Has anyone’s mum ever actually stolen their baby?

[Cabbagewhites]

Seen a few threads recently (and lots over the years!) where women fear their mums / MIL want to take over the parenting of their child.
On a thread recently a PP described the overbearing MIL as ‘sinister’.

Just got me wondering, how much of a genuine threat is this? Worst case scenario- how far does it ever actually go?

Has anyone ever been in or heard of a family where grandma did in fact actually succeed in taking over the role of mother, becoming primary care giver in child’s eyes?

(I mean in situations where parents are actively parenting and haven’t actually asked or encouraged GP to step in, and there’s no kinship fostering or anything like that.)

I don’t have children, I’m just curious!

It’s more likely to be parents stealing children of daughters, not pils, as daughters are more likely to overlook severe mh problems in their families. This is why women shouldn’t rush into giving their family the ‘keys’ in terms of childcare.

@GeorgiaGirl52. God bless you for giving up your freedom for the good of your grandchild. I'm glad your daughter is well now 😍

Christ, having spent 20 years bringing up my kids it's beyond me why anyone would willingly go through all that again.

Vulnerable teen mums aside, I don’t understand how anyone can just have their baby stolen. If my Mum had taken one of mine when they were babies, I would simply have picked them up and walked out.

Not in the same league as some of these at all, but exMIL decided my DS should go to a particular private school, and of course exH went along with it. ExMIL never said a word to me about it.

Very dominant and quite aggressively proprietorial.
This is a good description of exMIL. Thank you.

I lived with my maternal grandmother to attend the good primary school near her for almost a year after she applied a fair amount of pressure to my mum. Allegedly, grandma threatened to report my mum to social services because I was homeschooled at the time. I’m unsure exactly what was said.

To people who ask how this can happen legally, there are 2 main routes:

1. via the father's PRR- if they have 50/50 or EOW or whatever court ordered or voluntary residence/ contact agreement the Dad can legally hand over the DC to the GPs for all of that contact if he so chooses. I've seen 'dads' go to court for 'contact' when it's actually the GPs paying for the lawyers so they can have the DGCs in that time. Dad's aren't required to actually see or care for their DC's during their contact.

2. residence by default- sometimes the Mum will be going through a temp crisis eg fleeing domestic abuse/ in a hostel, moving house, having a temp job abroad, studying, being sectioned, rehab, prison, staying with a sick relative/ providing care, etc so they agree to the DC staying with Gran for a few weeks.
   Then when the mum returns they fall out and GPs go to court and say the DC is settled and moving them would be traumatic. Courts are very reluctant to move DC's from where they are- even if this was only a temp plan. If dad sides with Gran, mum has no chance.

So women should be mindful of this when leaving a relationship- never agree to DC's temp staying with anyone else as you may never get them back.

And don't co register the birth.

@13579db

My DM used to take my newborn out to do 'messages' in the prism and not tell me when she'd be back. Didn't answer her phone. Told me that she'd wished she never had kids. I could go on. It's a very real thing. A very real negative female to female assassin style behaviour. Jealousy versus ageing and how they've had their chance to birth and parent. But maybe they wish to do it differently witb via their grandchildren. Charming. So so intense and bizarre but definitely a thing. Beware.

Yes. My childminder tried this with mine. I was stuck with her due to my circumstances for a bit. She really thought that i was stupid and that she'd get away with it.

One of my DDs friends stays with paternal grand parents and has had sleep overs from a few weeks old. Her Dad is out of the picture and her Mum has a stepson and a toddler with her new DH. They live in a two bedroom flat while grandparents have a house with big garden and DDs friend has a room and a play room there and goes to activities and has play dates with the grandparents.
If there's a falling out I can see it going through court or it may happen naturally. It's about 50/50 at the moment.

My MIL and her mother basically stole my DH's cousin. This was over sixty years ago and all dead now including the cousin, who died tragically young. My MIL used to give her version of events but DH's aunt had a more realistic version.
She was concerned that history would repeat itself with MIL and SIL and my children. I think being forewarned helped a lot as they would try to demand time alone with my children. It never happened.

Where it's mothers that trick their daughters into letting their DGC stay then live with them my stealth this will be off the back of a lifetime of emotional abuse/enmeshment where the daughter is unable to go against their mother's wishes.

That sort if dynamic is very difficult for the daughter to even recognise is wrong - it's a codependent abusive one.

Seriously? Your Ofsted registered childminder?

Nope but my unhinged narc mother was secretly (in her mind but very obviously to me) VERY jealous of me when I was pregnant. She did some really nasty stuff and the baby stealing threats come I think from the same place. I would advice anyone dealing with this kind of jealousy to keep the contact with jealous mother or MiL to an absolute minimum if at all.

Reading through this has just reminded me.

The wife of someone I was at school with left her marriage while she was pregnant with her second child, she already had a daughter. Once she had the baby she moved to find a better life for her and her DD and the baby stayed with her parents until she was settled.

At this point the parents told her that her son was settled with them and that it would be wrong to uproot him to go and live with her, and so he stayed with them and is still there. I think he’s about 11 or 12 now.

There was a story on Reddit once, when the MIL let herself in to her son/DILs house during the night and took their newborn baby, so they could "rest".

One of my friends was raised by her grandparents as her parents split up when she was very young and then her father died. Her mother kept her sister and her grandparents (father's side) took her and stopped her mum from any contact.

The grandparents are now long dead and her mum and sister live in the next suburb but she's not seen them in 40 years and has no interest in meeting them.

I dont think it's necessary a case of actually stealing the baby. More often it's the grandma trying to get in between baby and mums bond. Being that person that the baby wants ect it does happen. My mum tried to do similar with my dd. Wanted to be the person my dd wanted the most. It's horrible and overbearing. If you don't nip it in the bud it can definitely spiral and you can be pushed out.

@Worldwide2

I dont think it's necessary a case of actually stealing the baby. More often it's the grandma trying to get in between baby and mums bond. Being that person that the baby wants ect it does happen. My mum tried to do similar with my dd. Wanted to be the person my dd wanted the most. It's horrible and overbearing. If you don't nip it in the bud it can definitely spiral and you can be pushed out.

Yeah but does anyone understand why they would think theyd get away with it or want that in the first place?

@coodawoodashooda

Oh god knows why, I think a previous poster said jealousy ect it's not the norm but it is strange how so many women do this to their own daughters ect

A single mum I know fell out with her parents and went reduced / no contact. They took her to court and have some sort of custody agreement whereby their grandson (her child) has to see them on specified days. I was shocked when she told me.

My own mum had a really weird reaction with our first child.

When baby would pull a face at my mum or be unsettled, (just through being tired or normal unpredictable baby behaviour!) she would really huff and go off in an awful mood shouting at me that the baby ‘doesn’t want me IT WANTS YOU!!!’. Waving arms around, the lot.
I’d be stood there feeling very uncomfortable and there would be an atmosphere. This happened very often.

I look back at it now and it’s like a rejection to their own ego as a female. It’s warped. Well, what baby wouldn’t want their own mother? It really shattered my idea of how I thought our relationship would blossom which really felt quite heavy, unpredictable and sinister at times.

I think something like this is why the awful twisting behaviour of GP is aimed at a babies and children at young age as that’s when they can ‘get their claws in’ without the child being fully aware of the manipulation.

[quote Worldwide2]@coodawoodashooda

Oh god knows why, I think a previous poster said jealousy ect it's not the norm but it is strange how so many women do this to their own daughters ect[/quote]
I suppose. The childminder i used had a huge family, including 8 grandchildren. I thought that meant she wouldnt have any inclination for the weird psychotic relationship she tried to gain with my kids.

No. I do remember my own MIL telling me ‘when I developed PND she’d take my son, and my husband in and take on the role of mother’

In a weird way I think she was trying to be kind - like tell me she’d be there to support etc, but it just came across weird and overbearing

I knew a family where the grandparents were raising the child and they used to actively tell people they had custody because their DS and DIL had been sexually abusing it! I often wondered if that had have actually been the case whether the authorities would have removed the child completely from the family dynamic? It was never clear if there had been a formal arrangement or if they had just taken over.

The GPs were both batshit crazy, were religious nuts and had a history of making wild accusations against third parties - particularly in the organisation I worked in that had dealings with them. They formally complained that the boss was gay with the assumption that if they were, they shouldn’t be working with children! I was accused by them of making an SEN child clean up its own mess! A complete lie - I had asked it to help me with some tidying up. The child wasn’t even SEN although that didn’t stop them working hard everywhere to get a diagnosis. They wanted a peg to hang all their issues on plus any benefits going. They used to dress the child in the most inappropriate clothing too which drew a lot of unwelcome attention.

When the child finally left, we had a file nearly 15cm thick of unfounded complaints and the related paperwork. The amount of time that was put into responding to their allegations could have been so better spent in other more beneficial areas. After seeking legal advice, we were told that these sort of people are vexatious complainants and get their kicks from this sort of behaviour. It made me wonder how true the allegations against the DS and DIL actually were and how sick someone has to be to fabricate facts like that in order to take over control of their GC.

I found out years later the GC cut them out of its life completely and was probably a lot healthier for it too.

@JellyNo15

Seriously? Your Ofsted registered childminder?

Yes.