Brother says I am not allowing him contact with my child.

[Pickledpenguin]

The general gist is my brother has decided to cut me out of his life and does not want to talk to me at all.
I have a ten year old child who has access to a mobile phone for youtube etc but does not have and does not need a sim card so no phone number. The phone is an iphone so while my sister can imessage him or facetime him my brother does not have any apple products and is not looking to get any.

We are in an area with strict lockdown. Cannot leave our homes to go far and my brother and mother (only family in this country) are in different counties so no way to drop or collect child.

Clearly I am missing some way my child and my brother could have some contact as my sister keeps repeating that there has to be a way yet neither of us can think of one but my brother is telling all and sundry that i am stopping my child contact with him so I must be missing something surely?

My brother has my phone number blocked so I cannot get my child to call or text him from there.

Any suggestions?

Sister on a different continent so cannot really do anything I guess but you never know! We have a strange family.

Up to my eyes in work today but appreciate responses and will pop back on later when I get the chance.

Can’t he email instead? Set up an account that you would have access to.

@Pickledpenguin

I just wanted really to make sure it was not me in the wrong here. Our childhood was not great and my sister (and parents) seem to side with my brother on this is basically me looking for validation that I am not the one in the wrong here which is good. I did think I was losing my mind there about two weeks ago when my sister who does not even live on this continent told me that there HAS to be a way but you are all right. If he can treat me abusively then he should not have access to my child.

Since your "brother has decided to cut me out of his life and does not want to talk to me at all", your sister and parents need to accept his decision. It is absolutely his CHOICE to have nothing to do with you.

And, given that he wants nothing to do with you, you cannot imagine why he wants to contact your child, who would inevitably mention you at some point (e.g. Mummy and I went to ...). Him being in contact with your child will therefore force you into his life, against his wishes. No, no, no; we must respect fuckwitted brother's wishes and ensure that he does indeed have nothing to do with you - and you will therefore ensure his wishes are respected by making sure your child has no contact with him.

Play them at their own fucking game.

Alternatively, you are The Mother and as such you 'outrank' grandparents, aunt and uncle. What you say, goes. And if they don't like it tough. It's not their call.

That's a strange way to behave over a child that isn't his. Why is he so invested/interested in him?

The silent treatment is abusive in an intimate relationship. No one is obligated to talk to anyone in any other relationship.

What is the argument that you have over your childhood op?

Does your son want to talk to your brother? if so is there a reason you can't give him an email address, a ten year old is more than capable of email? It is also very useful for home ed.

I would not stop my ten year old from having a relationship with a family member because they didn't want to have one with me. I'd see that as abusive to my child. They have family relationships independent of me.

Alternatively, you are The Mother and as such you 'outrank' grandparents, aunt and uncle. What you say, goes. And if they don't like it tough. It's not their call.

I'd 100 per cent agree with his if the family is awful, but otherwise it's really quite horrible and will bite you in the ass one day

OP I mentioned that I have fallen out with my sister over her husband. That is the truth for the most recent reason. But a long-running argument is that we were raised in an abusive household. As the younger sibling, she didn't see it enough to understand the damage it had on me but did manage to replicate it herself with her husband.

Our childhood is an ongoing argument. She sees it as fine as she didn't experience the abuse. I did. She thinks I should be happy and grateful and I should be happy with her husband who beats her. But at the end of the day, she loves her nieces and nephews and I would not deny them a healthy relationship as long as she continues to be respectful in her dealings with them (and doesn't bring our shit into their relationship).

If you do not have a positive relationship with your brother then why would you want to facilitate a relationship between him and your son? It doesn't make sense. If a member of my family wasn't very nice to me then there's no way I would want them having any bit of influence over my kids. Put an end to this now and tell your other family relatives once and for all that you won't be facilitating a relationship between your estranged brother and your son. And don't engage in any further discussions about it.

Your brother has chosen to go non-contact with you. As a consequence of his decision and a result of his actions, he is unable to contact your son. That's okay. He's not actually entitled to contact with your son. If he has such antipathy for you, then I don't think it's necessarily going to be in the best interests of your son to be in contact with your brother. And it's the best interests of your son that are paramount here, not your brothers wants and demands.

Is it because he’s a man & your son is male?
Is it a gender thing? Your son doesn’t have a “dad” so your brother thinks he’s “head of the family” kinda shit?

@YoniAndGuy

How about you tell your brother that he doesn't get to cut you off and still call the shots in your family?

I would not want someone clearly so hostile towards me having contact with a child I was still absolutely responsible for the welfare of (as in, it would be different if they were 17 ish).

You don't get to 'cut me off' and expect a relationship with MY child!

This!!!

Why on earth would you allow this toxic man near your child??

This thread is interesting because if this was your MIL there would be people saying she could call you a massive cunt to your face daily and still be owed time with your child. But for some reason, a brother who no longer wants to argue with you shouldn't have a normal relationship with his nephew.

That's probably because there are more mothers in law than uncles on here @PetesBigSausagePizza
FWIW I don't think any family member is owed a relationship with a child. If someone is being foul, they lose the right to be included in another person's family life.
I say this as a mil and grandmother.

I would probably just ask your sister to stop interfering. If your brother has something to say to you about wanting contact with your child, he has your number and your address.
You are not ruling out a conversation about it. You are open to considering some contact between them if it's set up in a sensible way. You haven't 'blocked' anyone.

How can you even be sure he wants this contact if he hasn't asked you. Could it be your sister making something of nothing. It sounds like a horrible, mind games situation.

In view of your update stating that your brother and your ds did not have a close relationship anyway, there was no special friendship between them - your brother is seeking to use your child as a weapon in his disagreement with you, both directly and indirectly by complaining to other people about this.
Tell them all to shut up about your brother, you don't want to hear it anymore. You don't have the money or the inclination to be buying tech to facilitate a relationship that never existed and may indeed only be a tool for passive aggressive underhand aggravation towards you.

This really resonated with me OP because I fell out with my brother a few months back, and yet he's still harassing my mum about seeing my son. Isn't bothered about me or my girls, just my son. One of the reasons we fell out was because he tries to exert his sexist, controlling, misogynistic male influence onto my son and tells him that he doesn't have to listen to me because I'm a girl, and that he doesn't have to do jobs like making his bed because he's the man of the house. (He's 7....)

He feels entitled to a relationship because he's a boy, and this sounds similar with your brother. Lockdown has enabled me to drop any contact, as he lives with my mum so we aren't visiting her at the moment but soon I do have to have the conversation around us not going there if he's there as I dont want my son growing up in that world.

MN has taught me the power of being able to actually say no if its something you dont want to do. In this case, if he isn't involved with you then why should he be entitled to be involved with your son (and probably call you to him as well and cause you even more problems if he's anything like my brother!)

Well if he isn't close to your son, OP, then I would say that he's only making a fuss about seeing your ds as a means to 1) continue to be difficult/controlling/horrible towards you, 2) to try and control the family narrative that you're the bad guy in the whole situation 3) to influence your ds should he get contact with him (plus a whole host of other negative reasons that other posters can probably pinpoint).

I would ignore the lot of them (your family). You make the decisions regarding your ds and if your ds isn't going to suffer from not seeing your brother than I would cut all ties completely as per your brother's wishes.

TLDR

I don't think he should be allowed contact with your child.

But there's always email.

@PetesBigSausagePizza

This thread is interesting because if this was your MIL there would be people saying she could call you a massive cunt to your face daily and still be owed time with your child. But for some reason, a brother who no longer wants to argue with you shouldn't have a normal relationship with his nephew.

No they wouldn't

Not true actually. I have literally seen similar. Look up just about any MIl thread. Not all but many will expect a MIL to have access even if it is just through the husband. People asking that a toxic mother in law who calls the OP names to have access when she isn't around.

but I do think a pp made a valid point that it might because there are MILs on MN and unlikely to be any uncles.

All I'm saying is the OP hasn't given any information about the uncle other than she sees a refusal to talk to her as abusive. He may well be a toxic bastard but we don't have anything to go by other than that he wants to know his nephew.

@PetesBigSausagePizza
Have you not read the OPs post?
Why are you writing in defence of a man like that? Have you got nothing better to do?

Stonewalling her is abusive and I think the OP knows her family a lot more than you do.
And yes the advice for a MIL like that would be the same so the threads you have read that say otherwise are not seeing the MIL as abusive so therefore the advice is damaging

@PetesBigSausagePizza

This thread is interesting because if this was your MIL there would be people saying she could call you a massive cunt to your face daily and still be owed time with your child. But for some reason, a brother who no longer wants to argue with you shouldn't have a normal relationship with his nephew.

But that's not the same at all. In the kind of cases you mention, the reason the MIL is in the picture is because the child's other parent wants the MIL - ie his mother - to have contact, and the reason it's different isn't about the relationship of child to relative, but the rights of the PARENT(S) to decide on who their child has contact with.

OP is the only parent.

She does indeed have rights that trump everything else, and that is precisely because when it comes to the crunch, she and she alone is the person responsible for her child's welfare. The buck stops with her - no-one else - and that's why it's her call. No one else, least of all an uncle, is going to be the one left holding the can when the child is upset by being put in the middle of a family row, for example.

MIL situation where you have a father arguing that yes, he does want his mother to have access? Totally different - the point there is that there is ANOTHER parent with equal responsibility who wants to do it differently.

For context, I've seen several threads on here where grandparents want access but BOTH parents are against it/have cut contact... guess what, no access.

It's the parents' call - here, there's just one parent.

And she's made her decision.

He can't have a relationship with the nephew if he ignores the mother.
A child is not an object or pawn in power games.

I'm back in touch with my brother in law after a big row and long pause. I am still wary of him because I had no idea the row was coming until it hit, and boy it was bad. He brought up stuff from years back that I had no idea had bothered him, in a formal setting that is now part of the legal record. I'm OK to move on but I'm not going to leave my back exposed to him.

I'm happy for him to have a relationship with ds, who's an older teenager now. But guess what? It's up to him to sort that out. They finally had a phone conversation this Christmas after he contacted me and got ds's number - i handed it out with ds's permission. Before that he could have written cards and letters, phoned me, whatsapped, almost anything. He did nothing for almost 3 years.

If he wanted to have a relationship with your son, he could - at the very worst case scenario, he could avoid badmouthing his mum.

[quote Silenceisgolden20]@PetesBigSausagePizza
Have you not read the OPs post?
Why are you writing in defence of a man like that? Have you got nothing better to do?

Stonewalling her is abusive and I think the OP knows her family a lot more than you do.
And yes the advice for a MIL like that would be the same so the threads you have read that say otherwise are not seeing the MIL as abusive so therefore the advice is damaging[/quote]
Why are you being so rude? I have about as much to do as you have, I guess, as we are both on the thread.

The OP said she sees that he is abusive because she thinks not speaking to her is abusive.

She has said her whole family agrees with the uncle. She has said he has babysat for her about ten times and asked to do so more often and does have family dinners with them all. She said they have an ongoing dispute that he has said he can't deal with anymore.

I have also said that I am in an almost identical situation but have decided to let the person in my life because I think it is best for my child.

The OP may know her family more than I do but she has literally posted here canvassing opinions because she isn't sure and the other people in her family disagree with her. She has not asked to be told she is right.

Now failing a massive drip feed where we find out he is a total bastard or abusive to her or the child I am happy to stand by my post.

Please actually read mine and the OP's posts and get over yourself.