Our children do not like our DM

[Rosengolds]

My sister and I have a complex toxic relationship with our parents. We are NC with our father completely, for good reason. Sister and I are close and we are not toxic together and love each other very much and support each other 100%. We help each other with our children and have close strong bonds with them. I love being an Aunty and my sister loves being an Aunty too.

Our mother is clingy and needy and alone. She is not very old, in her 60’s. We have boundaries with her now although she will still be subtly emotionally manipulative at times we are better at handling it. She is in our lives for mostly special types of occasions and this has helped manage her behaviour as she has less opportunity to do or say things that can cause issues. Unfortunately this means she ends up just grateful for the crumbs we throw out inviting her occasionally and this makes me feel guilty that I am perhaps emotionally abusing her by being distant and boundaried. She doesn’t really understand why I might feel the way I do and any confessions would deeply wound her and just lead to more emotional torment. She sometimes has moments of clarity about herself but will always revert back to victim status. It is quite boring and repetitive.

However our girl children (bar one of our DC a boy) grown to dislike our mother quite obviously and I have noticed they actively avoid her and my DC speak negatively of her. I feel bad about this, I don’t think this is a good thing. I have tried to help them have a relationship with her but she is mostly too self centred to be honest. She will buy them nice gifts for their birthdays and want to be invited along to things to look at them but wants to monopolise all my attention (or my Dsis). This makes the DC become jealous of sharing us whilst she is ignoring them and angry at DM for being ignored. DM only knows anything about them because we tell her, she never asks the DC anything directly.

Recently DM told one of my DC off during a mild disagreement I was having with my own child and this just made my DD even more mad at her GM. in the context my DM thought she was taking my side in the disagreement. All this did was make my DD feel like 2 adults were against her and one that didn’t even like her. I immediately stopped the conversation with my DD and we dropped DM off home and I sorted it out with my DD on our own.

It’s hard to keep them all apart for good, as DM seems oblivious to it all. My DC say they don’t feel like she even likes them but she still buys them things and wants to come along so it’s very confusing. I don’t want to keep inflicting this on them but also DM wants to be involved!

Has anyone been in this situation? I am not sure what is best

If your mother is too toxic for YOU to deal with, it’s the SAME deal for your children as well. Why are you subjecting your children to your mother?. I presume you’re doing this because you hope that she will somehow behave better this time around. As you have seen this is a forlorn hope. She’s emotionally harming them and otherwise confusing them right in front of your very eyes. She ignores them yet buys them nice presents. It also looks like your mother has favoured the boy child over the girls here, again such favouritism is unacceptable and this will damage the relationship between siblings.

Your mother has not apologised nor has accepted any responsibility for her actions has she?.

Your boundaries are still somewhat mixed up and you are mired in FOG (fear obligation and guilt) re your mother. This needs to be addressed in therapy. Your mother is not being emotionally abused by you, why would you think this at all?. Both your sister and you need to reduce contact levels further with your mother to zero sum.

I would suggest you read Toxic Parents by Susan Forward as a starting point and also look at and post on the current “Well we took you to Stately Homes” thread on these Relationships pages.

You all need to stay away from her. No good comes of having any contact with her.

@AttilaTheMeerkat thank you your feedback is useful.

well DM does say she feels we neglect her and don’t want her around. She says we have shut her out. She says she loves all the DC. She also says that she has tried with them but they don’t seem to like her. She does really just bother with the boy now. He is very innocent and neuro diverse so he does not pick up on many of the things the girls do. I think DM is jealous, especially of anyone who has my attention, I always feel like an object everyone is fighting over.

I’ve not been able to cut her off as yes, guilt and also she doesn’t do anything so terrible I have a reason to. It’s just low level things that grate on you. She is more savvy now to not have a lot of detailed emotional convos in front of the DC as we refuse but I dread the DC leaving me alone with her as she will immediately launch in the moment they are out of ear shot about the past and a huge guilt trip.

I actually think I have had a horrible realisation right now that the DC are our shields against this. She knows she can’t do it when the kids are present as we won’t put up with it, but it’s like she is desperately wanting to be alone with me (I won’t be alone with her willingly). So she tries to get rid of the DC to get me alone? The moment they aren’t around she will just reel me into whatever spiral emotion guilt trip she is desperately wanting to share. The desperation of it all is so pitiful and unnerving. I now feel like a truly terrible parent. I was genuinely trying to help my DC have a grandma and yes telling myself she wasn’t that bad.

You know she’s toxic.
Your kids can see through her and don’t like her.
I agree with @AttilaTheMeerkat . Your kids don’t need someone like this in their lives and you shouldn’t make them tolerate her. Soon enough she’ll turn on them, they’ll dislike her more and your mother will blame you.
You’re thinking way to much about her feelings and putting yourself and your kids second.

*too much

You can see what its doing to the kids and indeed they are a sort of buffer here.

She can say what she likes but the fact remains that she favours the boy over the girls. None of you should be seeing her at all and you need to start dropping all levels of contact to zero sum. Her husband is also abusive and that fact is yet another reason to drop the rope here she holds out to you.

You are not a terrible parent at all, many people have made the error of allowing their children to have a relationship with a toxic grandparent even after they have suffered at their hands. Your children need emotionally healthy role models in their lives and your mother does not fit the bill.

Trust your dc’s instinct. They are picking up that the dynamic is wrong and it sounds like you’re maybe (unintentionally) gaslighting them - trying to convince them that what they’re seeing and feeling isn’t reality (when you’ve admitted it is).

Fwiw, I’m NC with my mum (and my dc were years before I was, they didn’t need that drama, it’s my job to protect them from all that). My mum did the same sort of thing, occasionally freaking out and screaming at my dc for minor and silly things. E.g., once dd was struggling to go to sleep while I was putting her to bed (she was 5) and my mum came flying into her room, slamming the door into the wall, screaming about how she needed to be quiet and go to sleep RIGHT NOW or she was going to pack up and leave in the morning and never come back. One big 65 year old woman tantrum. 🙄 Completely uncalled for and unnecessary when I had it all under control and all was fine. But a child being overtired and upset made her feel overwhelmed and out of control. Because she’s selfish and immature and can’t handle big emotions.

That’s not something my kids need to be exposed to. They were too little at the time to really understand what was happening but yours sound old enough that they can see it for what it is. Validate that and show them how important it is to trust their intuition about a person.

She is trying to steal the heart and mind of the boy here from under your very nose by giving him further attention, gifts and such like. She could well encourage him to tell on you so using him as a further way of getting back at you. If she makes him the golden child this too is a role not without price either. This is the sort of behaviour narcissistic people do as routine. Such contact if continued will harm the relationship between him and his sibling/s so this cannot be allowed to continue.

You are the parent here and it’s down to you to show good judgment as well as protecting them from malign influences like your mother. If you have doubts for goodness sake do not show it.

I do not tell my DC they are imagining anything, I don’t pressure them into feeling guilty for DM, just that she is invited as she says she wants to be there. I’ve never once told DC to be nice to her. I’m aware I am in control of that but I haven’t felt like I am - she is just a fixture of a birthday or a Christmas but we all know it’s for her sake and not our own. I empathise with my DC and recognise when she has ignored them, I will say I am sorry for that and yes I saw it too. I have tried to draw them together in shared conversation.

I told my DD that DM should not have got involved in our disagreement and I was sorry for that too, hence me stopping the discussion when DM went too far and trying to validate that DD was ok to feel that DM had inappropriately got involved. I just didn’t realise they are my buffer from my fear of being alone with DM. Ultimately I think she just wants to be with me alone as she likes to tell me her problems like I am a close friend. I never tell her my problems.

DM was not always like this with the DC, it’s just got worse as they got older. She likes them as babies. The boy has always been very happy with DM and they have quite a nice simple RS. She seems to find girls too complex. The girls don’t really mind she likes the boy as they do not even like her. The girls get jealous of DM dominating mine and my Dsis time and what I see now as DM trying to separate us from our DC and DH’s. I think the guilt comes from that I know DM is jealous of me and Dsis relationships and with our DC. I think she may feel that they are a barrier to getting us alone. We all come as packages and she is trying to destabilise that.

The journey now is how on Earth to detach from this needy woman. I am not sure my Dsis can manage it she has too much guilt.

It looks like you’ve replicated your dysfunctional relationship with your mum, with your daughters. Teenagers shouldn’t be disliking their grandmother just because she wants to talk to you during one of the rare moments you invite her over. Please, please take this seriously. My cousin has basically turned my neice into the narcissist copy of my aunt!

I’m not sure how you have inferred this, sorry. I love talking to my DC and my sisters kids in fact I ignore the adults more during these times so I get all the time with them it’s so precious. I like adult chats too but it’s not appropriate when kids are present. I don’t want to have in depth emotional chats with my mother about the past I am not her friend and I live in the present day not the past. She makes me feel very anxious and I dread being alone with her. My DC do not dread being alone with me. She wants to only talk to me. Not talk to them at all. She wants to overshare inappropriate and confusing thoughts and feelings with me that I am not interested in hearing