to not be able to let this go.

[IHeartKingThistle]

I've posted about this before, sorry.

16 months ago my 7 year old had an accident at my parents house. They were doing some renovations and their bannisters had been removed. It was an accident, we were being careful, there's no blame to dole out. She came off the stairs and suffered a skull fracture. It was awful. My parents were devastated. I was very careful not to make them feel bad, and to be honest I played down how awful it was in hospital and how long it took her to recover.

She's fine now. She's 9, she has no lasting effects. We were very very lucky.

But there are still no bannisters on the stairs. They have continued to do up the house, but show no signs of doing the stairs. I haven't left the DC there without me since it happened (they used to go for weekends fairly often). I have told them that the DC are still nervous about the stairs (we have a younger one too who witnessed the accident). Every time I bring it up I get long emotional messages about how bad they feel and how nothing is more important than the DCs. But I don't think they are going to do the stairs. I don't want to talk about it any more, I just want them to make it safe. If I talk to my siblings about it they tell me not to criticise my parents because they feel bad enough about the accident as it is. I feel like I'm going mad sometimes. I have now stopped bringing it up altogether, but we don't visit nearly as much because I struggle to be in the house. They never mention this, ever.

But they adore the DC. Adore them. They want to be with them. They are amazing grandparents. And I know stairs are expensive, but, but, AIBU to feel like this? I just can't get my head round why they won't do it. It's getting to the point where I need to just accept it, but I can't.

"They haven't been to stay without me, I mean."

No, but they have still been there.

I just wouldn't have been back whilst there were no bannisters.

Diddl it's not that easy in practice. They live nearly 2 hours away, I have grandparents there too, we've had a family funeral this year. It's the best compromise I could reach at the time and I never thought it would go on this long.

YANBU at all.
You need to be more blunt with them though, however lovely you say they are.
Tell them you are worried about them. Tell them that while you are aware it was an accident that none of your foresaw, now it's happened, you worry about every single person that uses them - including them, your parents.
You aren't blaming them but you aren't coming back until the house is safe, and it seems a shame that they don't want their grandchildren to stay / see them very often, and that is hurting you.

Gosh that's absolutely horrendous and I'm glad your DD is fully recovered now, physically speaking.
However, the accident will take a long time for her to recover from mentally and I am baffled as to why her "loving" grandparents are hindering her recovery by refusing to fix the bannisters. Because their failure to fix them with be affecting her deeply too.
As other posters have already said, if you do not address this issue now and put your daughters welfare first, then you should expect your relationship with your own daughter to be damaged.

I hope that you get this issue sorted soon

I have another question for you OP. How will you feel if they suddenly repair the bannister or if, as some pp have suggested, you repair it yourself? Many suggestions have been made about the bannister, including getting a cheap (but safe) one and pay for it yourself. If it was really just the bannister, you could hire a builder and send him in to fix the bannister, right? In fact, you could have done that immediately even before your dd came out of hospital.

Fixing a bannister is not rocket science. In normal families, that bannister would have been fixed within 24/48 hours of your dd falling and breaking her skull - how, who would have paid, etc, would be irrelevant - it would get done.

There's a deeper problem going on here.

For people who hate verbal confrontation, they certainly like to provoke with their actions, don't they?

It's a valid question but they have unusual stairs and they want very modern unusual bannisters but the quotes they have had have been too high.

I know, I know.

YADNBU if you can't afford to immediately replace a bannister surely you don't take it down?

So glad your DD is ok.

I know, I know.

Yes, you do know. Probably you already knew, deep down, before you started this thread. Sometimes you just need to spell it out for yourself and hear others validate what you instinctively knew. When you were in the hospital with your dd, watching over her with a serious injury that could have killed her, you already knew then that there's something very wrong with the fact that you're trying to play down her injuries and pretend to your mother that it wasn't so bad.

Really hope you find a way out of this for your dd's sake.

But who takes the bloody bannisters down withouit having it in place to get them replaced?

Could you get any of your siblings - presumably not your Dsis - to advocate for you? It might come better from them, as it would seem less accusatory (from your parents' perspective - obviously you are not actually accusing anyone).

Not a chance. She'd listen to DH though. Loves him, wants him to think well of her.

They took them down to paint them, realised they needed replacing then decided the stairs looked good without. That was before the accident. I still think they like the stairs without.

The bit that jumped out at me was this (being talked about on MN) would be her worst nightmare

What, worse than a seriously injured granddaughter?

Perhaps this is the angle to make her understand/take this seriously, if she thinks you are talking to your siblings about the problem? I know that your Dsis isn't on board but perhaps that would be the tack I would try.

Sorry x-post

I find your Op quite disturbing in a strange sort of way.

Their GD was seriously injured and yet they still seem to like the stairs 'open'.

Yanbu

I'd actually find it quite insulting. Even temporary type of banisters could be fitted until they can press on with their project.

Is there a reason, then, that your DH hasn't talked to them about it?

That might at least get the fricking bannisters back up - which would be my priority as it is a) dangerous for everyone not to have them and b) frightening and unkind to your DD to expect her to deal with the stairs without them.

Where's your Dad in all this?

Are there no building regulations that would require a staircase to be safe? You couldn't sell the house like that surely.
And you could claim on the insurance of someone whose house was unsafe for personal injuries.

One more thought, to show that this really isn't just about the bannister. If your dd had never suffered that injury, you wouldn't just be naturally a mum that worries obsessively about missing bannisters and can't get over it because you simply just can't get over the thought of a bannister not being there on a staircase. It's not like you just have a weird bannister thing for no reason, is it.

The main thing going on here is that your dd suffered an injury at her gran's house and her gran went into complete denial about it.

I would still be worried about that, even if they fix the fecking bannister.

Your sister is like me, I don't tend to worry unduly about risks and I wouldn't worry about a random missing bannister. BUT I most certainly would not send my dd to a house with a missing bannister where my own niece had fallen and suffered a serious injury!!! I would be thinking, blimey, nearly lost my niece there!

Personally I prefer the direct approach. But if you really can't, then how about blaming yourself?

"Mum, I've been trying to work out how I can say this to you. I've tried to be subtle, mentioning dd's nightmares, but the time has come to be honest. Because I know it would kill you to think that I was suffering and there was something you could do to stop it.

"So I'm just going to say it. Obviously I'm devastated by having to say this. Mum, I cannot come to your house anymore. Every time I look at your stairs all I see is dd falling.

"This isn't about blame, this is about me. This is about me hurting. I can't come to your home while that gap is still there, because it's all I can focus on. I know that's my issue, but it's the only solution I've got at the moment. I'm sure once the banisters are mended, and some time has passed, then it'll fade. But right now I can't do it. And if I'm feeling like this, I can't imagine how dd is feeling. I can't put her through that.

"It would mean a lot to me if you could do your practical part in helping me, by fixing the banisters as soon as you can. Hopefully once they're in, and dd and I can't see the gap anymore, we can start to heal. But until then we'd love for you to visit us here, and when we come up we'll stay in a B&B and have days out instead."

Something like that?

Op I think you need to address this with them, they are ignoring your distress and completely minimising what happened to your dd. Because they like the stairs open.
They have no intention of buying a banister.
Your mum hates confrontation so text her something along the lines of

It's been 18 months since dd accident, and as you've might have noticed we have not visited
as much as before. I've been thinking Dd and I would like to visit more but feel unable to until a banister is put in place. Do you know when this will be?

Iheart, I have just read this whole thread with my heart in my mouth. I am so sorry that you and your DD had to go through this.

I was reminded of my ex-in-law's house. They removed their banister for aesthetic reasons, to make their hallway seem bigger. There is a handrail on the wall side, but the other side is completely open. When my DS was about three, he fell on the open side. Fortunately, he wasn't as badly hurt as your poor DD, but he had a bad bump with mild concussion; and it was scary for us all. Somehow, it became my fault for not teaching him how to go down stairs "properly". (We had a stair in our own house, which he had to use a lot because the living space was upstairs and the bedrooms downstairs; and he had no issues with that.)

I also fell down the gap, when pregnant with DD1 and carrying a box. I'm blind in one eye, and the gap was on my blind side. Again, it was only bruises, baby was ok, and, of course, it was all my fault for being blind in one eye/clumsy and M-i-l was upset about the damage to the contents of the box to the point that OH and I immediately went out to try and replace the damaged goods.

F-i-l fell down the gap when he was terminally ill. Of course, it was all the fault of the shit cancer and nothing to do with the safety of the stair; but he needed a week in hospital.

25 years after the "remodelling" of the stair to remove the banister, it is still the same.

Ex-m-i-l broke her hip (not on the stair) 18 months ago. When she was discharged from hospital, SS made an assessment of her house. She was told the stair wasn't suitable. It's not possible because of the layout to put in a stairlift. She has a downstairs loo and it would be possible to convert that to have a shower but she didn't want visitors going into a shower room, rather than a toilet. But she told the relevant people that she would stay downstairs and just strip-wash. However, without the agreement of the medics/social worker, she started going upstairs. Guess what? Last summer, she fell and broke her pelvis. But she still won't have the stair changed. Because it's her house and it is important that it stays the way she wants it to look. And, of course, it is more important for her to be right.

18 months?! It's been 18 months since the accident? How did I miss that?

They are being breathtakingly selfish IMO - your DD is going to be an adult and will have moved out before a new banister is fitted at her grandparents!

Personally, I love a contemporary, v minimalist/modernist type of house, but it's just not very child friendly, is it?
You cannot make them put banisters up or otherwise change their behaviour, but you can change your response to it: don't stay at theirs, don't visit. There must be a Travellodge/Premier Inn type place you could all stay at if you are visiting. You really owe it to your DD to protect her from further harm IMO.

I would also suggest you look at why you have found this thread hard to read? Every post has been supportive of your position and to me it sounds like, as others here have said, that you have bought in to their narrative of events and somehow feel guilty about wanting to protect your child. Don't apologise for not visiting, the phrase really needs to be 'we are unable to visit until the banister is in place' - I think asking for a time frame is a v good idea as well.

I think you should ask your DH to say that you and he are BOTH upset by the lack of bannisters. Clearly your DM minimises your feelings, but it will be harder for her to do so to someone outside the immediate family circle.

FuckYou, you are far nicer than I would ever be able to be!

Pacific this I'd what I need - a real world WTAF reaction. Because it's just insane.