DC and grandparents WWYD?

[4081q081812]

In brief, I have always had a difficult relationship with my mother and not sure how best to handle the dynamic between DG, ourselves and our daughter.

I find my mother toxic etc and ideally would go NC with her but DD loves going over to her grandparents and my dad is amazing with her. I've had periods of going NC with them in the past but since my daughter was born have tried to ensure they have a relationship and we currently live really close to them. In the past, I used to take her over a couple of times a week but my mother would basically grill/criticise me the whole time and now DH takes DD and stays there while my dad plays with DD and my mother grills/criticises him. After a couple of months of doing this - DH is fed up. And am trying to find a way of my daughter still have a relationship with her grandparents but without too much involvement from ourselves. DD is only 2.5 so we do need to take her there etc.

I know it's a weird one, and i dont want to deprive my kid but at the same time - I cant handle her just being nasty to us the whole time we're at theirs while my father plays with DD.

Any tips on how best to maintain relations between grandkids/grandparents while the parents cant stand the gradnparents.

Your mother is showing your dd that this is how to behave and whilst you all allow it you are showing her that you also find it ok.
When your dd grows up your mother will do the same to her and your dd may do the same to her children because it's all being normalised.

Stop going there, maybe go once in a blue moon when you can't avoid it but get out of the routine and only spend time with people who deserve you and your family on their lives not those who think it's their right no matter how cuntish they're being

I'd invite your dad to meet you every couple of months. Him being insular and bored is not your problem. I'd make it clear to him that he can invite you to places as well but that if your mum is rude to anyone you will leave.
While you are behaving exactly as your mum wants, she has no incentive to change her behaviour. Change hurts but it will be worth it.

"Twice a week is an extremely high level of contact for GPs who aren't helping with childcare"

What an odd thing to say!

I would happily have seen my parents twice a week.

Perhaps in this case it's odd as the visiting adults appear to just sit by whilst they are criticised!

However did your husband ever get sucked into that for a couple of months Op?

You've tried to maintain a relationship between your DParents, then your DH tried. Your DM's behaviour and your DF's enabling have continued to make your efforts pointless. Wanting your DD to have a relationship with her DGPs is one thing, but repeatedly pissing against the wind is another completely.

Twice a week for 2/3 hrs, my god OP, I don't visit people I like that often or for that length of time.

Try every other week for an hour, as soon as she starts say "Is that the time? Must dash" If that doesn't work try once per month and so on. If nothing works, bye bye Granny!

www.mindtools.com/pages/article/Assertiveness.htm

Agree with @IridecentPearl here. Short visit, once a week. Have somewhere important you need to be afterwards. An hour, max. And the moment she starts criticising you, you leave. She'll either get the message, or she won't. In my experience, they ramp up the nastiness when they realise they're losing the control but quite honestly if she does do that, it makes it simpler for you just to walk away.

I could have written this thread. I was NC for many years until my dd was born. I desperately wanted my DCs to have a relationship with my dad but my mum is just like yours. I grined and beard it because my dad was my dad and great with my DCs. Like yours though he wasn’t allowed to come to my house without beating the brunt of it from her. At first it was him backing his wife up which is what is expected of partners but somewhere along the line it became enabling her behaviour and very hard to go back on. It was only in the end when he was dying he realised he should never have got that far, by then it was too late. When he tried saying something to me about her being on at him all the time I told him it was his own doing, he nodded and said I know. I wasn’t being nasty it was just a fact. Towards the end I really struggled as I spent so much time with her and put up with so much but I did a lot if it to give my dad a break as she wouldn’t give him a moments peace. My older 2 remember him, though my 2nds memory is fading. I wouldn’t change putting up with it for them to be a part of his life or giving him some respite from her when I got her out of the house. We didn’t even make it to his first anniversary before I went NC again because I couldn’t handle her after he went. She has her favourite child at her beck and call so I havnt left her all alone, althoug( if I had I wouldn’t feel guilty as it’s been 100% her doing. My DCs would get upset initially and still occasionally talk about missing her too, obviously the toxicity hadn’t been turned on them yet, but it would have been and I was not going to allow that to happen. My DH it’s extremely patient and can tune most people out but even he couldn’t bare her and wanted our DCs away from her.

You need to decide what’s more important, putting up with her for your dads and DDs sake or going NC with them both if a relationship with your dad alone is not going to be possible.

I've not read others replies but I understand where you are coming from, my mum is toxic too and though things are better for us today, there are always indirect comments. I had to grow a backbone and stand up for myself, except this time I wasn't just doing it for me, I was also doing it for my DS because if my mum couldn't love me, her own child, who tried everything to make her happy but somehow always disappointed her, then how do I expect her to love my DS. In the case of my mum, she just wants someone who she can mould to her liking and does everything that she likes and wants. I understand that your DF is great with your DC but are you prepared for your DC to witness the constant negativity from your mum directed at you and your DH?

My parents are like this, very critical and they pry into everything. Oh you haven't got any money, you've a birthday card on the side, so why have you bought that, who's it for, how much was it. I mean they are that nosey. It's both of them, but my Dad is more keen to play luckily. My mum is not very interested in the kids, although likes the pics and to brag about her grandchildren.

I did at one point say there was no point them coming over if they didn't spend anytime with DS ( and I now have two DC) not seeing them in lockdown has actually been quite nice, but I do wish we had a normal relationship. I think best not to tell them anything, this is hard, but is my new technique as only seen them once now since things are unlocking. Makes for very boring strained conversation and quite tiring, but as Boris says it will be the new normal.

@4081q081812

And to answer the question as to why I would do that.

I guess because after years of her criticisms and putting me down and making me feel like it's all my fault - i just dont know whats up/whats down. I dont want to deprive DD of a relationship with her grandparents in case I am the evil one I guess.

You’d be evil by not protecting your daughter from her toxicity. Having no grandparents is better than having toxic grandparents. Your father is a grown man and part of this system.

People are always going to have an opinion, maybe formed by your mother, but why waste your life because of other people’s opinions? Protect your child!

So why dont you stand up to her?

This is your little baby

WTAF do you think is going to happen when you - a grown adult - can’t handle your dm, your dh can’t handle her and nobody will have the ability to stop the venom WHEN she starts chipping away at your dd.

Wake up.

A relationship with this woman won’t help your dd in the long run

Cut it now

She somehow sees it as her being left out and cant handle it. If she cant do it her way - no one can

Then there is your answer. Stop going round.

Also you are not depriving your child of anything apart from a nasty mouthed woman and her husband who hides in another room as an excuse of why he can’t stop it.

When you were NC with your mother before. If you didn’t have any contact with your father then you have to ask yourself why.

Is it in the toss up between a quiet life or seeing his daughter. You are not really as important to him as you think. Even now you don’t seem to have much of a relationship or interaction with him as he is playing with dd in another room.
Why doesn’t he play in the room you are in or you go and sit in the room and have a chat whilst he plays with your dd.
It sounds a very odd way of visiting your parents if you have to have your dd taken off you and sit with someone and be grilled about everything you say do and think and never get up and leave the conversation to go and talk to the other parent.

@4081q081812

To those who ask if what way is she toxic - the hardest thing for me is that she grills you about your life and in my case every thought and decision seems to be wrong and not how she thinks things need to be from my attitude to my job, what I eat, Dc eats, where I live, what I wear....basically everything. She has completely black and white thinking and needs me living out her principles/ideas to validate her. i.e. she needs me to implement all her advice etc about everything and she doesnt stop until i do. Nothing I say is ever right or correct.

By now we come from different cultures and generations- in her culture at the time everything was black and white and the mentaility of you are with us or against us was cultivated by the regime from birth. So I get where she comes from but cant live it and before I have DC just stopped seeing her. As an immigrant she is also lonely and I do see ways in which she needs me to validate her choices bit the problem is that we are too different and I struggle having to constantly predict what is the right thing to say.

She actually doesnt spend mucb time with DD....she's not that into kids. She just expects us to sit eieth her and have dissect us as my dad plays

Em so don’t, go in and play with your dad and daughter. If she’s like “ people are ignoring me” tell her she could play with your daughter too but if she chooses not to do so that’s on her. Goodness sake. Or when you get there suggest you all go for a walk together.

Been NC with my mother for about 10 years. One of the last things she said to me was that I had turned DS against her. but she did that all by herself...

thank you very much for everyone's feedback, comments and suggestions. will write them all out and think through them. my priority is obviously to DD so perhaps going LC or going occasionally is the way forward. My hope to somehow salvage my dad's boring retirement whilst ensuring that DD knows her gradnparents was probably always a little over-optimistic. i do feel sorry for him as he was always about his work, moved to this country in his 40s and doesnt really have any friends. so now that he's retired the only contact he has other than with my mother is our little family and with my sister (who accidently does only see them about once a month despite also living in the same city).

It's so hard with difficult parents - i literally cannot understand why my mother cant just be nice, chat about inconsequential things and just hang out with us. but no - she thinks chit chat is for stupid people, that everything we talk about must be important stuff, but that our way of life is just wrong. it's funny she also pretty much insists that we meet at their house - not sure if other grandparents do the same. i think it's because she feels in control and in charge if we are at theirs - so going to the park, our house or to a museum/zoo is basically out of the question. but my dad has never once stood up to her and realistically he does need her much more than he needs us and am ok with it. i mean she is the one living with him, not us.

i tried to stand up to her, and even just tried to agree that look we dont get on and should maybe try to better manage our relationship for the same of the rest of the family. her retort is always the same that it's not us that dont get on but that am difficult and she gets on with me fine etc etc so she has no interest in moderating her behaviour or what she says. it's always all my fault. it was much easier to go NC or LC with them before kids but now the guilt resurfaces a lot more

It’s not your responsibility to make your Dads retirement less boring you know.

Since he's retired - he really doesnt have anything to do and just loves having DD around

Well then he has plenty of time to come round to yours to be with his granddaughter, doesn't he?

I bet he won't, though. Which will show you exactly how 'precious' the relationship is to him; whilst you're second guessing and bending over backwards to facilitate your parents.

When your mum starts criticising your DD in time to come that'll be another post/thread.

You have your own family now. Your DD & DH should be your priority, not your parents' feelings and dynamic. They've had their time raising their children as a family, now you need to get on with the same.

@DeeCeeCherry

Oh i know he wont. They've already told us that they will only 'help'/travel to see DD if we are basically within a 20mins walk from them. Seeing as we cant afford to buy anywhere near where they live (houses cost 1.4mil near theirs) my mother basically told us we will just have to travel to see them if we choose to move away. She thinks we're nasty for taking their granddaughter away from them by trying to buy a place in a more affordable part of the city.

Toxic parents make toxic grandparents

My family are also toxic and had minimal contact with my dd as a child and now she's an adult she is barely in contact with them her choice which I support.

Why would you inflict this woman on your child and husband but avoid her yourself? That's unfair to say the least.

And don't minimise your fathers part in this he is just as responsible for not dealing with your mother.

Go nc, your child presumably has grandparents on dh side? Plus many kids manage to grow up without grandparents in their lives just fine.

Other friends and relatives can be wonderful friends to your child minus the toxicity.

She is only 2.5 now, I would say better to remove her from their influence now than when she's older when it'll be much harder.

Your fathers made his bed essentially that's not your responsibility

I have similar except the sexes are reversed, dads the most toxic one, mum the enabler although she makes her own mistakes and choices eg my sister is very much her favourite and she's always made that known - though will deny if directly confronted on the matter.

Families who needs them eg?

Good luck whatever you decide

i literally cannot understand why my mother cant just be nice, chat about inconsequential things and just hang out with us

You’re right, you can’t understand this, because this is how she is (not a very nice person at all) and because she’s totally different to you (and you ARE a ‘normal’ person, kind and considerate.

The proof of this is your guilt

Fear
Obligation
Guilt

Or FOG as it’s known by people in similar relationships

You can’t change her. She won’t ever see she’s wrong, she will always think she knows better and yes she WILL start on your dd, because she has on your dh and on you so she thinks that this is normal.

If you’re looking for permission from us to take your life back, have a say in your own life, to protect your husband, your marriage, your daughter your own little family, you have it. In spades.

We KNOW you’ll feel better for it. If you don’t change things, things won’t change

So pull back, say know, tell your dad he knows where to find you, and you’re happy to see him if he wants, but no more are you going to offer up sacrificial lambs for her to feel better about herself

Say no. :)

Op she's impossible and you have FOG and that's what you need to try and deal with in yourself.
My in laws the same, take dc there one in law pins you down whilst the other goes off with the dc.. And any outside their home visit will have lots of references to going to their home. I also think it's about total control.
Your dad is an adult, he shouldn't be wanting you to both to have suffer so much and dread these visits down to his own lack of planning.
He's an adult he can join groups, get a hobby... Speak some sense to your dm!!

Your dm couid be flexible... You've literally done all you can.
Life is too short to sacrifice at the altar of such people.

Mzhz good post