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!

Whatever it is, it is none of your concern - that is a parental decision, not your decision.

Would mean there was a strong existing relationship between the child and grandparents that a court has deemed would be detrimental to the child not to continue. also the child will be spoken too and again may have added to the case of wanting a relationship.

The child’s right not the grandparents.

Yes it's the child's right.

But it is the grandparents who would have brought the case to court.

I've heard about a few grandparents getting access recently. The courts must be taking ir more seriously.

I’ve not seen much in new orders coming up. Unless extreme cases as I said before such as grandparent raised / lived with child for years then parent tried to cut off, their child dies and the other parent cuts contact, a grandparent who’s had weekly contact such as childcare very regularly overnights etc suddenly being cut off normally again because of a new partner then the grandparents get access.

But a married couple still together joint child, grandparent sees child a handful of times a year since birth. Never been granted visitation in a court of law.

Do you work in the area?

Just to clarify.

I don’t work on the cases but I see the cases and outcomes. There is a high level of in the child’s best interests when your talking about forcing a legal parent to hand their child
over to someone who isn’t also a legal parent or legal guardian.

The problem you seem to have is you appear to think your opinions/concerns/your relationship is paramount to others. Yes they are your grandchildren and they are important to you but ultimately they are not your children. Doesn’t seem you welcomed her into your family first and reserved judgement till you got to know her, you made assumptions and voiced these. That was not your place. Yes he is your son but he is an adult, who made his own choices. I don’t think anyone would have been good enough for your son. I would be proud of your son if I were you, clearly they both choose to keep distance from such a toxic person and your son loves his wife and doesn’t want his children and wife being around such toxic. End of the day you are the grandparent but they are their children.

You come across as very self entitled with her going to visit her family and a bit of resentment how many times she takes her children to visit them. Yes be worried but it is not your place to tell them they should not be going. There children there choice. Seems like you don’t trust them and their judgement as parents and also trust in your son to choose who he falls in love with.

and actually his comment to his brother was spot on, because you start by wrongly judging

You need to sit down, shut up and stay in your own lane.

It can be hard to be a new immigrant to a country, even if the immigrant thinks they know the new place.

I was 40 when I moved from Vancouver (where I was born and raised and grew up watching the likes of Coronation Street, Goodies, Fawlty Towers, AbFab, Are You Being Served, Smack the Pony, etc on telly... hell, I even remember Button sodding Moon on t.v. back in the 70s) to London to marry my DH and I found parts of my new life to be confusing, in spite of how much I thought I 'knew' my new home town.

12 years on and there are still the odd times when I'm befuddled by life in the UK.

I can only imagine how your DiL fared when she first arrived, what with all of the 'sees' that she's seen in her young life and the language barrier... if a de facto British person (as a Commonwealth citizen, I had most of the same basic rights as my England born husband, except the right to a passport, when I first arrived... that took 4 years and a small fortune in visa/naturalisation fees to achieve) like me can be confused and overwhelmed then imagine being expected to cope with a new family in a foreign place and in a language you might not speak/understand very well.

As for the grandchildren, just be glad you're able to see them as often as you do. My own MiL sees my DD (8) 2-3 times per year (she lives in the North) while my own parents see her every few years, as it's not exactly easy (or economically viable) to be jetting off 9+ hours to the west coast of Canada each and every school holiday.

As much (or, as you'd probably judge - as little ) as my parents and my in-laws see my daughter, they're most certainly not excluded from her life. Husband and I send 'the grandparents' regular updates and photographs and video of what she's up to (she was camping with her cub scout troop recently, so we sent photos from that... we send copies of her report card from school [I'm ethnically Japanese, so it's an unspoken expectation from my parents that they get a copy of her academic progess] etc etc) and we chat with each other via FaceTime and WhatsApp.

You're going about things the wrong way, OP... it's good that you're worried about your DiL taking the kids to the Ukraine... I'd be worried too, but you've got to lose this attitude of self entitlement and 'Mum knows best' because it's not a good look... if you could be a little more welcoming and dial back the judmental aspect of how you see your DiL, you might find that your son and her are a little more amenable to visiting.

Just something to think about.