Our daughter renouncing our family

[TheRealJuliane]

I will seriously think about your advice.
DH and I have been on mostly supervised visitation for the last couple of months, except for several times when DD wanted to use my car to go somewhere by herself and leave me to babysit at her house.
I think what bothers me and my father and stepmother the most is that DD feels very free to lambast everyone in the family verbally, and doesn’t care if it is public or not. What I mean is, if she gets angry at a family member, she pitches a temper tantrum then and there. I am feeling less and less tolerant of this behavior.
And although I love her with all my heart and would love to be part of her life, I am not sure that we are up for trying to please her right at this moment. Maybe I have answered my own question here.
I’ll keep praying. Thank you for your insights.

I am so sorry that you are going through this. It would kill me not to be able to spend time with my grandchildren (I don’t have any yet, but I can look ahead). But there’s only so much you can do. Your daughter knows that she holds a weapon to your head when she keeps her children from seeing you. That gives her tremendous power over you. The public scenes are unacceptable and may be more of a cry for help. Do you know for 100% certain that there is no abuse going on?

In the end, as you say, you may have to back away for now and let her come to her senses. It hurts to lose contact with those precious children but the situation is quite difficult and anything you do is not likely to fix it.

My prayers are with you. Do not question what you did in the past. It is gone. Your daughter has an obligation to learn how to handle the past.

 

[Debbie58]

I feel your pain. I am going through a similar situation with my oldest daughter. We are not allowed to see the baby at all. He is 6 months old and they live 15 minutes from us. I feel the husband is controlling and this has been expressed by family members as well as her co workers who have encountered him and his mother. I expressed this concern to her and she got very defensive of him and told us he is not controlling at all. We have overlooked his rudeness and arrogance many times in an effort to have a relationship with our daughter.
When the baby was born they named him Alexander, A name we all loved. I indicated we could call him Alex for short. (traditional little boys name). At that point her husband make a joke about calling the baby LEX after Lex Luther from the Superman comic strip. (Lex was the bad guy) My daughter had no problems with our nickname, but changed her tune after her husband and his mother ranted on about the nickname and how “horrible and uneducated” we were not to call him LEX. Well we got kicked out of the hospital and have only seen them when we tried to have a meeting to discuss all this nonsense and he left yelling at me and said if we did not call the baby LEX we could not see our daughter or the baby. That was 6 months ago. I told our daughter she was always welcome to call or come over and nothing. She came to pick up her sister and would not even come to the house…had her sister walk to the front of the development as to obey her husband that she not come to our house.

Kids today have different standards than we did growing up .We may have raised them to love family and respect their parents and other family memebers…but they grow up and decide to go against all we tried to instil in them. I think it has a lot to do with TV and the people they hang around as they get older and get out on their own. It is heartbreaking and all we can do is pray pray pray for them.

I will keep you and your family in prayer. I understand your hurt. It’s a Grandparents roll to “spoil” the Grandkids…after all…you raised your kids and they all survived a drink of cola or a cookie or staying up half an hour later. I’m so sorry your are going through this. Prayers sent!

 

[aicirt]

You really need to stop beating yourself up and get on with your lives. It isn’t you nor your husband, it is her and her husband.
We’ve been through it in our family and off the top of my head I can think about eight others who are estranged from their kids. One friend hates going to her step-daughter’s house because she makes them take off their shoes and scrub in the kitchen before they even think of approaching the children. If she isn’t mentally ill, she’s giving a good imitation of it.
Another was forced into going to family therapy at the insistance of her dil. That ended abruptly when the therapist focused on the dil’s control issues. Dil then delcared therapy was no longer needed and refused to return.
You’ve tried. Please focus on the kids who love and respect you. Focus on your husband. Go and enjoy the things you can enjoy together. None of us know how much time we have. And remember the Prodigal Son and Shakespere who remarked “An ungrateful child is like serpent’s teeth.” None of this is new. We just think it is because it is happening to us. God bless.

 

[sanctamaria17]

OP, I’m almost just out college, in a still young romantic relationship (2 months old), no babies yet and I don’t think any of this is normal.

One, while my parents didn’t let my grandparents interfere (wouldn’t let them buy a car for us at sixteen, etc), they made sure we still have good relationships with the extended family and made use of their help when they were still young parents and needed it.

Two, Train Up a Child? Didn’t a kid die because his mom used those methods?

Three, some rules I get (keeping the kiddo’s routine, not interfering with things like breastfeeding or discipline tactics). But why so excessive?

Four, he dropped out of school and works part-time? Please tell me your daughter works? I can understand if it’s the bad economy but come on! I could understand if he kept searching and had this because at least it’s something. Not when you could get something better and you refuse it. When I see some of my post-grad friends do that, it’s just annoying. When they’re parents, I get scared.

I think you should just let her go. Try and keep an eye on your grandkids, but don’t put up with her BS. She’s toxic. And don’t blame yourself. She’s an adult, she makes her own choices and she’ll reap what she sows. Just pray that she starts sowing good seeds.

 

[Musician]

Thank you tremendously for your insights, questions, and prayers. You have helped more than you realize…
I am not looking for validation of how I feel and think I am going to react to my daughter. But what I feel like would be most helpful would be for us to leave her alone. We did that last year for months and months and then, desperate to be part of her life, I ended up giving them both jobs at my studio, which they treated like a joke…
My DH responds a bit differently than I do; he feels that our daughter is behaving like a seventh-grader. But he also wants to be very careful how we respond. His main concern is their method of discipline, which is the Pearl “To Train A Child”. I am a bit concerned myself about this.
Anyway, I am focusing now on things that bring me happiness and peace, like spending time with my sons and their pregnant wives; putting more thought into playing/orchestrating the music at Mass; spending quality time with DH.
So life goes on…

 

[insideitall]

is this the method y’all’re talking about? gospeltruth.net/children/pearl_tuac.htm

this actually seems to make plenty of sense - assuming it’s done properly. just like when dog training, with using a choker or prong collar - my dog was trained with those collars, and very rarely needs a correction. but yes, I have seen plenty of people who don’t understand how to properly use it and end up yanking on the collar all the time (or the dog is constantly pulling and choking itself), because they haven’t trained the dog correctly (they think the *collar *will fix the problem, and don’t realize it’s the *training *with the *aid *of the collar), and end up hurting it. I can certainly see how this method could lead to abuse, if the parents use it incorrectly or are not mentally stable themselves.

I would be wary of your daughter and her husband using this method, because of the issues she seems to have in controlling her frustration/anger, and because of the control issues her husband seems to have. in addition, you mentioned that his family has a history of unresolved problems. this seems to me to indicate that he has not learned the proper way to deal with issues but was taught to ignore them, which is what they seem to want to do here (that is, if other people don’t follow exactly what they say, they’ll cut them off).

so while I would love to say “don’t bother with her anymore” I think it’s important you and your husband stay as involved as possible, just so someone can keep an eye on the children’s safety, especially until they’re old enough to find help, should they need it, on their own.

also, if you back down, the children will grow up being told lies about how awful their grandparents are. imagine all their classmates talking about how they got to visit grandma for the weekend, or look at what grandpa got them for their birthday, etc etc, so the kids go home and ask your daughter and son-in-law, why don’t grandma and grandpa come to see us? why don’t we get presents? (because remember, even if you send cards and gifts, you don’t actually know the kids are getting them!) and even if your daughter isn’t intentionally lying to them (because from her pov she’s observing everything to be true) she’s poisoning their view of you from the youngest age. that’s something they might never think to challenge, and if they do it might be once they’ve grown up and realize how abnormal their parents are, which might very well be too late for everyone.

I would suggest what someone else already mentioned, trying to find a compromise maybe by suggesting “supervised visits.” it seems that you live fairly close to them - I would stick to small things, like going to the park for an hour, walking around the zoo or museum, or just sit and color for a little while. have a tea party, play with some toys, whatever. little stuff that shouldn’t cause your daughter to flip the hell out, but that your grandchild will remember. plus, up until they’re like, 5, an hour is an insanely long time for them (it’s still a long time for me…), but hopefully not too long to be around your daughter.

I would also start to lessen the “help” you’re giving these people who clearly do not have any desire to be functional productive members of society. that’s fine and dandy if they really can support themselves, but when they’re being lazy and mooching off of others - regardless of whether it’s family or the government - enable them as little as possible.

I hope you get some of this mess straightened out!!