He is deliberately making it hard for you to test you and ‘prove’ to himself that he is right in his assessment of your inadequate love for him and that he should keep the walls up rather than than risk being vulnerable.

Money is a safe thing to ask for and take from you because it’s material, not emotional.

I would say that you need to have some boundaries about the money because, on his salary and at his age, it’s far too much to expect. Nonetheless, I would think through very carefully how I communicated this and I would strongly agree with the previous poster’s suggestion about family therapy. His patterns of thought about you are lifelong, ingrained ones.

This will take a lot of work to change, and he will have to be on board with this for it to work. Put your money into therapy. I don’t know how you get him to agree, which I know will be the next question, but don’t give up.

I would try to change the narrative. When he brings up perceived inequalities in treatment about money, consistently redirect it to what might be beneath that, how he’s feeling, and reassuring him that you love him.

ETA: There’s a middle ground here. Don’t tolerate his bullying or unpleasant behaviours but do recognise their root and redirect the focus to that. Yes, he’s an adult, but in these situations he’s clearly reverting to the ‘child’ position in the parent/child dynamic to act out the feelings he has about his childhood.

I totally agree. Some really harsh comments. You cant rewrite history. Her son needs to grow a pair and stop blaming his mother.

You dont need to do anything other than stop funding him. He is 41 and has his own children. He sounds like a bully who is trying to guilt trip you. Do not engage in a discussion about this or try to explain or justify. If you do you are implying to him you did wrong and if you dont then that also implies you were in the wrong. So bottom line is you cant win and you will never get him to accept he is wrong.

It’s not to do with the current differences, perceived or real, except that he perceives them to be what they are because he feels his childhood was unequal to his sister’s in love from you. This is how he expresses it.

Exactly

it smacks of drugs or gambling

but the Op doesn’t seem too concerned about that

The financial situation is concerning. "Borrowing" (and not fully paying back) £4-500 every month, when he knows that you don't earn a huge amount (and claims to be on £50k himself), plus shouting down the phone at his grandma when she had no more money to give him? Plus his treatment of your daughter and her DC.

This is a middle-aged man treating the rest of his family very poorly, and I'm surprised how much this is being hand-waved away. Demanding hundreds of pounds every month may be a psychological proxy for needing to be prioritised, but it's not a fair one and I think he's been given too much grace about it by many posters.

I think your son needs to accept that you're deeply sorry for what happened in his childhood, but it was in the past and you can't change it.

He also needs to stop using you and your mother as a cash machine - maybe it's a gambling or other addiction, but he needs to address it rather than demand money as some sort of compensation for his childhood.

Family therapy could help you all to improve your relationships, and move on from the past - it can't be changed by you giving him money now, especially as he's comparing it against what you give his sister.

Do you think you've fully grasped what it was like for him? He lived with his Nan until 11, when he was finally allowed to move in with you, but only with your partner too. You didn't have him living with just you. Then you had another baby when you hadn't sorted things out with him.

I don't think this is going to be easy to fix and I think the money is just a symptom.

Whilst I feel for your son, this isn't the answer. You can't stop being a mother and grandmother to DD and Co to try and make it up to DS. It isn't her fault either.

You've offered to babysit. He said no. You offered weekends. He said no. He doesn't get to punish DD for being born when she was.

Have you ever say down and apologised for what happened in his early years, and explained why honestly not in a "it was so hard for me, I had to do this, I had to do that" but genuine ownership?

I would in future buy the shoes and transfer the extra over etc. to make it feel fair, but physically you can only do what he'll let you do.

So op shoukd out herself in massive debt to fix it? Presumably he abs his partner both work, it isn't ops responsibility to work a second job to pay for their lifestyle, regardless of the childhood trauma. That's a selerste issue which needs to be handled by not just throwing money at it

Post one

You were doing a nursing degree so couldn't cope and your mum helped

I have 2 children they are 41 and 26, I had my first child at 21, he was for the most part raised by my mother, I was completing my nursing degree then doing shift work.

Well no, you said degree, but it doesn't matter. I was responding to another poster saying that things were very different socially for unmarried mothers. My point was that they are not much different to now. In 1955, yes, but not 1985.

You can’t turn back the clock, he’s being petty hes squabbling over shoe costs.
it seems like he’s setting up obstacles to be mad at you, I’d suggest you offer to do some family counselling with him.
I wouldn’t cancel looking after your daughters kids.
he comes across bitter and blaming everyone else rather than taking some responsibility for himself at this point.
I do understand his hurt ( I grew up in an even more dysfunctional family so I get it) but I don’t think it will matter what you do as I think he’s just angry which is fine but you’ve apologised and time cannot be reversed.