This is really chilling, I think

[404NotFound]

Namechanged for this, as potentially too identifiable to FOO stalkers.

I am NC with FOO, for a variety of reasons, none of which I particularly want to rehash here. Occasionally I lurk on a FB forum for parents of estranged adult children, because I find it morbidly fascinating and actually quite validating to observe just HOW bonkers the mindset is.

Today I found this post on there, which sent shivers down my back because it is SO similar to the kind of thing my NMother has sent to me:

The last time I wrote my daughter...a few years ago, I stated the following: "When a person is charged with a crime, the accused is presented with a list of grievances. As your mother, I feel I am entitled to no less a list of grievances in support of your claims of hatred towards me." I've never received a reply, because she has none. We as parents shouldn't accept responsibility for our adult children's short-sightedness and bad behavior.

As ever, it's much easier to see the crazy when it's not your own personal situation being hashed out, but OMG at the demand that the adult child justifies her emotions with a bullet-pointed list of grievances before there can be any question of her being permitted to feel her own feelings. And these people wonder why they are estranged. You'd think round about the time you wrote about your entitlement to a list of grievances to support your child's claims of hatred towards you, you might get a glimmer of realisation about why your adult dc didn't want to be around you. But apparently not.

X-post. The church were totally wrong Bouquet and you deserved better from them.

Bloody hell OP - I'd put money on the person who wrote that post being my mother! That's exactly how she thinks, speaks, rationalises...

I agree with "back off and live your own life" btw; being able to emotionally detach a bit is vital

I'll agree with that too. Having made the mistake of doing too much with a friend with DV problems.. I wasn't helping her I was just feeding into the "us against the world" narative, and I put my own health and even safety at risk. I should have just consistanlty been there but no tried to do the leaving for her IYKWIM.

Merd - thank you for saying that the church types should not have said that to me. I thought I knew that was wrong but with so many comments being made by the church people which I thought was out of order. At least I know now that you are agreeing that I should not have had to stay with violence.

Perhaps I just want everything in the garden to be nice. I would find it such a comfort if this abused person could come to me and just say I know it has been hard on you but things pass. It would mean so much but I do know that she has enough of her own problems to deal with to bother with me. As wrong as it will sound I need her but I know she is in difficulty. I hope that if she knew how bad I am finding things just now that she would do something but I wont tell her that I am not in a great place myself.

Maybe I should find out if there are others here who have got through a similar problem and survived. I will think about it.

I am sorry that I got all this wrong. I would never condone anyone being abused in any way at all. I just don't have any experiences like others on here have had but I do have domestic abuse in my past.

Blimey, I go away for a day, and this happens.

I think Bouquet is talking about a very different dynamic and situation, and would benefit from starting a new thread. But tbh she sounds like she is very deeply enmeshed and co-dependent in a highly dysfunctional situation, so maybe her being drawn to a thread about estrangement is not entirely coincidental.

I'm glad some people are still finding the OP and subsequent thoughtful posts useful, though obviously it's sad that other people find themselves in similar situations.

Its a great thread OP. I am afraid I have used it as a bit of a brain dump.

Me, too!

No problem Bouquet and I do think a new thread could be worthwhile. Churches have a long way to catch up with some of this stuff in my experience - strong Christians know that forgiveness doesn't mean keeping yourself in danger, but others don't always get that. And they often forget that in cases like this, one partner's already broken their vows (to protect, honour, love, cherish etc) and blame the victim instead. It's horrid they did that to you.

And an ahem from me too 404. However I had never twigged about the other kind of supporter group out there and reading some of them has reminded me afresh of how hard it is to talk to some people.

There are none so blind...

You are BEING TOLD so you are assuming you're being told the truth.

As screenshot says there are any number of ways to frame the truth without victim blaming (and teaching children to victim blame).

I agree I think you're being used by someone else in this scenario. Why do they even need to tell you all the ins and outs?

"We did not all sleep and bathe together but we were all in the one place more than I think other people do." That can be abusive too (even if I believed it were the case), smothering.

"I was the caring one the one who did all the housework shopping cooking etc." More victim blaming/shaming as it sounds like she had enough on.

You can be a badly behaved child and still be the golden child as far as the parents/family are concerned.

The golden child can be getting excused for awful behaviour and the scapegoat vilified for minor infractions, in fact that's probably pretty !much a definition of the scenario.

Also you've gone on to explain all the money issues but the point I was making was you'd claimed you'd not even mentioned money!

the SC will often eventually act out and be "difficult".. but I don't think they start that way, as a young child they might seem clingy and maybe later sulky..

I was challenging the idea that the golden child is necessarily the 'nice well behaved one' the abusers/family may describe them as that but it isn't necessarily true.

Re church types - whole other board needed for that! It's another reason my mother stayed way beyond when she should have left (Catholics especially of her generation and older, rarely leave marriage, catholic church has only relatively recently recognised that people shouldn't stay in violent/abusive relationships)

Yes, I agree, and was adding to that that the SC doesn't necessarily act out at least to start with

I was the SG and I spent my early childhood desperately trying to please my mother to finally earn some sort of consistant love and affection.

A GC doesn't have to desperately seek their parents affection by trying to be good all the time, so in the start at least they can do what they like.

It's later when the GC becomes the "good" one, looking after their parents in adulthood etc. When the SC are "selfishly" finally looking after themselves and distancing themselves

Bouquets - I think the problem you are having is a failure to understand that your relative is a different person from you, despite having the same upbringing.

You had an experience of DV, so you left immediately and divorced - and because you did this, you can't understand why your relative won't do the same. You can't understand why she won't change things to protect her child. You got out, so why doesn't she?

The biggest issue here is that you are not her, she is not you. So she does things differently and "wrong" - but you don't know what conditioning she may have suffered in her relationships, you don't know what her mindset actually is because you're not in it, and you don't really know what goes on behind closed doors, although you have some insight into it because of the physical evidence.

Abuse victims can be suffering from a form of Stockholm syndrome - they take the abuse but they still love the abuser, they believe they need the abuser, they can't live without the abuser, they'll do anything to get the abuser to love them again like they used to, like they still do every now and then, just to keep the victim on the hook.

Stop thinking that your relative can just walk out of her situation - she clearly can't, for whatever reason. Once you stop thinking that, and read more about how DV victims function, you might get on better. And be less judgemental about her.

And yes, do start another thread if it will help. I hope she does find the strength to leave at some point before it's too late, but it's something that only she can do.

"A GC doesn't have to desperately seek their parents affection by trying to be good all the time, so in the start at least they can do what they like"

by that I don't mean the parents are necessarily permissive and don't tell them off… but that they are consistantly shown love even if they've been naughty and have had a telling off…

whereas the SC doesn't get consistant love even if they desperately try to be good and loveable

Screenshot then sorry I misunderstood your post explains very well.

Thumb is spot on too, you can't judge someone's actions on what you did/would do (you shouldn't be judging full stop).

Bacony - I am not being told everything I have seen things for myself and as said I can only talk about what I have seen and been involved in some way in.

I have opened a new thread talking about Domestic Abuse and wondering how others have coped watching on from the side. I know that she is not me and will not likely do as I did, this does not stop me wishing that she would for her own benefit not mine. I have doubts about what I did, I was talked down to by church people who should have had more compassion, I think, rather than assume I should have stuck with the vows. People at work had things to say too but I did not care. At that point I was angry enough to think I did it right. This is not only about a woman in an abuse situation, there are children in the house too and others not in the house. It is a bit messy.
I will see what is said on the new thread.
Thanks to everyone who took time for me

Anyone else had emotionally abusibe / favouriting GP who has started multiple
Litigation against the children inc extensive child arrangement orders? Wants 3 kids all weekend per month inc toddler

Started court proceedings when we said no to her taking 3 kids on holiday. Cafcass said she gets 4h contact centre once
Per month but I guess she'll re start court process ASAP.

How do I protect manipulation/ favourites in contact centre? DD1 is favourite. DS aged 4 scarp goat.

I don't know London sounds awful.

Can you go to mediation and offer some "lesser evil" amount of contact?

If you're offereing other options will the court be less likely to agree to weekends?

As I understand it, contact centre sessions are only ever temporary (unless there's serious abuse history) and the aim is to work towards the GP taking them out unsupervised for that time.

So can you maybe offer a longer time, but at a 3rd party's house? maybe one of your relatives from another side? So that you're being agreeable re: contact but they're not left alone with her?

within the contact centre I'ld imagine she'll be on her best behaviour

problem is that'll mean they'll move to unsupervised.. and she'll get to pick them up at contact centre, take them out for 4hrs then drop them back to CS

How does that work then, I didn't think GP had any "rights" to see grandchildren, how did they manage to get court-ordered access?

I hesitate to suggest this, but if the GP only like the DGD, perhaps you should save your DS the pain and not bother letting him see them at all? I know it feeds into the favourites pattern, but at least your DS won't suffer at their hands. :(

Wow! Intoo thought it was extremely difficult for grandparents to get access/contact. Have you got legal representation of your own?

I agree something needs to be done if children are being abused.

As for -" I am not being told everything I have seen things for myself " as myself and other pps have repeatedly said, dysfunctional people/abusers are very clever and manipulative and could well be only letting you see/hear what supports their argument.

Wtf? GP's can do that? That's horrendous, why?

The legal situation is that if there is a pre-existing relationship with a grandparent which the parents then decide to sever, the courts can be asked to rule that it is in the child's best interests for the relationship to continue without the parents' consent. Grandparents with whom there is no prior relationship can't argue this.

So the lesson is that if you think the grandparents are potentially flaky, don't allow a relationship to be established in the first place. Grandparents whom you never permit near your child have no case; grandparents whom you think "well, iet's see how it goes, perhaps they'll change" do. Indeed, if you keep grandparents at arm's length on general principles, the issue is much less likely to arise. "Grandparents Rights" were intended to cover the case where couples divorce and one party uses access to the child by the other party's parents as part of the battle, not when parents jointly decide to exclude abusive grandparents, but have been extended.

It's also not clear quite what a court can do if the parent say "stuff your arrangement order", but I doubt many parents would be willing to be the test case.

I didn't know GP had any access rights, certainly in the UK.

As the OP, I've been fascinated by the way this thread has developed, and by the parallel thread/s on GN. It started off being about the inability of some EPs to acknowledge any reasoning other than their own, and their active unwillingness to consider that their intransigence and need to be right might be a large part of the reason why they are estranged.

Both in this thread and on GN there have been discussions about this, but also quite a lot of posts where people have been actively reproducing some of those really entrenched dynamics you get in dysfunctional families.

It's been quite a car crash, but an instructive one, i think. The GN thread is particularly interesting because you can see a very clear distinction between grandparents who are capable of taking on board some of the reasons why people estrange, and those who just keep repeating the same distorted logic, regardless of other people's counter-arguments or even actual facts. There are a couple of (I presume) MNers on there who are heroically trying to explain how things look from the POV of an estranging adult child, but not really getting anyway because of other posters' inability to engage with ideas that don't fit their worldview.