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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

to feel desperately sad about the state of my relationship with son.

51 replies

reawed · 07/12/2013 20:31

Have namechanged for this.
DD when she was 22 wrote me a letter stating how much I was a bad mother and how she hated me and her father (we’re separated and he has been absent for around 12 years). I have tried unsuccessfully to talk to her about this (I’ve phoned her, texted, emailed and tried to go round and see her) but she has ignored me and relayed through others that she wishes to have no further contact with me and I have unwillingly accepted this whilst making it clear she is my daughter and that I will always love her no matter what.
DS (14) and DD (25) have always been close and he has often stayed over at her house and I was initially happy with the situation but in the last few months or so he has been going to stay at her house every weekend and even during the week to the stage where he probably spends more nights at hers than he does here. He has become very closed and secretive around me and has not shown me any sort of care or affection for months. She has also started involving herself in his life to the extent where when he had a problem at school he told her and she went in to see the teacher and told her she was his guardian as I was severely ill(the first I heard of it was when the teacher phoned me to tell that they had moved to resolve the situation). He has also decided he is spending the Xmas week with her and that I am going to be a sad lonely bitch who no-one cares about (I cry when I think about it).
I tried to talk to him about it in recent times saying that I’m glad he is really close to his sister but that she cannot do things such as that and that I don’t like the way he mostly ignores me or the things he does say when he speaks to me but he becomes more verbally abusive and says that she looks after him and knows him far better than I do and that he wishes I would die so that he could go and live with her all the time.

OP posts:
DoYouLikeMyBaubles · 07/12/2013 20:34

What did you do to your DD to make her hate you?

Your DS isn't going to turn his back on you just because he loves his sister, there must be something more to this

formerbabe · 07/12/2013 20:34

Can you tell us a bit more about why your dd says you were a bad mother to give us a clearer picture? What is her justification for saying that?

thenamestheyareachanging · 07/12/2013 20:38

Why do your cbhildren feel this bitterness towards you? I'm not blaming you, just wonder if there's anything you can do to put things right? Have you considered family therapy? I'm not sure how you'd access this, but GP might be able to direct you?

BlingBang · 07/12/2013 20:39

That must be quite heartbreaking for you, I would be distraught. Hopefully he will pass out this phase and you will be close again. Have no idea of the backstory here though and what happened that it all went so wrong - all sounds very sad.

bunchoffives · 07/12/2013 20:40

Sounds a very hard situation to deal with. :(

Do you work?

Original poster
reawed · 07/12/2013 20:41

I've never been able to speak to her about it but from what I can gather she feels that the home life was boring and that she grew up feeling inadequate because she never got many opportunties to follow her interests. The truth is that I was single on a low income with very little help from anyone and I certainly struggled to keep everything ticking along.

OP posts:
bunchoffives · 07/12/2013 20:43

Surely there must be more to it than that? What else was in the letter?

CaptainSweatPants · 07/12/2013 20:44

:(
You poor thing
Have you got other family you can slender Xmas with?
I'd be tempted to tell your son to go & live with her if he won't stop verbally abusing you :(
Could she afford to provide for him though? What happens when she wants to spend all her time with a partner, he'll be dropped soon enough :(

BlingBang · 07/12/2013 20:46

It does sound very extreme reactions.

DoYouLikeMyBaubles · 07/12/2013 20:46

reawed she hates you because of that? Wow, that's extremely harsh.

I was ready to say she could be poisoning your sons mind, but she can hardly be doing that by going on about petty things like you've just stated.

Original poster
reawed · 07/12/2013 20:46

Her letter stated that she hated me for denying her the childhood she wanted and that I was a cancerous effect on her life that she was removing.

OP posts:
DavidHarewoodsFloozy · 07/12/2013 20:52

Wow, OP, If dd has stopped contact for reasons you,ve said, she.s quite an immature madam, isn,t she?

There must be more (even if you're unwilling to. disclose here).
Your dd stopped contact because you struggled on a low income?.Hmm

NearTheWindmill · 07/12/2013 20:55

The thing is it isn't that difficult to work and earn and provide when a child is 14. Your dd probably thinks she is doing for your ds what you couldn't do for her. It's very different from parenting a small child who needs 24/7 care and when there is no support. She probably has a bit more money than you had then and is manipulating the situation. It sounds as though she possibly needs help in the form of counselling to help reconcile her expectations with reality.

CoffeeTea103 · 07/12/2013 20:56

There must be more to this. People just don't wake up at 22 and decide to hate their mother. It's a buildup of a lot of things. Choosing to cut your mother out of your life is not a light decision, there is more.

Original poster
reawed · 07/12/2013 20:58

DavisHarewoods- I know its not about money, I admit that I'm not the best mother and that I struggled (and still do) as a mother due to being very cautious and underconfident individual. I know that this might have meant she did not have the same experiences as other

OP posts:
squeakytoy · 07/12/2013 20:59

There has to be more to it. I know plenty of people who grew up with a single parent, were in almost complete poverty, yet didnt disown their parent or blame them for the situation that the family was in.

NearTheWindmill · 07/12/2013 21:01

Can we please try to remember that the OP is sad and probably quite vulnerable please.

RoseRedder · 07/12/2013 21:01

This sounds really sad and heartbreaking

On first read my initial instinct was 'well you must be horrible and treating your children badly' but thinking about it logicaly I'm betting that's not the case at all (or your daughter would have you reported to social services and get full custody of your son)

Did anything change when your daughter was 22? Was this when she left home? Finished uni? Met someone/broke up with someone?

I have an older sister and I preferred to go and stay with her to when I was, but she was not estranged from my parents. I wanted to go because she wasn't my parents who I thought were trying to control me and dictate to me would I could or could not do

However looking back, being a parent myself, I now recognise that they were doing their job. I'm sure I told them I wished they were dead etc but that's teenage hormones for you.

It sounds like your daughter is getting your son on side, and at 15 he will be easily swayed.

I'm not sure where you go from here though but hoping someone else here does.

Mia4 · 07/12/2013 21:05

It sounds very odd OP. Do you think she is a nasty piece of work and manipulating him or would her story be very different from your own? Your son sounds like a charmer calling you a lonely old...

I don't know what to suggest I'm sorry to say, for myself the angry part of me would want to say 'fine fuck you then, enjoy each others company' and then laugh when she chucked him out and her came crawling back. But that would only work if what you have said is all there is to the story and they're both entitled little shits (which is how they sound taking your reasoning) who actually don't have a clue.

I have to agree with others though, it does sound like there should be more but without your DDs opinion we can only give opinions or advice based on yours.

fatlazymummy · 07/12/2013 21:08

Sorry, but your daughter sounds quite manipulative, and she is alienating your son from you.
Don't allow your self to be manipulated like this. Do not allow either of them to see how hurt you are - that is what your daughter wants. Let your son know that you love him, and then let him see for himself what his sister is doing. He will eventually. Sometimes you have to let them go.
And don't allow her to take over parental authority for him at school - that really isn't her business.
This happened a few years ago between my 2 sisters (though they were older) and the younger one did soon catch on.

ocelot41 · 07/12/2013 21:11

Can I take a wild guess just in case it rings any bells? ASD wasn't really diagnosed much until relatively recently - if an adult is undiagnosed, hasn't had access to any care or support, and hasn't had the opportunity to develop coping mechanisms that work for other people as well as themselves, then they can have a hell of a difficult time parenting because they find it hard to empathise.

That was the situation in my family and I very nearly 'divorced' one of my parents who has ASD - I didn't know that's what it was until they were finally diagnosed many years later and we now have a good relationship. But it really was as bad as you are describing for years, and s/he had no clue why what s/he regarded as normal interactions would have me running from the room in tears. So just a wild guess here, is there anyone with ASD in your family? Have you ever found it difficult to understand why people other than your DC react in the ways that they do? If it is even a faint possibility - please ring the helpline for the National Autistic Society. They are brilliant!

But like I say - it is a completely wild guess in the dark, based only on my own experience and not a thorough understanding of your situation. It just raises questions for me when you say that your DC have had such an intense reaction and you really don't seem to understand how things have got so bad between you.

hoppingmad · 07/12/2013 21:11

I think you need to ascertain from your dd exactly what the problem is. People don't normally refer to their parents as having a cancerous effect simply because times were a bit hard.
What she feels may be very different to how you feel about her childhood but that doesn't mean her feelings aren't valid.
I think if you focused on repairing your relationship with your dd then your ds would probably follow suit

DavidHarewoodsFloozy · 07/12/2013 21:14

rea, it sounds really difficult, how can you stop a 14 yr old seeing who they want?
My heart goes out to you- is there no family who could try talking to dd?
22 is young, but tbh she does sound very immature. I,m not when we realise our parents are humans, with all the faults of anyone else.
It,s awful of her to poison your son( if that is indeed whats going on, remember 14 is it's own set of ups and downs).Are you sure nothing else is going on with your son? Girl/boyfriend trouble? Hard time at school?.

shoom · 07/12/2013 21:17

The boy is 14. He has the choice of life at home, which probably involves reasonable bedtime and all the rest. His 22 year old sister probably sends very exciting in comparison. No-one can tell us what to do! We eat pizza and leave the box in the floor! Play videogames all night!

OP I'm sorry you've had a hard time in real life and from some replies here. There's a current thread about surviving Christmas with family tension. The OP there has a 20yo DD who would probably say similar things Abbott her mum as yours has.

Your daughter has her own views and seems happy with them. Your son spends some time with you still, so it's not lost. All I can think to advise is to talk to him and ask further questions e.g. "what do you think about that? Do you remember that yourself? What else could I / she / you have done?" Etc.

Oblomov · 07/12/2013 21:25

I think your dd sounds disturbed.
My brother, who is lovely, has a totally different memory of our childhood, compared to me and my other brother. Just saying.

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