How to explain NC grandparents to pre school child?

[Wife2018]

I'm looking or some advice.

We are no contact with husbands parents. MIL has been NC since birth of first child. FIL has been NC just this year.

DC1 pre school age is aware of their relationship with their grandad. But obviously has not seen him for months.

If they ask 'when can I see grandad?' Or 'why can't I see grandad?'
How do we go about navigating that conversation?

For context - NC is due to parental abuse to DH.

Grandad is busy might work for a while.

I am NC with my parents and my kids have never met them. I am matter of fact about it and they've never been upset by age appropriate truth. In primary I said "I don't want to see them because they aren't very nice" but as teens, they are happy with "I don't want to see them because they are abusive". They've never asked for extra details above that and know that if they want, they are welcome to contact them on So-called Media. None of the kids are interested. They understand that they were being protected fans trust my judgement in making that decision.

Granddad is having a hard time being kind at the moment, so we're giving him some space.

At that age, it doesn't need anymore than a vague 'I don't know' or 'we'll see' and onto the next subject.

Honestly your child will almost certainly never ask. My dc completely forgot about gps, and most children tend to focus on their parents. Mine have never missed it, but we do have lovely sibling relationships and great friends.

We were honest with our children, Grandad/Grandma wasn't kind to dh when he was a little boy so we see lots of kind and lovely family/friends now instead.

Because they're not very nice.

That's all we said to our kids.

He's on his deathbed now so won't have to worry about it for much longer.

Pre-school - not this weekend, we're busy

As they get older 'because they aren't very nice'

You can expand on that as they get to appropriate ages.

They are likely only interested at the moment as they are aware other kids at nursery see grandparents (and get presents!) and they don't, not because of a great personal devotion to their GPs.

I think be honest but at their age level. Something like sometimes people aren't very kind and Grandad was being very unkind so we are not seeing him for a while.

Mine were told early on about unkind Grandparents because I had them and we weren't protected. We had issues with PIL where we went very low contact for a while until the issues were resolved. I didn't want them rewriting history so was honest about them being unkind and making Mummy and Daddy very sad.

I think you do need to say they aren’t nice/we don’t get on because at some point your kids grow up and the GPs might contact them. So the kids will need to understand what has gone on, in age appropriate terms.

My mother would message my dc directly as soon as she got their mobile number, and would say it was all our fault she couldn’t see them, and play them against me.
Had I not been honest from the beginning this would have been very difficult to manage. She would message them when I was in hospital instead of contacting me directly. Manipulating non stop. Luckily my dc simply replied telling my mother to talk to me and nothing more. I have always left it to the dc now they are older to decide but they have seen my dps behaviour first hand on the few times we relented and saw them, so they are not interested.

Age appropriate honesty is always best.

I told my DC in an age-appropriate way too. As they have got older they have asked more questions which I always answer. They have always accepted it. We are NC with a few family members, the ones that they once knew they have completely forgotten. My DC were never excited to see the NC family members when they were in our lives anyway, I think children sense more than we realise.

We are planning a family and will have this issue on my partner's side. We have been making an effort with our aunts and uncles and on each side a cousin of our parents. Alongside my lovely parents and siblings our kids will hopefully have so many people to visit that the lack of one set of grandparents will be barely noticed. In addition my partner's aunt and his mother's cousin have been asked to be grannies when we have a baby. Neither was able to have children and they are thrilled. They are also no contact with his immediate family due to abuse towards them.

Thank you all! Very helpful.

We know FIL will bring gifts for birthdays/Christmas' obviously we want to be honest and say they are from grandad rather than lying. Just worried it will open the can of worms of asking to see him.

That has worked for us too!

Christmas and birthday gifts I would simply say they were lovely gifts, and not say anything more. The children would write thank you letters. I have always tried to balance distance (safe boundaries) and good manners. I never ever say anything unkind or negative about them, simply that gps were unkind to me whilst they were children. We had deeper conversations once they were teens - and they fully understood the situation.

I would love nothing more than a close gp relationship but they aren’t capable sadly and I have learnt the hard way. I can honestly say it hasn’t made any difference to the dc but it was hard for me at times. We adjusted, it was fine. Look after your dc

If you’re NC why would you accept gifts?

This. I told mine (although they had witnessed some poor behaviour from their GP) that some people are nice and some people aren’t. That we need to learn our boundaries and be safe. I likened it to a dangerous animal that you want to tame and be friends but you can’t make others behave or be kind.
They accepted it. Our NC GP live very near by but the children don’t ask anymore.

This I never have sent or received gifts when NC.

We are low contact.
We do birthday and Christmas gifts and cards each day but nothing more.
For us it works, as I found it too hard to send the presents back, it didn’t feel like it was fair to dc either

We haven't decided to accept yet. Just know this is what FIL will do as he was very doting on DC1.

We're just aware that our children might see us as actively preventing a relationship when they're older. My parents said to us we should let the kids receive gifts. It's not something we've decided yet.

Such a hard thing to navigate.

If you receive gifts you may have to consider sending gifts back. So there will be some contact. I guess it depends on the abuse, some abuse is cut and dried - no contact is the only option. But sometimes its not cut and dried and much harder to navigate.

You have to find your own way - and what works.I couldn’t bring myself to send gifts back and found a middle road but only you can decide

When my DC received gifts in the beginning after NC there were very manipulative messages written in the cards by the relatives, so be careful doing that.

We wouldn't be sending gifts to him. It's not a NC but send random gifts. It's a NC from our point of view (no communication, no gifts, no talking through others etc) but FIL will drop off presents to our doorstep (no verbal communication to him as we wouldn't open the door)

Would you just send the gifts back to his house?
Or give them to DC?

my NC family found our address and sent money/cheques/gifts at Christmas.

I didn’t cash the cheques, I tore them up. But money and gifts? How would they know if I spent it or not, who would benefit from me getting rid of it when we don’t have much (we were food bank & FSM kind of poor). So I spent the money, and I gave DD the gifts. I didn’t explain where they were from and made sure there were no cards or messages. I just said ‘look what arrived for Christmas!’, she didn’t care about who from or why.

When we initially went NC we said they just lived to far away. As they got older we had very little contact - slightly confused when they realised they lived in the next village to Grandma. Now in late and early teens they can easily see what type of people they are so without us ever saying a bad thing but being protective of them they’ve both chosen to not have much contact with them either.

They sent presents we gave them to the kids but never made a big thing about it. We sent little information around the children school reports etc I know what they like so had to play it carefully as they would try to get to them when they older so by giving them something keeping them at arms length. Cards & letters checked but they never did write anything to worry about.