aibu to think grandparents are just expected to know their place now?

[justme39]

honestly feeling quite upset and not sure if i’m being unreasonable or not.

my ds and dil had their first baby a few months ago and ever since it’s just been rule after rule after rule. no kissing baby, no picking him up straight away if he cries because theyre trying to teach self soothing, dont call him my baby because apparently thats boundary crossing now 🙄

i’ve kept my mouth shut mostly because i dont want drama but yesterday i honestly felt humiliated. baby was asleep on me and i kissed the top of his head without even thinking and dil immediately goes we’re not doing that in this really sharp voice in front of everyone. atmosphere after was awful.

i do feel there’s a lack of respect if i’m honest. i’ve raised 3 children perfectly well, all grown adults with good jobs and houses etc so its not like i dont know what im doing. yet if i mention he looks cold or maybe he’s overtired suddenly im undermining.

another thing that upset me was photos. i put ONE picture on facebook after he was born because family were asking and you’d think i’d leaked government documents. ds rang me asking me to remove it because dil was really anxious. i did remove it but i wont lie i cried after because it just feels like nothing i do is right.

i’ve also offered loads of help. meals, cleaning, having baby so they can nap etc but apparently they want to figure things out themselves. then dil posts online about how exhausted she is all the time. i honestly dont know what we’re meant to do anymore as grandparents except buy things and sit there quietly.

now ds hardly messages unless she’s included as well which never used to happen

aibu to think younger parents are so obsessed with boundaries and gentle parenting they forget other people have feelings too?

Oh OP i feel so bad for you especially as your husband isn't around. Do you have any other children?

Actions have consequences.

I feel like my MIL could have written a similar thread to this years ago.

My partner also had to manage his mother’s emotions for years, along with his siblings and my partner has very little contact with her now

My MIL does what she wants to with no thought for anyone else, then acts like the victim. My partner also had had enough when we had children as she majorly overstepped with coming to the hospital after having our first child, when we had asked everyone not to as I was very ill, posting photos of us and our kids online when asked not to, telling me I had dressed our baby wrongly, saying nanny knows best when I knew my baby needed feeding and she said no he needs this or that, basically picking at everything we did. This followed years of other things before we had children. If ever anyone addressed anything with her she’d deny, then turn it into a poor her situation. FIL would tell my partner and siblings they had to say sorry. 🤯 Then it would happen again. It sounds very similar to what you have done to your own son and then his wife.

If you want contact, you need to make massive changes. My guess is it’s too late, as from my partners experience, his mother isn’t capable of not making everything about her. I hope you’re different.

And those saying, they will want something from you at some point, we have never and would never ask MIL or FIL for anything. We never contact them.

I would imagine as new parents they've prioritised themselves and their baby. I would do the same if anyone came to my house when my baby was newborn and ignoring what I was telling them. From what OP has written about what DS has said there's been a pattern of behaviour that's caused issues for him but DM has never listened, so the time has come for him to stop it the only way he sees fit.

Yes. In my experience, a decision to cut contact is never done lightly. It’s after years of dealing with their crap.

There are some people on this thread who don't seem to have much respect for the notion of other members of their family having personal autonomy.

Ultimately, family or not, it is a privilege to be invited inside people's homes when they are at their most vulnerable, such as after the arrival of a new baby. Consideration and sensitivity are called for. There really isn't any room for 'right' and 'wrong', just love, respect and compassion.

If we don't necessarily agree with new parents' decisions, most people would at least agree (in the absence of danger to the baby) with their right to make those decisions.

OP - I feel so sad and sorry for you. In families that work and when people are kind to each other there is a lot of work and self awareness and give and take. You sound generous with your help and you have willingness to apologise if you've got something wrong.

Others have posted, to my ear chillingly, about how easily they have cut out parents in law. So very often it seems to be the son and daughter-in-law getting angry with MIL, as in your case.

I'm probably older than you. I remember meeting my MIL just before my first baby was borh and hearing all her out-dated views about baby care and witnessed her mild distaste about breast feeding in public. But my generation did not automatically take umbrage and cut contact. I worked at the relationship and so did she. When my two children were grown up MIL gifted them each a substantial deposit to enable them to buy flats. I stayed in touch with her post my divorce from her son. By the time she died and well before I loved her dearly and miss her. She represented a stalwart, old school, family loyalty. I learnt a lot from her.

I''m a granny too. I probably annoyed my D-I-L with various grand parental crimes now long forgiven I think because my grand-children love me and DH and we provide a lot of childcare and generous gifts. Difference is my D-I-L has huge family values and a big heart and also very good manners and she wants her children to have wide and deep family relationships. She accepts that our generation does things a bit differently.

I hope that if you stay apologetic and do your best to continue to offer help and show your love for them all that you will be included again. If I were a religious woman I would pray for you because I genuinely have found your story heart breaking.

No I dont, like I said, as a parent you pay it forward. Them spending time with me is not a privilege to them.

I didnt have an easy or comfortable relationship with my DPs or DPIL.

Now as a new GP I am trying to 'do better' than they did. This means checking before taking or sharing a pictures, washing hands, not kissing my DGC, checking I am holding the bottle correctly. All things my own DPs and DPIL thought they knew better about.

Not sure why this bothers you so much.

Hello again,Op.
I've found a place on Gransnet, giving advice about estrangement:
https://www.gransnet.com/grandparenting/how-to-cope-with-estrangement
It says you can go to Relate for support.
Unfortunately, this thread hasn't been much help to you. I think you will find Gransnet much more supportive and useful in general.
Wishing you the very best.

It’s not just you, there seems to be a trend by today’s mothers to ‘control’ and distance their mils in particular and generally grandparents, I know because I have exactly the same situation as you and having read lots of posts, this new behaviour set seems the norm. Unfortunately. It is the demise of the extended family, the support network, as we know it. And they wonder why mental health issues, including diagnosis of ADHD in new mothers is increasing. My grandbabies are not ‘allowed’ to be on their own with us or sleep in our house incase they ‘miss mummy’. Very sad indeed, but it is what it is.

Hello OP
I’m very sad for you, but you can turn it around. You need to work on yourself though in order to properly reconcile. You won’t reconcile with your son and DIL by doing the same thing you’ve always done. You probably have ingrained behaviour patterns that you’re not even aware of. Give them space right now.

Therapy could be good, with the right therapist. it’s not helpful to be told ‘you’ve done nothing wrong’, nor to blame your son or DIL.

I suggest you listen to The Estranged Mum Coach podcast by Jenny Good. It’s for Christian mums, but even if you’re not Christian, you could find it very helpful.

Sending lots of love and wishing you hope and positivity.

A baby is often the thing that pushes adult children to finally go Nc because once they have a child they realise they don’t want their child around that behaviour and that as a parent it’s not right to do that to your child.

Ops behaviour has always annoyed her son by the sounds of it but having his own baby and looking at that little bundle has made him go enough is enough my son won’t be raised how I was.

OP has stated that she brought up 3 children. She hasn’t said how her two other children feature in this scenario. They are Aunts /Uncles of her first Grandchild.

I feel very sorry for her. The son, father of the baby, will be torn between his wife and his mother……it’s very sad as Grandparents can be integral to a child’s upbringing.

Equally, a self-centred, boundary stomping grandparent can be detrimental to that child's upbringing.

In some ways I do agree with you. Women are more likely to get annoyed with their MIL than their own mother over the same issues but the difference is I can tell my own mother to back off and I know my own mother genuinely has my best interests at heart. Whereas tbh many MILs seem to have an issue respecting their sons (as grown independent men) and their DILs in general and a power struggle seems to develop. Women are thrown so much information now and id struggle to see how any woman doesnt develop some sort of anxiety with their firstborn. So when MIL comes in and tramples over your boundaries and does things like comment on how you care for the baby, thinks she knows better and does things that you've expressly said you don't want done (kissing and social media) it proves she doesnt care about you as parents and will just do what she wants.
The ways to deal with this are discuss it or distance yourselves- OP isnt listening even to people on here so they choose to distance themselves and protect their family unit.
People dont need to physically hurt you to cause pain, OP has caused pain here and isnt even sincerely apologising.

I set boundaries with my second baby purely because with my first my daughters grandmother, grandad, aunty, cousin and their family dog were all at my house when I came home from the hospital and I was so overwhelmed I wanted to be left alone with my new baby to get breastfeeding established and I couldn't because they wouldn't leave me alone, I had to tell my daughters dad to get rid of them all, i didn't stay with her dad and met my now husband and his parents were brilliant and respected boundaries, I had told them I needed a bit of space when I came home just to recuperate and bond as a family and they were incredibly understanding and the complete opposite of my oldest daughters grandparents, i had the same rule for my own parents, I also had the no kissing rule because babies can't fight off certain things and I didn't want to risk anything being passed onto them.

They’re two very big things. Did you kiss the baby on the face or head?
Let them cool off. You know your place now, which I don’t agree with them putting you in the “place”. Children need many people to love them.
MIL said some things that I found irritating in my first but I’d never have been so cruel or rude towards her.
She didn’t do anything as serious as uploading a photo, but again, it’s not the crime of the century. Next time use WhatsApp. 🫣
Shit happens, let DS piss off. Sadly paternal dm’s get the short stick.

The son, father of the baby, will be torn between his wife and his mother

He shouldn't be though.

Everyone should be trying to get along, but it often seems that MILs feel threatened/"replaced by DILs.

There’s clearly a lot more going on here. This is just the point your son has reached his limit

From experience, please do as others have suggested and seek therapy. I have a parent who sounds similar to you. I have spent years working on myself and just wish she would as it impacts all her relationships.

Yes OP, if you just want to get a load of sympathy for yourself, a load of blame for your S & DIL (even more than this poster is affording you) and dig deep into the self-pity with a total absence of reflection into how your actions have resulted in your son going no contact, this would be the perfect place to seek support and double down on your problematic behaviour.

Edited because my anger at OP was misplaced. I think this poster's contribution to the OP's thread is unhelpful and counterproductive.

Why would OP message him now? That’s just going to inflame him further.

If what you have said on here is true OP then you are not abusive so it seems overkill for them to go NC but it sounds like your DIL has got hyper focussed on this and there is nothing you can do but step back and try to forge new joys in your life.

Yes they are new parents and take any comments as criticism. Yes they seem to feel something about your ways they don’t like but it is cruel to attack your personality. That’s abusive. If it were me I’d want to protect myself from them. You won’t be able to do right for wrong. Next they’ll be moaning about lack of support from gran.

They don’t want anything from you so take that as permission for you to move on with your life and fill your days with other things.

Or DIL wants her own little bubble.
I think it works both ways. It is a relationship that requires mutual respect not walking on eggshells.
This relationship is destroyed.

Agree. The expectation that the pp mum should just allow boundaries to be trampled on because everyone is so excited with no regard to her physical, mental, and emotional state and deemed automatically controlling even when her spouse is not only rightly supporting her but agrees.

To me what is the most saddening is the amount of women who know how difficult pp is and can be and all the discussions about supporting women in other arenas yet in pp she has to defer to older family members who think they are almost equal to her and entitled to have a say and should be able to override her decisions about her own baby.

It’s infantising towards the new mum and their spouse, usually grown adults, to make out as if they can’t possibly know what they’re doing in an age you can access factual information at any time and even if they have years of experience with children, older relatives seemingly know better when they haven’t experienced the baby years in decades and will even choose to ignore factual information if it doesn’t suit their wants.

If one can’t bond with a baby because they weren’t allowed to do what they want in the early months, then it seems likely they don’t care as much about the baby’s wellbeing as they say because part of the well-being of a baby is supporting the mother, supporting the parents even when one would have or has done something different and not taking it personal.

I think a new baby brings up a lot of things for new parents about their own upbringings and for other family members about what they did and/or what they weren’t able to do especially for women. Add in expectations from both sides and preconceived notions about how things are going to go and changes in dynamics, it’s not surprising it’s a bit difficult to navigate.

Saying that I do think it is better if new parents are left to get on with it, ask what kind of help they would like, if any and letting them know they can ask when they are ready and you’ll be there and accept that some may not need as much help as you needed or may need more. Barring them doing something that is unsafe, leave them to lead things with their own baby.

I suspect a lot of us with tricky parents and in laws suspected there was a lot more going on than photos on social media.

Your son is saying as plainly as he can that he is emotionally struggling with how you conduct yourself in relationships. It is soul destroying trying to bring up with someone, something that has hurt you, and to have them ultimately dissolve into tears, with you sitting there wondering how you are the bad guy.

This pattern will not be new, it will be a behaviour you have repeated throughout your son’s life. Becoming a parent is one of those seismic shifts where the hormone shift around a baby brings into focus how you were parented.

Realistically therapy is the way forward if you want to maintain some type of relationship.

Absolutely, he shouldn’t be but, nevertheless, he will be.

Hopefully, the relationship will not be permanently destroyed.

New mothers often accept ‘help’ from their own mothers, rather than their MILs.

OP has not commented on the family relationships of the baby’s maternal grandparents, Or her other 2 children.

She, sadly, says that she is alone. Yet, states that she brought up 3 children.

Let’s break it down.

The “no kissing” is because very small babies have virtually zero immune system, so even a small cold can develop into respiratory distress (not to mention that caring for a newborn with a cold is another level of hell even if it does remain mild - zero sleep for 2 weeks).

Not calling the baby “my baby” … some might not care or think it’s a sweet sign of affection, some people (possibly due to past experiences) might be wary of overbearing grandparents who actually see the baby as theirs, and want to take control. Whatever the case, it’s a VERY easy rule to stick to, so why not just stick to it?

The letting a newborn cry it out is ridiculous, BUT, sleep is a massive deal for new parents, affects their quality of life and mental and physical health enormously, so it’s their business and theirs alone, don’t interfere.

Posting on social media: many parents have the same rules, for very valid reasons, and they are easy to follow. It takes effort to post on social media, so went out of your way to break that rule.

All very reasonable and easy to follow rules so far.

The snapping at you seems unnecessary and I would also have felt very hurt… but perhaps she was sick of you not following simple and easy to follow rules.

Comments like “the baby is cold”… it depends on delivery, they can be helpful, but generally they are intensely irritating (and this is not a new thing. My 75 year old MIL still speaks with irritation about her own (103 yo) mother used to say things like that and try and take control when she had her first baby!)

It sounds like you were being quite irritating, they gave you the chance to stop by telling you what was irritating them (all perfectly reasonable and simple to follow requests), but instead of just changing your behaviour and moving on, you made a massive deal about how upset you were that they had had the audacity to say something. You didn’t have to react that way. You could have just said “OK” and followed the rules. Doing things the parents’ way is normal, it’s the natural order of life. You seem to have a problem complying with simple and reasonable requests and see it as a personal attack, when it’s not, and that is clearly posing a serious barrier in your relationship with your son and grandchild. Why not just… do as they’ve asked without taking it personally? That is an option that is open to you, but you have chosen not to take it.

I think you need to seriously reflect on your behaviour. The fact your son has said there have been issues in the past, but you don’t know what they are, suggests you are lacking in a lot of self awareness. You are not being honest with yourself.