Parents tried to pick DC up from holiday club when I didn’t ask them to and I’m in the wrong!

[TheyTriedToTakeDC]

Background: Split with ExH in 2017 due to his violence and control. In the proceeding year he threatened me and threatened to kidnap DC (aged 2 at the time) and take them abroad so I never saw them again. He then repeated the threats in court for the CAO, his dad also got me in a headlock outside court and threatened to kill me so that (quote) “DC was in their rightful home with their father” because of this ExH, and Ex-PILs are banned from picking DC up from school or childcare.

ExH does have supervised contact, it’s supervised by another member of his family who’s never threatened me and I am happy to supervise but they do not have permission to take DC without me knowing either.

Every activity club, childcare or holiday club as well as DCs primary school I’ve shown the CAO to has always said “Unless we have verbal confirmation from you while your stood in front of us, we will not release DC to anyone but you”.

I love doing school or holiday club (HC) run so I don’t ask others to the pick-up. I like hearing about DCs day. Occasionally I’ve needed someone else to pick DC up so I will tell the club or ring school to let them know. In an emergency there is a process in place so school/holiday club can verify that it’s a genuine emergency situation and take DC. There is one other person I add to the pick-up list in case on an emergency, a cousin of mine whose also got DC at the same school.

Today DC was at HC while I worked. Parents rang at lunch to ask if they could pick DC up, I said no as I had booked to take DC out for dinner immediately after HC and I’d paid a bit more for them to stay until 4.15pm (normal pick up is 3.15pm) but if they wanted to pick up or have DC another day let me know and I’d arrange it. It’s a new holiday club for this year that parents haven’t been to or picked up from before.

They decided to go anyway and get DC.

I say get DC; they didn’t manage it. HCs safeguarding protocol kicked in, they moved DC and the other children into another room and rang me, when I said I was on my way to get DC and I didn’t give permission for DC to go with anyone else but me.

Of course, HC Lead (HCL) said this to my parents, who started shouting and saying it was ridiculous as they’re DCs grandparents and if they bought DC to them DC would confirm who they were. HCL apparently said if they could prove they have PR they’d let DC leave. This annoyed my stepdad and he apparently swore and called the HCL a t**t. HCL said if parents didn’t calm down the police would be called, and they didn’t so police where called.

I got there at same time as police, my stepdad especially is still wound up shouting and swearing. When I got there he said “See mums here now she’ll tell you who I am”.

It was all sorted out quite quickly, HCL explained to police and I showed the court order and I also had to prove who I was via ID (which is fine, I have no issue with this and carry my driving license for this purpose). DC was brought to me and we went out to eat. Police decided not to take it any further and HCL said it would be forgotten about despite them being abusive.

I’ve had a long text from my mum saying that it was a bit daft, I could of given permission over the phone for them to take DC and they could have had a lovely evening with DC and bought them home to me. They’ve said next time I need help with DC they’ll be more reluctant to help and this has tarnished their thinking of me as they now think I don’t trust them with DC.
I have replied to explain I couldn’t see through the phone to verify it was them. ExHs family have made threats as recently as Christmas to take DC and I couldn’t risk it. I’d rather be safe than sorry, they don’t mean DC any harm but if they’d been ExH or his family and the HCL had just let DC go they’d be the first ones to complain and be calling for jobs to be lost and compensation.

I got a one line reply of “Exactly how we thought it was”.

Why am I the bad guy for protecting my DC? AIBU to have not let DC go with them?

So .... give in to the socially award pressure tactic her parents used?

Absolutely.

The poor HCL having to put up with abusive scum like your step father.

Good to read you will be stepping back.

People like your step father add nothing to the lives of any child.

Yes! Instead of having the club fight her battle for her, as the child was not at risk.

This. You sound like a great mum.
They clearly have no idea what you’ve been through and how important these procedures are!!! Stick to your guns 💪 x

Hopefully not as they sound unstable (or the Step dad certainly does).

Well done OP, just be civil and concentrate on the most important thing - your DC. They dont have any control over your life and your DC’s life (and they especially shouldn’t be making it harder). We manage with holiday clubs without any help from grandparents and to be honest makes life easier that I know the clubs will always be open (no grandparents getting ill, needing to cancel etc).

Keep a distance and hope your siblings will support you in thinking they are crazy!

You're allowed to say twat on here @TheyTriedToTakeDC you know. Your stepdad was the twat in this situation. Must have been very stressful for you. Glad it got sorted today and don't blame you one bit for limiting contact.

They should have listened when you said NO.
I would be furious with them.

Give in like my chickenshit dad did? With all the damage that did to me and my sister? Nah, the OP took the better option.

You clearly have no comprehension of the power imbalance that persistents between parent and child into adulthood and how that is made 100x worse when the parents are narcs.

The child is at risk if the GPs are allowed to treat him/her like a library book to be borrowed without warning when they see fit, for reasons that I already spelled out.

Ridiculous. No loving grandparent would piss all over boundaries in such a manipulative vindictive way. OP did exactly the right thing. Grandparents who trash a no in this way don't deserve one bloody minute, they've no sense of actual responsibility and are acting put like petulant brats.

The OP is modelling to her child that boundaries matter and that someone trying to pull a fait accompli on you should not get away with it. The OP is modelling that it's OK to stand up to bullies, even if they are family, and it's OK use authority figures to help you with that. The OP is really fucking importantly modelling that it is OK to resist the social pressure to go along with someone else's boundary violations.

That will matter when the child faces bullies at school, sexual assailants, and all the other shitty humans who will try to abuse said child throughout his/her life.

I wrote on here a long time ago under a different name about a bloke feeling me up on public transport. Posters were telling me that, next time it happens, I should pull the emergency lever. I was like "stop an entire vehicle and piss off a whole load of passengers because one bloke can't keep his hands to himself? I'd be too embarrassed". That was social pressure not to rock the boat talking. Now, I'd pull that lever, because it's him that's the problem and reporting him does every woman on that vehicle a favour.

The only people who benefit from "don't make a scene" are abusers.

So you said no to your parents and they decided to ignore you....has there always been a control issue going on?

You are absolutely not unreasonable and its great that they used their safeguarding policy

But if the child's parent has said no I have made plans what right does the grandparents have to force their will on her by ignoring her and going to get the child?

Well the HCL played a blinder, thank heavens for people like her. I don't think people always realise how horrific it is to have a child abducted by the other parent and taken abroad. It happened to two children in my family. I can still hear me sitting on the stairs crying as I listened to my husband on the phone getting the message that they were gone and we'd never see them again.

In fact once they grew up we did eventually see them, these children we loved were strangers and it is so hard to look at them and see what we all lost. Worse for their mother and the children but the whole extended family suffered. Their grandparents died without ever seeing them again and nothing can put that right.

You are right to guard you child, long may he be safe.

Its simple, mum has safeguarding in place. Her parents wanted to take her child out of daycare, mum said no but grandparents ignored what she said and attempted to take child. The grandparents are wrong. The parent gets to decide.

Your stepdad and mother are assholes. And completely in the wrong.

You said NO when they asked if they could pick him up. No. And they went to do so anyway because what they wanted felt more important to what you had planned. Completely out of line.

YWNBU

This is what I came to say. Your parents have no boundaries.

Your parents have acted like total pricks here. They owe you a serious apology and until they do shouldnt be having your children. How dare they do this and your stepdad behave like a wild animal!

Interesting that a lot of these responses seem to be telling the Op that she should just fall in line with what other people say and want.

Most of those come from one poster.

@latetothefisting
Not to mention the use of very limited police resources - the incident will have been prioritised as a child safety issue which could have meant someone else's burglary etc didn't get attended, when in actual fact there wasn't any threat to your kids, and you were 99% sure of this (and could have easily made 100% sure) at the time.

Yes, there’s a threat to the kids. The OP knows it; she’s just so used to this abuse from her parents that she doubts her own knowledge.

Sequence of events: GP ask to take DC out for evening. OP says ‘no’, because a meal out is already planned - and since DC have been booked for a late stay at the holiday club, the kids know it’s planned.

GP turn up anyway. That’s emotional abuse; it’s encouraging the GC to doubt treats they’re promised will actually happen. If they told the DC Mum okayed this sudden change, that encourages them to not trust Mum. If the DC are told that the GP ‘just decided’ to take them out for the evening, that develops a belief that the GP can do anything they like - and Mum can’t or won’t stop them.

When things don’t go according to plan, Dear StepGP becomes so abusive the police have to be called. Sufficiently abusive that the police spent time with the kids afterwards and let them play in their patrol car (so the kids remember this as fun and not ‘we had to hide from scary shouting GP’.)

These GP are a child safety issue. Do you seriously think people who take their grandchildren when they’ve been refused permission are responsible adults? Do you think people who are so aggressive in the playground that the police have to be called are anything but a massive safeguarding red flag?

I suspect the only reason the HCL wasn’t on the phone to Social Services is that the OP was firmly telling them ‘Do not let them take the kids.’

Oh so you think OP should be a doormat? She should just give in an reward the SF for throwing such an an enormous toddler tantrum that the staff felt unsafe?

Unbelievable! Your sort of attitude is why it is so difficult for staff in frontline positions because people who behave badly, and threaten staff just get rewarded by getting what they want because people like you advocate giving in to adults throwing tantrums.

I’m sorry, how awful and what’s worse is that even though the kids were moved to another room, more than likely they would have heard shouting and probably got really worried.I bet your stepdad didn’t stop to consider that small children as well and probably some staff, would be scared. Have had to do this several occasions over 20 odd years of working in playclub/holiday club. People should can lose their temper like that shouldn’t have anything to do with your children and if I was your mum I’d be bending over backwards to apologise. I cannot fathom in any world where you’d think this behaviour was ok from grandparents

@latetothefisting
police don’t turn up for burglaries.The fact that stepdad became abusive when he was aware there were children close by and he still could remain calm says all you need to know.what if she hadn’t called police? What would be step dads next move? Forcing himself through a door and taking grand child and frightening the children even more.?

Thank you for your very clear articulation of the harm that narc GPs can cause to children.

that develops a belief that the GP can do anything they like - and Mum can’t or won’t stop them.

Replace Mum with Dad and you have summed up the impact of my GM's behaviour on me and my sister. The helplessness is terrifying. It teaches you not to trust any authority figure and teaches you that your parent never has your back against anyone, so when you are sexually assaulted at age eight, you say nothing to anyone. After all, they've already groped my fanny and discussed how my pubic hair felt, what's the point of making a scene? According to @RoadSignFool, it's my fault for not saying no a second time and I shouldn't expect my parents and teachers to fight for me, because this isn't Jeremy Kyle.

It took my GM dying for me to start building a trust relationship with my dad.

The OP has modelled that she keeps her promises, that she will stand up to her SF and M to keep those promises, that it's OK to stand up to family who are bullies (important when considering what ex-H is like), and that it's OK to use relevant authority figures to assist you with standing up to bullies. I'm astounded that @RoadSignFool still refuses to acknowledge this.