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?

When a woman walks away from an emotionally abusive relationship, children often end up blaming her for the family exploding. I have seen the father successfully manipulate the children against the mother.

I have a family member where two of his three children won't speak to him. They've completely cut him off.

If you ask him, he cannot understand why and is convinced he's done nothing.

I won't go into it, but he's wrong. We watched him do this to himself and tried at various points to stop him before he pushed them too far.

He's also unwell with very little support. It's of his own making and when anyone tries to help he's also horrible to them and then can't understand when they stop away.

I'd be inclined to believe she absolutely is the reason her children don't speak to her, she just sees herself as a victim and everything as everyone else's fault.

My father has 4DC who have gone no contact with him. He is genuinely confused as to why that is, since he considers himself not to be a bad person and father (this is what he has told me after I tried to make clear what my issues were).

The reality is that he is very controlling, narcissistic, has had social services involvement for his children multiple times, cheated on all of his partners including my mother and is generally not a nice and safe father figure. He would always have something negative to say.

People can judge me and my siblings all they like. I am staying away for my mental health.

Multiple children all just happening to be shits is considerably less likely than one person having been a poor parent and reaping what they’ve sown.

Then drop her.

A friend should add something to your life, at least some of the time.

I wouldn't judge. I don't know the details.

I would be extremely wary of stepping in to the gap you perceive OP. You can be friendly from a distance without taking on any responsibility or burden of caring.

I wouldn't blame anyone because 1) not my business and 2) relationships are complicated, we all make different choices and these things happen. It's just life.

But she isn’t my friend? I wouldn’t class her as a friend anyway, she will be family at some point but not a friend.

The issue isn’t their Dad and that’s the only fact I know to be true out of the whole situation.

Just because someone is family doesn't mean you're obligated to help.

You help because you care and want to.

Every single person I know that has gone NC with a parent has had a very good reason to.
And I know a few of the parents who insist they're not to blame and have no idea why it's happened... Yes they do. They'd been warned and spoken to many times. I had seen it myself.

You’ve answered your own q here.
Together with your own family’s suggestions to stay away, I believe you’d be better off finding a new hobby, well away from elderly time consuming folk?
I mean all this in the nicest possible way, truly. 🙂

The thing is, you don't really know this woman very well, do you? You haven't known her for very long and she doesn't live close enough for you to see her with any frequency.

What you DO know is that the people who have known her all their lives, and once depended entirely on her for their well-being, have removed her from their lives. Your partner hasn't, but he has withdrawn quite considerably and doesn't seem to have any concern that you might not support his mother like she would like you to. He doesn't seem bothered at all...

I would draw the conclusion that you are seeing the version of his mother that she would like you to see, and that she is trying (in "desperation") to get you to get them to contact her again. You are being manipulated to her own ends. She probably views you as a puppet that she might be able manoeuvre to get what she wants.

I would take a giant step back and leave this woman be, and I wouldn't be pitying her either. She is reaping what she has sown.

You don’t need to do anything op.

My brother and I are both NC with our dad. Because he is a prick.

Someone getting ill doesn’t mean they are suddenly not a prick.

On average I would think it was probably the parent's fault.

However if there are divorced parents it can be parental alienation, so done by one parent against the other.

I also had a situation where in my early 30s my older sister went through a stage of telling people what a dreadful childhood we'd had. We didn't. We weren't rich, parents were strict in a lot of ways, but there was a lot of love and what we needed we had, even if it wasn't the designer makes.

She tried a few times to get me on her side and agree with her, but I remember all the events she was talking about and she was really misrepresenting the situation - and no it wasn't that she was treated differently. I'm not talking about punishments or things that went wrong, but ordinary family occasions where she was spinning a tale removed from what had happened.
Eg one of them was she was telling how we'd been to a party and all the other children had got ice creams and we hadn't been allowed. But what she hadn't remembered was that the reason why we hadn't was because they were only serving them with brightly coloured sauces already on that our brother was very allergic to - and Mum stopped on the way home and brought a tub for us to eat at home - which was a huge treat as we didn't have much money for things like than, nor did we have a freezer so ice cream was a big rarity. The organiser had also felt sorry for us and given us an extra chocolate bar (another rarity in our life!)- so I'd thought of this as a big win.
She does tend to be a glass half empty (as is my brother) whereas I'm glass half full person which didn't help.

Yes, there were some things she didn't like and I did and vice versa, but they weren't dreadful parenting as she wanted me to say. But if I'd been enough younger that I hadn't remembered those situations, or didn't remember what had happened then I'd probably have believed her and felt indignant too.

There are certainly things I would agree our parents made mistakes over, but show me any parent that doesn't. And certainly nothing that justified her months of telling people how hard done by we were,

I only know one person with multiple no contact children, it was/is definitely her.

So it's your MIL to be? There is no reason you can't have separate relationships with her and the children who don't talk to her. You shouldn't try to fix it.

It is possible she had a good relationship with her son before his marriage. Her handling of her DIL and being able to accept her son's married life in a healthy way might have changed things for a range of reasons. This might have created distance.

She might seem like a nice person to you. My MIL is also a lovely person - until you disagree with her, don't do things the way she wants you do do them because of what suits her wants or set a boundary.

She may be a nice person to many. But that doesn't reflect how she is with individuals or her children/a particular child.

I would probably try to have a nice but cautious relationship with your MIL, because you may get on with her but she may have another side you haven't seen yet. What does her son that you are marrying say about her?

Genuinely, I think you should tread very carefully. I’d keep my beak out until more info has been unveiled.
You risk compromising a lot of formative relationships for the sake of what exactly?! If your DP urgently wanted you to support his mother, then you’d have a decision to make, but he is indifferent. Let things lie for a while.

If she isn't your friend then you're massively overinvolving yourself. Why?

Because she’s my future mother in law and she’s asking for my help?

This is the best advice.

My MIL is hard work. Her son's haven't gone entirely NC but at different times in their lives they've all fallen out with her and gone periods of time of not speaking to her for one thing or another. Often for her treatment of their wives.

I now get on with her OK, but I don't get involved when she's saying anything about either of my SILs or when she's arguing with any of her sons unless it's DH and he either wants me to or it directly impacts me/DD.

I keep things friendly with her for the sake of DD and because it makes DHs life run smoother. He's the least likely to fall out with her, but that's more to do with our personalities than hers.

Be friendly but not involved. And go with your husband to be's feelings about her or approach to her.

Specifically what is she asking for? Tread very carefully in terms of what you agree to.

Yes . I can understand a fallout with one child but more children going NC indicates there’s a parental problem especially considering going NC usually indicates a longer pattern of unwanted behaviour . It’s not a decision taken lightly

Your help to do what?
If it's an attempt to build bridges with other family members, be careful that you don't alienate any of them yourself.
OTOH also be careful that she doesn't use you for her own ends, and end up upsetting you.