Excluded from grandchildren's life

[GrandmDEA]

I'm going to try and keep this short but I have 3 sons, one of them moved abroad many years ago for work, it was meant to be short term but he fell in love with a girl 10 years his junior, married her 9 months later and they had a child a year after that. A couple of years ago this same country that they were living in and she was from ended up in a war, they moved to the UK with their 2 children immediately. They live in London, fairly central, they pay way below market rate in rent as someone he works with owns it but it is a tiny 2 bed and they have 2 children, one who has just turned 5 and the other just turned 3.
We have always had issues with them, we weren't invited to the wedding, in fact we didn't know they were married until after the wedding happened! We had never met her. She clearly has no respect for our family but we try to keep the peace.
This year we have seen our grandchildren 2 times, we only live an hour away but they don't let us visit, if we show up uninvited on the weekend, they are always busy. If we ask to go up to see them it is always "no the house is too small for guests". My sons is meant to bring them to see us once a month but most times he ends up coming alone with some excuse. We haven't seen his wife since Christmas!
Our son was meant to be bringing them to see us tomorrow, we have spent £100s on birthday gifts for them as they both had birthdays at the very end of August. Today he has messaged saying sorry we can't come the girls will be too tired after a week at school/nursery, we will see you during half term! This happens every time.
We have had some big fall outs over decisions they make such as his wife continues to take their tiny children to a war torn country to visit her family, putting them through 24 hours of travel to get there and back! My son never goes with her and I don't think he actually agrees with her but lets her do it anyway. It stresses me out when she takes them to there, I worry for their safety so I have voiced that I don't agree with it. We obviously also got off on the wrong foot with the lack of wedding invite to anyone in our family. We only mention things that concern us out of care but it is always taken as an insult.

AIBU to be really hurt they keep excluding us? The grandchildren have spent several weeks this year with their maternal family and they all live in a war torn country, but barely 2 half days with us who live much closer!

@GrandmDEA I'm sorry you don't see them as much as you'd like and can understand that you are disappointed they didn't come at the weekend. However they probably are very tired 4 weeks into term.

In your shoes I would be doing my best to go to London and plan trips out with them. A birthday trip to the science museum? Natural history museum? London Transport Museum is great at that age. You may find they (the GC) engage with you much more this way and also they will have lovely memories with you.

Are the other GC who live near you a similar age? If so can you invite two sets of GC over at the same time so the cousins can play with each other?

I suspect the other side of this story would be very entertaining

For me that would be a judgment call between myself and DH based on their levels of understanding and ability to weigh up the pros and cons of a situation to arrive at a decision that is in their own best interests. I agree with OP here - at 3 and 5 years old they would probably choose to have chocolate cake for breakfast every day, doesn’t mean you let them.

You would also ask your children what they want, I'm sure.

Grandparents can apply to court to get access to grandchildren

It would be extremely unusual for grandparents to succeed in an application for a contact order though against the wishes of both parents and where there is no evidence of there being a significant and ongoing relationship with the children. And yes, you would take the child’s views into account if they were considered to be Gillick Competent but at 3 and 5 that test wouldn’t even be applied.

Yeah we were talking abour a potential scenario about older children.

Not 3 and 5 year olds.

If grandparents ask for contact, they may not be successful,

but the children will be asked in this process what they want to do. It's not just the parents decision.

The views of older children would be given more weight yes, although their view would be a factor to consider and wouldn’t be determinative. This is all a bit hypothetical though because a) it would all depend on how harmful the grandparents were considered to be, and 2) OP’s grandchildren are 3 and 5!

I just think it's very sad.

Because the children in this case are seeing their grandparents on the mother's side all the time.

But they are not seeing their other set of grandparents.

In these scenarios it is usually the mother and the in laws relationship that breaks down, and then she stops the inlaws seeing the grandkids

it is usually the grandparents on the fathers side that suffer and miss out.

It's just sad, as I have seen grandparents suffer in real life.

I think if the mother falls out with her in laws, she can choose to not see them again, but she shouldn't punish her kids. They have their own relationship with their grandparents

How are the other grandparents seeing them all the time? They live in a different country 😅

I didn't mean "all the time" literally.

Maybe "more time" would be more accurate to say.

OP has said that the grandchildren saw their maternal grandparents for a couple of weeks this year so far,

But that she has only seen them for two days, this whole year.

Sometimes though when you have difficult parents or in-laws, it's protecting your kids, not punishing them. If the OP in this case is negative about their mum, or even possibly prejudiced or racist about their mother's country of origin, which is also her grandkids' heritage, that's not nice for kids to be around. And OP in this case seems to feel she is justified in her beliefs, and has not apologised for expressing such prejudice to her son about her age and nationality. Building bridges goes both ways.

My MIL is difficult in many ways. DH has chosen a low contact relationship with her, and had before we met. I've always got the blame for her not having more of a relationship with our DC, but in fact I did encourage him to try a bit more with her in the first few years and especially when we had DS1. But over the years I've seen how she is, and have respected DH's preference for LC. It annoys me how the wife always gets the blame when there's a rift with the in-laws. It's rare IMO for all the blame for a rupture to be on only one set of shoulders.

I would assume that’s because the other grandparents probably didn’t suggest their daughter was a gold-digger and the son was a chump who the wife must only want for his money and citizenship or continue to criticize their parenting and care for the children’s safety over the intervening years.

The mother who is bringing the children to a country that has an ongoing war,

isn't really caring for their safety, is she

Families are still living there or are they all horrible parents/grandparents/aunts and uncles.

I’m going to guess she knows her home land much better than you or me. Her family are living there and funnily enough clearly still alive to be visited.

We just get what’s shown in the press.

Where as her mother in law who was doubting and questing her behind her back to her now husband chooses not to visit his parents in the U.K. speaks volumes really doesn’t it to how the son thinks of his own parents compared to the love the dil clearly has for her family.

Then neither is the father. He has gone with his wife with their children to see her family some of the times they visit and doesn’t have a problem with his wife visiting alone with the children it seems. His wife going alone may need his permission to travel there. I know I had to have a consent letter just in case when travelling without DH and even more so since DCs and I have different passports.
.

My DH and I are from different countries and he has a lovely relationship with his parents. He has lived away from them since before we met. He talks to them several times a week and even when we lived in the States, he would fly back for Christmas. When we were engaged, and I brought up eloping, he said as long as his parents and siblings were there, he was happy to do so. His parents also know he has his own mind, has always done his own thing so can’t be forced or controlled to do anything he doesn’t want to.

He also isn’t afraid to tell them bluntly to drop an issue or say something that makes them do so. He has shut his mum down on certain topics involving our children that he didn’t tell me until years later because he didn’t see it as important to tell me and/or it was something we as a couple discussed and agreed on that it didn’t matter what she said or what her opinion was and she never brought it up with me herself.

Her son said why he didn’t invite her to his wedding and from what she has written about his wife, I can’t say I blame him. Instead of blaming his wife, OP should be looking at her own behaviour and how it is making her son not want to bring his children around her or have her come by. I doubt her feelings about his wife are well hidden as she says and thinks.

This sort of judgmental, poorly informed comment is likely why OP’s son and DIL have rightly distanced their family from OP.

All parents make decisions about acceptable risks for their children. When you strap your child into a car to take them to the store or visit a relative across town you are risking their life. Anyone who says you just don’t care about their safety for doing so is an ass. Ukraine is a large country - the size of France - and only a fraction of it is an active war zone; tens of millions of people are living there, going about their lives.

Poorly informed?

I volunteered with Ukranian refugees for a long time. They were in telephone contact with people back home.

I'm well aware of how bad the situation is there.

"Ukraine is a large country".

I know. I visited Ukraine, before the current war.

I'm sure that most people are aware that it is a large country.

Soooo. It's awful if the grandmother in the UK can't see her grandchilden, no matter just how unpleasant she is to her daughter in law, but the grandmother in Ukraine shouldn't see her grandchildren?

Yes there's a war on but there are an awful lot of people who live perfectly well in Kyiv, with adjustments. Further East is a different matter, but West is less dangerous. You can get run over crossing the road, more likely.

You can't have it both ways!

I assume your justification of the OP's position comes from your own experience (perhaps wrongly, but it does seem that way). But honestly, no one can really expect a mother to want her kids to have much to do with a grandmother who thinks she's a gold digger, is highly judgemental and turns up unexpectedly and uninvited after stepping on her DiL's toes heavily. The fact the father in this also keeps his distance (not inviting her to the wedding has to have had something to do with this!) indicates it's not just the mother. Maybe the father also wants the children to grow up with the experience of loving grandparents rather than judgemental and heavily tactless ones!

You said "only a fraction of it is a war zone"

The point is , that the fraction is always moving.

No one ever attacks a country and says, "we'll only attack this little part of it for years", do they?

War fronts and war zones move as the war progresses.

I was talking to a Ukranian refugee.

She told me that she was living in one town in Ukraine. Missiles atracks were aimed at that town

Then she moved to another town in Ukraine, to be safe, but then Russia also aimed missile attacks at that town.

She told me that she then came to the UK to "save herself from the missiles".

I never said the grandmother in UKraine shouldn't see her grandchildren.

I said it's bad to bring the grandchildren to a country with an active war.

There are a lot of travel warnings out there advising people not to travel to Ukraine.

If you had a grandchild, and someone told you that you could never see that grandchild again.

How would you feel?

This question is irrelevant to OP’s situation. You’re being emotionally manipulative.

OP has not been told she can never see her grandchildren again. He son and DIL have continued to distance their nuclear family from OP in response to persistent judgement and boundary crossing that OP apparently refuses to take accountability for and change. They have not closed the door permanently or gone no contact. If she values seeing her grandchildren, she should apologize for her behavior and change it moving forward.

I haven’t RTFT, just your first post, but it reminded me of my own MIL.

Sadly, when you have adult children, you have to keep your opinions to yourself, especially when they’re negative or likely to cause offence. You have to accept their family are now their immediate unit and their needs come first before anyone else. You can advise of course when asked, but can’t just put out opinions that disapprove as you could come off wrong. You don’t have to agree with everything they do of course, but your job is to support and be there.

Unannounced visits are also not something I’d enjoy and someone judging your life and seeming to expect visits would make me on edge. Nursery/school does take it out of lots of children and if you’re working Monday to Friday, it’s absolutely relentless at times trying to fit in life errands, household tasks and spending quality time with your children yourself, without trying to fit in regular visits with someone who doesn’t make you feel happy or supported.

Our story - we had our first DC and first grandchild in Covid. MIL wanted to come immediately, then also turned up unannounced on someone else’s visit to meet DC so she was getting 2 visits before some family had even had 1. She was asked politely not to hang over DC when they were sleeping in their basket, with her phone inches from their face which resulted in her dramatically storming out of the house.

I had PND as DH was working PC shifts at the time and she’d relentlessly demand his shift pattern to schedule in video calls or turn up unannounced to stand at the window once lockdown got called. As DH wouldn’t agree to a consistent schedule, she stopped talking to us and hasn’t seen first DC since they were a baby. They have never met second DC, despite being in the same room at a family wedding, choosing to ignore us all instead and then tell other family members not to speak to us either.
They’re also not currently speaking to another of their sons, DH’s older brother, as he said he didn’t fancy going on a holiday with her.

Have you been the daughter in law in real life?

You sound like you're letting your own life - affect your posting.

By the way, She hasn't seen her dil since last Christmas, 8 months ago.

That is no contact

She has seen her grandchildren For two days, in an eight month period.

That is extremely low contact.