Would you blame the parent with multiple children NC?

[TheBushySquirrel]

Situation: Women with multiple children. Divorced from their Dad almost 20 years ago. Two of her children are NC, both of them at different times due to different reasons and nothing to do with each other as siblings are not close. One of these is her only daughter.

Both still remain close to their Dad. Her other are children still in contact but not particularly close to her and don’t go to visit often. Woman isn’t elderly but frail and in ill health, quite often in and out of hospital- has been going on for years.

In this situation would you think that she is to blame for multiple children being NC or would you think the children are being too harsh particularly given to her ill health?

I'm not assuming it, you are, by saying that no child (the younger generation in the relationship) would ever go no contact with a parent without good reason. I'm doing the opposite and saying of course they might, because there are unreasonable people in every generation, and it could just as easily be the adult child at fault as the parent.
I agree, acting like a parent no longer exists should be a huge deal. But in reality, 'going no contact' is thrown about by some people pretty liberally these days, and provides a handy reason not to bother with a parent who had become an inconvenience.
Not always of course, but it happens. Each case of family estrangement will be different. Sometimes it's the parents fault, sometimes the adult child's.
Two children does suggest a fault with the parent, but on the other hand, there are cases where one family member or the other parent poisons the well against a person.

It's up to your partner to give/not give her support. You don't need to get involved. I think that your own mother is giving you good advice.

Agree with your friends and family that you should be wary. If multiple children have cut her off, there'll be a good reason for that. People don't go NC with their mums for fun.

All my siblings are NC/LC with our parents. Our parents are apparently baffled by this. I am not.

But she’s asking me to be involved. My partner said it’s up to me.

He isn’t here to give the support.

You have kindly of answered your own question. The children seem nice as does the DIL. Of course she insists she did nothing wrong but she clearly had an issue with her DIL and fortunately her DS was prepared to take her crap. Maybe if she accepted there were issues they could be resolved but whilst she is in the mindset that she has done nothing and it's om her kids there is no making up to be done. Even if she did accept there were issues those NC children don't have to accept her back as part of their lives.

I'd be wary of getting involved at her request tbh. Toxic people have a particular skill at drawing others in- especially newcomers.

My mum is NC with my older half sister. Her parents and my sister's father were neglectful and abusive, and my mum as such is basically a half-person in many ways.

When I was little, on the way to school, my mum would recount physical abuse from her mum and her first husband. To a 5yo - who was then periodically expected to visit the grandmother! My mum had two more of us with my lovely dad, but my older siblings were two traumatised teens who probably needed all the focus, not two toddlers. My sister in particular went off the rails.

Is my mum at fault for having been abused? Of course not. I'd say she should have known better than to have more children. And when I was a teenager, she found ANOTHER massive life grievance to become obsessed with, so repeated the effect with us younger ones.

So my sister is better off out of it, and the rest of us know where we stand.

(And I would never NEVER blend a family like that myself.)

Be wary Op.

There is a similar situation in DH’s family. Disabled woman - no contact with her only child. I was asked to help with something and quickly discovered what an awful bully and bigot she actually is. But she paints herself as the victim.

There is no doubt that her disability has shrunk her world and she has few friends, and little exposure to any views but her own. I would never wish her disability on anyone.

But, she has treated her adult child appallingly , as she does not ‘approve’ of their life.

So tread carefully.

Then there's your answer.
If you like her and are happy to support her, then go for it. It's quite likely she might be lovely as anything to you as you are giving her what she wants.
If she starts being mean to you or treating you badly then walk away.

Equally, you should not feel under any obligation to do anything because you feel sorry for her.

If you do get involved, I would suggest putting a hard boundary about her not talking about her NC children to you (and likewise not talking about their mum to the NC children). Otherwise it will get too messy.

My siblings and I, I'm one of 4, all don't speak to my parents, as they're abusive assholes. It's usually the parents in my experience.

I’d think it was none of my business and not give it a second thought.

Given your updates, I would not get involved.

Who knows. I know if someone that went NC with their father as they a) ‘only’ gave a substantial contribution to the wedding and did not pay for the whole thing, and b) refused to pay for their IVF. So, not sure NC is representative of anything, you would have to know the underlying reasons.

That right there is her manipulation.

trust your mother

I think if you mean doing things like visits, taking her stuff in hospital and so on then if your partner is happy, I might give it a go. But are you SURE he's happy? "Its up to you" is, in my personal experience, an odd response. It sounds more like a refusal to discuss it than genuinely not minding either way. If by support she means intervening between her and her children to try to get them to make contact then no no a thousand times no.

'and DP isn’t very close to her'

so obiv you would not get closer than him, surely he is the one that matters to you

Not necessarily, or at least not directly. Having the same parents isn't the only thing children might have in common. They might share temperaments, schools, social circles, and these days virtually all young people spend their formative years exposed to various destructive almost cultlike belief systems online. I spent a chunk of my 20s thinking my parents were abusive and that I needed to reduce contact. They weren't. I know some people my age who still think their parents were abusive and it's often possible to recognise if/when they're basing that on the same (online) headfiction I spent my teens absorbing.

Children don't go NC with their own parents for no reason. Believe them. Believe children. It's bad enough that children of abuse are not believed, and when adults, are not believed it is justified when they go NC. And not one, but two? Yeah, she knows exactly why, and her not taking any responsibility is a big red flag. It'd be different if she had some remorse. I'd be very wary around her and want to have as little to do with her as possible.

Why not?
All sorts of things go on in the world.
Just one example, a relative might be spreading lies about the parent, unknown to the parent.
A parent could be falsely accused of a crime.

It's hard to judge fairly without knowing the facts. One of my siblings was turned against my mom by a now ex partner who is probably a psychopath. They still have a relationship with my mom but the ex did do damage along with sibling who let their partner darken their view and reframe the past.

My mom showed me a poem that sibling wote in tribute to them before partner was on the scene and the contrast in siblings's opinion of mom was stark.

If you asked the adult children they wouldn’t go into detail just say she didn’t respect boundaries, was manipulative, turned nasty when she didn’t get her own way and son would say she wasn’t nice to his wife. The other children would say they aren’t getting involved. So that’s is how much information anyone would get from this.

So it sounds like they were justified then.

She blames the wife of her son for him falling out with her citing her as controlling, and would say her daughter has been difficult for years and believes she cut her off due to her getting poorly. Woman desperately wants a relationship with her NC children and will send them messages, attempt to call them to reach out etc and receives nothing back.

So she won't take responsibility. Shows no remorse yet keeps reaching out without apologising, and then wonders why she receives nothing back. If I were NC from my mother I wouldn't re-establish contact if my mother refused to acknowledge her part, express remorse and apologise. Those would be the bare minimum needed before I would accept contact. She can't expect contact if she won't sincerely apologise. You can't help someone who doesn't want to be helped and who won't help themselves by doing what they need to do. She sounds like a nasty piece of work and if I were you I'd have nothing at all to do with her.

Yes stuff like this. I would definitely not intervene between the rest of her children. I try not to mention them to her or tell her if there’s a family event going on if she’s messaging me. I’ve accidentally made that mistake and she got very upset.

I think my DP doesn’t want me to feel put upon by her and he knows she can be full on. We live quite far away and he is literally not here for months at a time anyway so he cannot do it himself.

You seem like a very kind person and I have been in your situation before. Both of my parents were NC with their own parents. My mum due to horrific physical abuse by her father and my dad due to continued emotional abuse and lack of any parental care from his mother. It's more clear cut in my mum's case, but on my dad's side I sometimes found it difficult to stay NC with my grandparent. She was never anything but nice to me, but I know what my father went through (as I have seen and heard it myself) and I could never forget or unhear some of the things I witnessed as a child from my grandmother. This did not stop me from feeling sorry for her and wanting to help her in her final years of life. I did help but I was also very mindful that her situation was one of her own making. She never apologized and never admitted/accepted she was at fault, but she knew it. I could never minimize what my dad went through (and he never spoke to his mother again despite living next door to her), but I was able to offer some help and empathy to her as a human being who needed help despite the fact I felt she didn't deserve it. My point being it is possible to both understand the reasons of NC and also provide some support if that's how you feel. My father never judged me for it or prevented me from helping.

But in your example, you spent your 20s thinking about reducing contact.
It sounds like you didn't, but even if you had, starting to reduce contact is a few steps away from going entirely NC. During which time, you would have come to the same realisation that you did, that your parents weren't actually abusive.

People who've actually gone NC, have slowly reduced contact over time, they've had multiple conversations with their parents, they've examined their own behaviour and they've often had therapy. This takes years. We're not talking about a short phase of teen/early 20s self absorption. Or if we are, the contact might well resume when maturity sets in.

It's been said a lot on this thread already, but NC is a last resort after all else has failed, not something that people do on a whim.

(caveats - yes mental illness, coercive partners etc etc may play a part in some cases)