FIL lost it with the kids.. Perspective needed

[mousemole]

My head's in a muddle with this one and I'm bloomin angry.
Yesterday we were at the in laws for a family get together. Nice day but FIL gets stressed by our boys aged 7,5 and 2 going within 5 metres a glass/ tea cup/ ornament. He's quite a shouty man and has very limited patience. Anyway, we were about to leave when the two youngest started bickering over a toy. I got up to go and pack our stuff up, left husband sat with the boys, FIL and other family members. I came back into the room 2 minutes later to find FIL dragging the youngest 2 boys by their wrists across the room. They were hysterical and clearly in pain. Apparently he had flipped at their bickering and told them to get out the room. He is a big, strong 6ft 4 man, they are 2 and 4. I shouted 'what the hell is going on ?' at FIL and DH ( who did nothing but that's another story), grabbed the boys and went to the car with them where it took 5 mins to calm them down from their hysteria.
I agree it's their house and their rules but I am livid that he manhandled the kids. AIBU ?

[mousemole]

Hissy I do know what you mean.. That he will turn the email back on to us and probably take it as an opportunity to berate us over lots of things.
BUT, a phone call won't work.. He will put the phone down. They are 1.5hrs away in car so can't pop round and frankly don't want to. So I think it has to be letter or email.

[flippinada]

mousemole he sounds vile. I loathe people who rule by fear and intimidation, good on you for standing up to him.

[mousemole]

Tribunals for families.. I love that idea !

[GoblinGranny]

You are unlikely to get an apology, I think the only way to make him understand is to set rules and stick with them, whatever blustering and name-calling and emotional blackmail he tries on you and your husband.
So if you say that your visits will be x hours long, and that if he yells or loses his temper you and the children will simply leave, then do exactly that.
Make sure the children understand that it is their grandfather who can't cope and if they've tried their best, then there is no blame involved and they've done nothing wrong when it's time to leave.

[Hissy]

Call him. Start the conversation calmly.

I'm calling about what happened yesterday. I wanted to hear from you as to what you did to the children and why. I'm here to listen and try to understand.

If he talks to you, saying anything about anything, reply calmly, 'I see'.

Then state that discipline is the role of the parents and that if he has any issues that he speak to you or your DH, but that he may NOT directly intervene and certainly NEVER lay a hand on them.


If he hangs up, then tbh, you can write to the MIL and tell her that you will not be allowing him access to your DC, due to his treatment of them and inability to apologise for doing so.

and then leave it at that.

[Hissy]

I'd also refuse to go up there again, keep it all on your own home turf. He can't shout if the ornament is yours, the teacup is yours now can he?

One of the things we are all conscious of is going home we revert to the child form. This is clearly what has happened to your DH, and a very frightened little boy he sounds to have been indeed.

By having them at your home, Your H may feel stronger. You can talk to him about this and see if it would help you all cope.

take the power back

[mousemole]

I'm definitely not going there again. At least if they are here they can leave when they've had enough. Probably yesterday we should have left half an hour earlier but there were family visiting from Australia who we are close too and were enjoying catching up with them.
Maybe I'll write the email and just save it in drafts for a few days and reflect. I'm away next weekend and they were due to visit for the bank holiday to help out DH. I pointed out that we could just cancel that arrangement with no explanation and that actions speak louder than words.

[Notquitegrownup]

Have you considered waiting for him to call you, MM. Other people seem to be running after him trying to sort his issues out. He is probably on the defensive, waiting for your calls/accusations. Why not wait for him to call, and then when/if he does, explain that you are all still very upset about what happened and why? If he is defensive or angry, then you say thanks for the call, but clearly being near small children is too stressful for you and leave it at that. It is only if/when he realises that he is missing out on family life that he might think to amend his behaviour. Talking it through with someone whom he knows stands up to him, is possibly only going to make him angrier.

[IloveJudgeJudy]

We had the same situation as some others here - my father. We did have a family conflab about it, but upshot was, DM would not go places without him for a long time, so DC were never left alone with him. Gradually visits to their house got less and less, he became less physically able and she would visit without him.

I wouldn't e-mail him; if he's anything like my father was, it will make no difference; in fact it will inflame the situation. Your DH is the one, if any, to say something. I wouldn't make a big deal out of it unless you are prepared to live with the fallout. it may be much bigger than you have anticipated and all sorts of family may be dragged into it. You have no way of knowing that in advance.

If you don't want to see him and MIL any more, then make a big fuss. If you still want communication with the rest of the family, then just manoeuvre situations so that the DC are never, ever left alone with him, ever. You say he has something with the charity he volunteers with. That shows that he will never change (much like my father).

[Maxium12]

Mousemole, was your MIL there, did she have anything to say? Maybe she's giving him hell or are they all scared of him?

[pigletpower]

Freddie-your posts are such BS.'Freedom fighter or terrorist' only a matter of words.Dragging small children across the room by their wrists is abusive and can cause dislocation and sprains.If you need to remove a two year old you pick them up and do not drag.That is why a nursery worker would lose their job if they did it.Why should a parent/family be allowed to do it? Your attitude disgusts me.

[blacklightning]

From past experience with my bullying fil, I think you need to talk to your dh about how you will address the possible implications of discussing your fils behaviour with him.
My fil was a horrible bully and dh was also intimidated due to a lifetime of being controlled by his dad's aggression. We had a few instances where he clearly crossed the line like yours has. He was verbally aggressive and constantly undermined my dh. He wouldnt hand our newborn ds back once when I asked him to when he was also holding a hot drink right over him. It was clear that he saw a pecking order in the family and he was at the top of it, and he did things like this to show who was in charge. We eventually tried to talk to pils about how we didn't want our children to be around this (more tactfully than that as we still really didn't want to fall out), however he took it really badly and wouldn't acknowledge he had done anything that doesn't go on in all families (his words!) Things escalated by letter and we were basically left in a situation where we had to accept his behaviour or keep our children away. As upset and emotional as it all was, we decided to consider if it was in the children's best interests to maintain a relationship with fil or not. We decided it wasn't in their best interests as fil seemed to want to exert the same aggressive control over our family as he had his own. We did not actually have to say this to him as when he realised we would not be bullied into accepting his behaviour, he lost interest in maintaining a relationship with us and we didn't hear from him again. mil was also bullied but sided with him in the end.
I really hope it doesn't come to that for you and your fil can be more reasonable than mine was.

[mousemole]

Maxim she was in the kitchen. She is lovely but scared of him too.

[gotthemoononastick]

Freddie!!!!many many GPs and great uncles and aunts loving you right now.Sensible Mum.Hate this not allowing GP's to see children...who are the real losers in this?Spite!!!!

[IneedAsockamnesty]

Why bother getting into it with him.

You are the parents of the child concerned not him, it does not matter why he did it or what he thinks about it.

Why piss arse about just " if you ever touch my children like that again I will xyz and you will never see them again"

[DontmindifIdo]

Mousemole - if you want to send an e-mail, send one cancelling them helping out when you are away. Quite frankly, your FIL will not be a help, you will spend your whole time worrying about them and your DH I'm sure would cope better on his own.

I'd say given the history with your DH, and that you think your FIL will just hang up on you, it might be worth just talking to MIL to start with, say that you are very upset with FIL's behaviour towards the DCs, so you don't think it's good for him to be round them for a while, she shouldn't take it personally as you are happy for hte DCs to see her. She can feed that message back to FIL, or will just hide this from him and be quietly upset (if they are the sort of family where she's covered for his bad behaviour and made excuses for it, it's more likely she'll do this).

[IneedAsockamnesty]

Gotthemoon,

What a lot of bollocks. If someone behaves in a abusive way towards your children and you do not stop it or stop contact and anything bad does happen like a none accidental injury its not just the person who does it that is liable its the ineffective parent for not protecting their child when they should have done.

But by all means feel free to carry on thinking dragging your gc's violently across the room because you have rights (even though you actually don't) is ok just because you are related to them.

[gotthemoononastick]

Sock,how rude you are.....abuse is a word so over used that it means nothing any more.

[freddiemisagreatshag]

Look. You left the kids with a man you say is abusive. You say your DH is incapable of parenting effectively when he is around. Why do that?

I defy any parent not ever to have taken a child firmly by the wrist and removed them from a situation. Hands are no good in that situation, because they can wriggle out of your grip.

Parenting is a job. You're supposed to be pro-active, you're supposed to actively do something not just sit there and let the kids do as they please.

If you don't like him, don't see him again. That's up to you.

But you need to look at your own actions too - maybe if you had stepped in sooner then he wouldn't have "exploded"

I'd have loved to have seen what you lot would have made of me when mine were younger.

I was not and never would be abusive. But I do expect a standard of behaviour. And my kids know it.

If you didn't want him to take charge of the situation, then your DH should have done something sooner or you should.

And I'm going to leave the thread. Partly because I'm not contributing, since my views don't chime with the majority and I'm being accused of abusing my kids, and secondly because I have somewhere else to be this afternoon.

[gotthemoononastick]

Great post Freddie!!!

[freddiemisagreatshag]

And one last thing.

Parents of small children become inured to their behaviour. What they think is cute and endearing, other people who aren't their parents can find intensely irritating.

Maybe what you view as low level bickering, your FIL views as unacceptable, especially in front of visiting family from Australia (which is usually a Very Big Deal in any family I've ever known)

[DontmindifIdo]

Gotthemoon - the real losers in this are the grandparents - children do not benefit at all from being exposed to bullies, even if they are relations. They are really damaged by seeing parents stand by and let them be hurt or treated badly by older relatives because they are the more senior members of the family.

Children are best kept away from bullying, controlling grandparents, where visits to their house are stressful, will they be told off for something minor, will Grandad flip and hurt them?

It's the grandparents who will miss out. The grandparents who will lose their relationship with their own adult DCs as well.

[loofet]

He dragged them out of the room which to some on here is acceptable, however what was he going to do to them if you hadn't have intervened? Hit them? Then would that be enough to make people see what he did was wrong?

Personally I think you shouldn't have spent the whole day there for starters. A two and four year old are too young to stay in an unfamiliar enviornment for so long, especially one where they're restricted constantly on what they can and can't do. A couple of hours would be far better imo. Secondly I would have removed one of the children from the situation- so as someone else suggested, taken the 4yo out to help pack things up.

I wouldn't blame the DH, he clearly was frozen into submission because of how his F treat him as a child. I mean, he clearly is a bully with absolutely no patience, very short fused- imagine being a child permanently around that So I feel sympathy for DH more than anything.

If I were you I wouldn't see fil again... 4yo will probably remember that event now and no doubt will be frightened of fil anyway and i'm sure you don't want your DC around someone they are scared of. Also with his short fuse it doesn't sound like he's safe around such young children anyway, one has to have a certain degree of patience to handle young kids! So who's to say he won't flip again, who's to say it won't be worse next time?

Also it surely can't be too pleasant for your DH to be around him anyway.. And it can't be a nice experience to be sat on edge constantly fretting over what the children are going near/how they're acting etc. So I think unless fil changes the habits of a lifetime and maybe gets some anger management the only answer really is to cut him off..

[Goldmandra]

Maybe what you view as low level bickering, your FIL views as unacceptable, especially in front of visiting family from Australia

In that case he should have raised it with their father or perhaps found a way to distract them. There is no acceptable excuse for his physical aggression.

Dragging children by their wrists is not reasonable. If you need to remove a child and they are not cooperating you calmly lift them in a safe manner and remove them that way. You can easily injure wrists and elbows by doing what the OP's FIL did.

It sounds like this man is used to throwing his weight around without being challenged.

If he were my FIL I wouldn't stop him seeing the children. I would expect him to listen to why what he did was inappropriate, ineffective and dangerous. I would also expect him to agree never to use fear or physical aggression to control his grandchildren again.

Like other bullies he may well back down once he realises that someone will stand up to him.

[BlueberryHill]

Love some posters saying that the kids / parents were at fault, the kids should have behaved perfectly all day and managed to control themselves and that the FIL only snapped due to the bickering at the end of the day. Who is the adult here and should have been in control of their emotions? Yes the FIL. It sounds as though the children were well behaved most of the day and were only bickering at the end of the day, hardly unruly and annoying everyone all day.

If you snap so that you are red in the face, you have lost it and are may be unable to control the physical force applied. Dragging two children across the floor would take a lot of strength and effort. I have marched my children holding onto the wrist, but they were walking, not being dragged.

I may have reacted like the OP, if I know that my children have had enough and are about to cry, get cross etc. I get them out of there straight away, unfortunately I need to get my stuff together first. FWIW, if my children were getting to that situation, my PIL / parents distract the children.

No idea of what to do with FIL, think about it first. However at this stage I wouldn't leave them with your DH and children for the bank holiday weekend especially as your DH froze. Is this the first time it has happened?