The Paradox of Visitation, or, You Ain’t Never Gonna Win, Honey
Just another one of those moments that make you go “Huh?”
A member of an estranged parents’ forum describes herself as semi-estranged from her son. Recently she planned a trip to their area and, with much trepidation, asked whether she could see the boys. The parents let her take them for four days. She said that at the start of the visit, “I had not seen them for almost two years and I was worried that they would not feel the same about me because I was sure they had overheard my ES & DIL speaking negatively about me.” But the visit went splendidly, and the two little boys were as loving toward her as always.
Afterward, she said she was “happy but more confused than ever.”
How could this be? These were the grandsons they kept from seeing me when I lived in their neighborhood. I could never find out what I did to deserve the E. I asked outright and was told “you know” I had all sorts of ideas, finally deciding it had something to do with the family business.
All of a sudden it made sense to me. What could they overhear their parents saying about me? I didn’t do anything, they knew I didn’t do anything. It makes sense thy wouldn’t speak negatively about me or they would have to be making up and sharing lies with each other. But, at the same time, now it doesn’t make sense at all.
It’s like watching a ferret bob around and around a glass, unable to figure out that the way in is up top.
The failures of theory of mind are cumulative:
- I can’t think of anything I did that would justify the estrangement, therefore I didn’t do anything.
- My son and daughter-in-law are working from the same set of facts, so they must reach the same conclusions. They know I didn’t do anything.
- Because my son and daughter-in-law know I didn’t do anything, they have nothing bad to say about me.
- Assumption: If my son and daughter-in-law had anything bad to say about me, they would bad-mouth me in front of my grandsons.
- Assumption: My son and daughter-in-law wouldn’t make up lies about me. (Noteworthy because estranged parents routinely accuse their children of lying about them.)
The string of logical failures amounts to, “My son and daughter-in-law didn’t badmouth me to their two young children, therefore I’m blameless in the estrangement.”
A further point, and one that people with young children would do well to consider: The group was baffled that the parents would be estranged from the member, but still let the member see the grandchildren. As one member pointed out,
[Y]ou are toxic enough that they feel justified in refusing to have a relationship with you, yet they are happy to let their precious children go away and stay overnight in your care??That speaks volumes. You will drive yourself crazy looking for a valid reason they had to estrange you, there isn’t one. They have estranged you just because they could.
The member replied,
Good point about letting them stay with me. I did have a mother who had a mean streak, I would never leave my kids with her, never.
The group agreed that if the son and daughter-in-law thought the member was actually toxic, they wouldn’t let their children see her, much less go off with her alone for four days. The fact that the parents allowed this was evidence that their complaints about the member weren’t real, that it was all a head game.
Mind you, the same people complain that parents who withhold the grandkids are “dragging the children into the adults’ fight,” that the mature thing would be to let the grandparents see the grandchildren, and that refusing to do so is “severe elder and child abuse.”
So if you’re going to be damned if you do and damned if you don’t, then pick don’t. Even the estranged parents say they wouldn’t let their kids around people they thought were abusive. If your parent is abusive, then–I’m looking at you, stream of recent posters on Reddit–don’t let your kids see them.
Lagniappe: A member who’s been cut off from her son and daughter-in-law for a while snooped and found out that they’re expecting. Another member said,
I am also sorry that you found out about your expected granddaughter in this way. It seems EC keep secrets as weapons. It is their way of misusing power, and it works. We are hurt when information such as a new pregnancy, wedding, birth[,] move, etc. comes to us second hand. And, they know the information will get to us. My ED is the queen of secrets.
Estranged adult children hide information from their parents because they want their parents to find out.
In the face of such logic, what’s hundreds of posts from estranged adult children panicking because their parents learned things they tried to keep secret? Nothing, my friends, nothing at all.
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I really can’t wrap my head around the “they estrange because they can” comment. What does that even mean? People do this to their parents because they have nothing better to do that day? No – there is always a reason.
A bunch of them are estranged from their own parents. For valid reasons, of course, not just “because they can.”
What’s scariest about that phrase is that it originated with a single member, now a mod, who’s managed to spread it through the entire group. As thought-ending statements go, it’s brilliant. It does require the audience to not ask, “But even if they could, why would they want to?”, but forum members already think of their children as black boxes. Too often they’re grateful for an excuse to not think any further.
I tangled with that mod a while back. She contradicted herself between one comment and the next, diverted manically, and lied. A lot. When she was caught in one lie, she’d lie to cover her tracks, then lie to cover for that lie. Not the kind of person whose children estrange “because they can.” But exactly the kind who’d want to encourage everyone else to believe it.
I believe that she is the one that says “anything addressed to an estranged child will be heard by an estranged child” which is also one of those things that sounds deep and meaningful but is nonsensical. It’s all very othering — the “estranged child” is the boogie man responsible for everything because of their nature as “estranged child” and there’s no reason to look any further. It’s bizarro logic designed to leave them blameless. In this specific case, she’s been estranged by pretty much everyone in her family. But it’s not her. Nope. It’s the doing of her ex-husband and the “estranged children,” despite the fact she has multiple mental health diagnoses that she either dismisses or uses as an excuse, depending on the day.
That’s another of the ferret-around-the-glass moments. Anything a parent sends to their estranged child will be received by a person who doesn’t think the same way the parent does–which is absolutely correct and an insight that many of the parents are lacking at gut level, if not intellectually. But then the “person who doesn’t think the same way the parent does” is defined as a member of class Estranged Child, a group that’s uniform in its irrationality and selfishness. (But which doesn’t include the estranged children who are now estranged parents as well.) And we’re back to “Don’t even try to figure out why they did what they did because they’re aliens.”
She’s the one who’s been diagnosed repeatedly with BPD, and says she’s talked her current therapist into agreeing she doesn’t have it. Honey, no.
Since Estranged Children are so horrible, it makes me wonder why they would even care to reconcile. Witness the relatively new guy that just announced his renewed contact with his EC and his assertion that he will be vilified for helping her. That’s the vibe they put off. I can’t see how that’s helpful to anyone that genuinely wants to reconcile. The person in your post, for example, seems to almost get it sometimes but is consistently led in another direction based on the echo chamber’s twisted logic. I’ve said it before — I don’t feel that most of the posters really have any connection with their ECs or any genuine desire to reconcile. They just thrive on narrative of martyrdom they’ve constructed.
And they piled on, everyone with a “Why would we criticize you; we’re so supportive” and then “I’m happy for you, but…” and he either had the sense to leave or he was banned.
Not sure how to ask, but I’d really like to hear more about that – both the mod and the tangle. It seems like you could make a full-blown study out of the spread of that slogan. It feels like a cult.
What it does is, it establishes a nice, awfully convenient hierarchy of motivations for the estranged parents, where the children’s motivations are subordinate and flat out untrue, and any flattering thing the parent decides in place of those stated motivations takes precedence. It’s the building block from which all the other nonsense originates: they get to begin with a presupposed, inviolable foundation that their kids are only estranging to get at them personally, which gives them all the reason they need to dismiss and supersede their kids’ desires and stated intentions at every other stage.
After all, they’re only doing it to attack the parent, who would trust what they have to say?
And they get to decide all that from within their insular little bubbles, with no input from the kids at all. Very useful for maintaining a self-flattering view of the situation.
I was going to type the words “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” until I hit the part of the post that included that. It strikes me as a very common abuse tactic, setting up the no-win scenario. Allowing an estranged parent to visit with your children is proof that the estranged parent isn’t that bad. Not allowing an estranged parent to visit with your children is proof that you’re playing mind games and are you yourself abusive.
“The only winning move is not to play.” –WarGames
I would love to see you do a post about “I don’t want to deprive my children of a relationship with their grandparents.”
I would be interested in this. This is a hard thought to get past in the beginning, and I left it up to my daughter (who, as it turns out, wasn’t interested). Something came to light recently which irreparably destroyed any possibility there and left me with zero guilt over the situation, but it was a source of some emotional conflict in the beginning. I now wholeheartedly agree with Issendai. If your parent is abusive to you, don’t let them have contact with your children. It may look different, but ultimately the abusive conduct will repeat and/or you will leave yourself and your family vulnerable to additional harm.
I think it is a stage in recovery, where you acknowledge that you can’t have a relationship with your parent, but you haven’t yet fully emotionally signed on to the reason why. That’s how it was for me. First, I got to a point where I was so sick of the misery my mother brought into my life that I wanted to break contact even if that meant I was a bad person. And it was only after that that I started reading around stuff about childhood abuse that I acknowledged that it was abusive, and that I had a responsibility to protect not only myself but especially my children. And around that time a part of me that is very matter-of-fact and practical started saying to me, you do realise that if you keep in contact with your mother she’ll try to use your children as a way of getting at you? And having had that thought, I couldn’t believe I’d ever thought differently – the truth of it was so undeniable. I’d been reasoning from false premises – that my mother at some level had my best interests at heart or at least was a person who would play fair or didn’t do it on purpose or something.
I’ll do it as soon as it doesn’t send me into shrieking, hair-pulling fits. So many people giving in because it’s easier, or saying, “I’m always with them and I speak up as soon as Grandma starts making mean comments,” or–this one still makes me want to stomp things–not having the spine to disinvite drunk Grandpa to the kids’ birthday party, so she asked her FIVE-YEAR-OLDS whether they wanted him there. They said, “Sure.” After that, everything was, “What could I do? They wanted him there.”
There’s a pit of denial that I want to examine but am too tangled in it to make any sense of it. For example: When I was about 13 and my brother was about 5, my parents went on a second honeymoon, leaving us in the care of my alcoholic grandmother. Decades later I asked Mom why she thought that was a good idea, and she said they thought she wouldn’t drink because she was staying at our house and she didn’t have a car to get to the liquor store. Which was a mile away. Along sidewalks so safe that I routinely made the trip myself. Because the liquor store was BESIDE THE GROCERY STORE. Somehow, Grandma wasn’t deterred from drinking.
Oh–and we spent every holiday at that grandmother’s house. You know, where her stash lived.
I think a combination of duty and “don’t rock the boat because it won’t do any good” made my parents’ denial necessary. It’s the duty part I may be having the hardest time with–the idea that you have no choice but to put up with these people, so you may as well learn to think whatever keeps you happy.
*Sigh* It’s so toxic. My mom fell victim to the same thinking regarding her abusive mother (and still sometimes tries to minimize or her defend the abuse she herself endured, “She [my grandmother] was trying her best,” etc.). I was lucky in that my grandmother didn’t direct any notably abusive behavior toward me, as far as I remember, but it was miserabe to witness her bad treatment of my mom, and still peripherally harmful.
If you have kids, you’re doing them a favor if you keep their abusive relatives away, even if the relatives don’t abuse them directly (though the odds are low, since people are abusive because that’s how their social brains work or fail to work: they’ve been genetically disposed and/or socialized to process social relationships in ways that can be/usually are abusive). There are outliers, but in my experience in discussion fora (and my personal experience), the grandkids are much more likely to appreciate being spared the abuse they would endure or have to witness if abusive grandparents – or whatever relatives – are allowed contact.
As someone who is semi-estranged from her mother, I take steps to actively protect my children from her nuttiness. Mirroring what happened with her own children, she was OK with them when they were small – up to about age 10. Then as they began to emerge as teens & young adults, she got increasingly frustrated with them. Yet she will tell us constantly how much she loves and misses them and needs to see them. Both my children know that I prefer they never be alone with Grandma (not that they want to be) in case she has one of her “episodes” of anger & upset. I would hate for them to have to deal with that alone.
I got this passage from somewhere on reddit, it’s part of my file of “useful quotes about Ns” and annoyingly I didn’t take down the name of the poster;
“OK, but the question remains – this woman abused you relentlessly through your childhood – why do you intend to give her access to your daughter?
I think I know why. I think it’s the #1 FLEA of all time.
You still crave your mother’s approval, validation. You are about to give birth, an experience you no doubt view as incredible. You are about to make a baby, which is spectacular! Really! You’re about to do SOMETHING VALUABLE WHICH HAS MERIT!
And I think subconsciously that you think this will make your mother something different. That you will FINALLY be worth something because look at this amazing baby, this affirmation of life, this perfect perfect thing, look mom, look at what I did, please love me.
She’ll never love you and you know that, intellectually, but you don’t care.
Am I far off the mark? I don’t think so. This subreddit is full-to-bursting of posts from women who recognize their parents’ pathologies and still insist on maintaining relationships with NGramma and Ngrampa … for the “the sake of the kids.” Ignoring all previous history. Because they’re FAAAAMBLY.
Go ahead, tell me I’m wrong. Spit in the face of history. Then talk to me in a year. Or decide that your kid(s) deserve better than you got. It’s ok, I don’t expect you to pick them, it never happens. Just remember it later.”
That would be deliciouscrab, in this thread:
https://www.reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists/comments/2lzmye/im_pregnant_nmom_is_acting_like_im_a_surrogate/
The user is deliciouscrab. Links get caught by automod, but the thread is here:
r/raisedbynarcissists/comments/2lzmye/im_pregnant_nmom_is_acting_like_im_a_surrogate/
Thank you!
No Ioethe, I don’t think that you’re off the mark at all, in fact, you’re spot on. Some adult children will continuously crave the approval and validation of a parent and do anything to get it, and parents do often allow their own abusive parents to access the kids for ‘the sake of the kids’ and the family. I think that some parents might also do it for some other reasons too, but these reasons could still include approval and validation:
Because of the overwhelming pressure that might be placed on a parent by others, e.g. family, friends, church, society, to do the right thing. In this case, doing the right thing will be seen as letting your own abusive parent (because they’re family) see your kids, despite the fact that this isn’t doing the right thing at all. But I suppose that sometimes it’s just easier to give in, and also it’s a way of gaining approval, i.e. others, particularly family, will approve of what you’re doing.
Because some parents desire to be seen as nice, diplomatic, forgiving, a good son or daughter, a good Christian or person e.t.c., is greater than their desire to protect their kids. And in this situation it could be argued that the parent is seeking both approval and validation, e.g. others will approve of what they’re doing and tell them or validate that they’re a good and forgiving person.
Because the parent thinks that if they allow their own abusive parent to see their grandchild them this will placate them and make them easier to handle or they’ll cause less trouble. Also, they may be secretly hoping that the abusive parent will approve of them and their decision.
Because the parent thinks that if they allow their own abusive parent to abuse their grandchild then that will make life easier for them, and abusing the grandchild will become the abuser’s main focus instead of harassing and abusing them. There’s also a chance that the parent might hope to gain some kind of approval from their abusive parent if they allow the abusive parent to get their own way, i.e. abuse the child.
Because some parents want their own children to suffer and hurt in the way that they suffered and hurt. And maybe they think that by allowing someone else to do the abusing, then they’re not bad or abusive parents themselves. Therefore, in their own mind they’ve validated the fact that they’re a good and non-abusive parent.
After reading what you’ve written, Ioethe, and thinking about the reasons as to why some parents allow their abusive parents to access their grandchildren, I’m actually quite stunned at how the need for approval and validation does play such a strong role!
Thanks – would like to underline that this is the work of reddit user deliciouscrab.
Okay, thanks Ioethe.
I’ve got to say, I don’t think it’s always to do with fleas. I’m on a support group (not RBN) where there are a ton of people coming on and trying to decide whether they have the “right” to deny their (abusive) parents contact with their grandkids and there are a few common issues:
– adult child isn’t aware that what their parent did was abuse – they write it off as different parenting styles, clashing personalities, etc. This often means that they feel they don’t have the right to choose NC for their children.
– adult child believes that the abuse was related to circumstances and won’t be repeated – “I was a difficult child”, parents under pressure, lack of money etc – and that it’s therefore safe to have contact
– related to that, abusers often don’t treat their grandchildren in exactly the same way as they treated their own children. I’ve heard a few stories where the abusive parent showered the grandchild with (inappropriate, but not abusive) attention and toys and money. I think this is just another round of golden child/scapegoat, with a side order of gaslighting: “look how well I am treating your child – your own childhood can’t be half as bad as you remember”
For me it was a mixture of all three. I didn’t know about NPD until after I decided to go NC with my mother. I’d just had enough of her coming into our house, expecting to have her every emotion managed, and then trying to create drama whenever she was bored. Regarding my kids I even felt slightly guilty about the NC as I thought I was depriving them of something, that my experience with my mother didn’t justify me unilaterally making the decision for them that they wouldn’t see her – and it was only once I started reading around online that I came across NPD, and came fairly quickly to realise how much of her behaviour I’d written off as odd was actually probably malicious, and that my kids had probably had a narrow escape. I’d never left them alone with her – whatever the rights and wrongs, I knew that I never wanted my children to be treated the way I was – I think I believed that her parenting style was old fashioned and unnecessarily authoritarian, and that mine was modern and slightly faddy but probably good – and I now think that her parenting style was abusive, and mine pretty much normal.
adult child believes that the abuse was related to circumstances and won’t be repeated – “I was a difficult child”, parents under pressure, lack of money etc – and that it’s therefore safe to have contact
Abused kids internalize the idea that their parents abused them because they deserve it–they’re bad, stupid, difficult, in some undefined way so defective that they drove their parents to it. As adults, some of us look down at our own children and unconsciously think, “My children are good and innocent. My parents won’t abuse them because they’re not flawed like me.” It can be tremendously painful to realize that no, the parent didn’t abuse because the child was bad, the parent abused because the parent was bad. Until the abused-child-now-a-parent makes that leap, they’re going to keep finding reasons to serve their kids up to their parents.
Good grief, I didn’t think of that. A parent believing that their own child won’t be abused because they’re not bad like them.
Hi toomuch,
I was mainly thinking about parents who know without doubt that their own parents are abusive.
Not realizing that your parent was/is abusive can be an issue, one problem being that you are raised to believe that the abuse is the ‘norm’. As a result of being raised to believe that abuse is the ‘norm’, I ended up in an abusive relationship in my very early twenties. Even when my boyfriend tried to choke me, it didn’t register as abusive or dangerous in the way that it should have done. Fortunately, I eventually saw this abusive man for who he truly was, and over time, became much better at recognizing abusive behaviour.
In regards to it being related to circumstances, this is something else that victims of abuse are often raised to believe. In my family there were many reasons – my mother not being happy in her abusive marriage (my parents abused one another), not having enough money, or my mother being stressed out and tired, to name but a few. Unfortunately, it’s often not until you’re way into adulthood that you start to realize that there are no excuses for abuse. And even then, there’s always someone ‘waiting in the wings’ with the ‘Nobody’s perfect’ or ‘They did the best they can’ defence.
I haven’t been in contact with my family for many years now, but it was only fairly recently that I realized that my mother is probably NPD/BPD.
I should add that there were NO children involved when I was in a relationship with this abusive man.
“I think I believed that her parenting style was old fashioned and unnecessarily authoritarian, and that mine was modern and slightly faddy but probably good – and I now think that her parenting style was abusive, and mine pretty much normal.”
Yes, this. And what’s worse is that it carried over into my own custody situation. My ex was, I thought, simply more authoritarian than I am and I was resigned to sharing custody and having to make up for his parenting style when I had her. Now that the custody dust has settled, I know it went a lot further than authoritarian, and I regret not trying to change things earlier. Thankfully, she’s with me full time now.
I know Issendai asserts otherwise in (at least) one place, but I will argue to the ends of the earth that authoritarian always equals abusive, whether we’re talking parents, political systems, office management, whatever. As a corollary, lots of cultures normalize abuse, encouraging people who would otherwise be fine to treat their felow humans abusively. It’s an unfortunate effect of human social psychology selecting for narcissistic traits in leaders.
There is also a huge public narrative that grandparents are sweet and always an asset to your child and depriving your children of grandparents is an awful thing to do. And if you get enough pressure and don’t yet realize they were abusive – or maybe they aren’t actually abusive – maybe they just aren’t good people to be around for other reasons – then there is a lot of pressure to let the kids see the grandparents or you aren’t a good parent.
It could be subconscious desire for approval, as suggested, or it could be (as suggested in the reddit thread) the pressure from family and friends.
In the end, in order to stop talking to my abusive parents, I had to cut off contact with my ENTIRE EXTENDED FAMILY, including many members I loved and miss. They absolutely and unilaterally refused to respect any desire I had to not speak to my mother and would pass along information, including contact info, on the grounds that it is just somehow wrong to not speak to your mother.
So now I not only am free from my nMom, but free from relationships with brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins, nieces, nephews, etc. I come from a large family and this is over 100 people by now and now my family is three people, myself, my wife, and my son.
It’s hard to judge someone who decides that is too high a price to pay.
I regret so much. Please, never doubt yourself. Keeping abusive parents away from your children can stop abusive grandparents being with your grandchildren.
When I was 49 and my mother was 70, she devoted much energy towards “How DDC is failing as a grandmother before her first and only grandkid is born”. Here’s the baby shower message thread –
9:23am
my mother:
Love u, Miss u like crazy. Isn’t there a way we can resolve this
2:39pm
me:
I love you too Mom. I’m not sure what you want to try and resolve. I am having a baby shower at our house. Space is limited, and guests will be adults.
I was happily calling people to share the news, and you are the exception to sharing my happiness. Everyone else is fine with the shower.
3:26pm
my mother:
Not true. It’s your house & your shower. And, I guess thats that. My grandson (my son) & his partner want other daughter’s 6 yr.old (my nephew) to be there. Only Son (my brother) is not happy with your no exceptions rule. And you know other daughter (my sister) won’t come without her son. My grandson’s partner would not come with out her dog. Where does thatleave me? any sllight to my family is a slight to me. This is not about me. This is about your family. I am reacting to what you have chosen. Pls respect us& my wishes. I await your deceision. Sometimes exceptions need to be made because that’s families do to stay together.
3:31pm
And by the way who is everyone else. Not my grandson, son, me & other daughter whenshe finds out. The most important people .
3:31pm…seconds later
Or your friends.
*my mom’s writing = sic
I know this is somewhat tangential, but I have to say–the likelihood of children actually enjoying a shower is minimal. Also, if in fact all of those people really were complaining to Mom about the shower guest list (and it sounds like that wasn’t actually the case), that doesn’t make them right. It makes them as unreasonable and drama-prone as Mom.
And the last time I checked, there is no legal limit on the number of showers. If Mom wants to choose the guest list, maybe she should set up her own shower.
But I personally would not have wanted to bring my 6 year old to a shower. The child would be bored and I would not be able to enjoy myself. At some point, I opted out of mothers’ days with the family because they involved a lot of waiting around and boring adult conversation that my toddler just could not tolerate while maintaining an acceptable level of behavior. And, yes, that led directly to the end of the world too because I clearly did not appreciate my mother, who the celebrations were evidently all for (definitely not me at all, despite the fidgety proof of my procreation being dragged along with me). I still do not celebrate mothers’ day because the associations are not very pleasant for me, even years after cutting off contact.
Reading this site gave insight into what our ED feelings are. There are situations you can never quite prepare for as a parent that create hurt, sorrow and distance in a family; sometimes permanently. While quiet young our child, Pam, should enormous courage and thoughtfulness; Pam reported suspected abuse against a 4yr old. Upon his arrest and interrogation he admitted to abusing others, including Pam. We we devastated that this predator had harmed and manipulated these poor girls. This family was well respected and active in the community. They questioned our terrified child, Pam was angry with me for putting her through it. How do you explain that the DA needs to speak to her? How does anyone prepare for that trauma. It was horrendous to see her in that pain. We both cried.
It changed the dynamics of our family, it changed all of us. Our child withdrew and we tried to support her in every way. After a couple years of work and encouragement; Pam’s happiness seemed possible. Then a relative that our children had a deep bond, started down a questionable path. There were times we limited contact between them. Only so when the person “got back on the right track” our children wouldn’t have been exposed to the negative inappropriate behavior. There experiences would be positive. Following what Pam had already gone through, we were apprehensive to expose her to anymore upheaval. So only limited contact for about 6 months.
The children had cell phones, later lived at college or with room mates. Once 18 they could AND did have private phone, email and social interaction. So they made their own decisions. Beloved family had visited Pam’s home, exchanged emails and gifts. They called each other. They had a relationship.
Unfortunately 4 yrs after our beloved family member had their life changes, we lost them. Your heart breaking is an ominous sound: Your children’s heart breaking is deafening. We have had many losses since then.
Pam blames me for keeping her away from our relative. She herself will tell you they spoke two days before their passing. Yet she is furious with me and says I kept them apart for the entire 4 yrs. I have been accused of ruining her life. I have contacted her on occasion, but nearly a yr ago she was very ambivalent and standoffish.
Ultimately happiness, a great life and prosperity is what we wanted for all of our children. I do miss her laugh, smile, voice I miss her. Someone asked why you would wish to speak to an estranged child again. Love doesn’t know logic, but we leave her to live her life because we love her. It doesn’t mean we aren’t sad or don’t hope.
” Someone asked why you would wish to speak to an estranged child again.”
That was me, and I was referring to the way that some estranged parents characterize their children – as horrible selfish people. My point was in questioning why these parents would even want contact, if their kids actually were such awful people.
I don’t see any of that characterization in your story. It doesn’t read at all like you regard your daughter as a bad person such that someone would wonder why you wanted a relationship. I am very sorry for the difficulties your family has endured. I don’t know you or Pam beyond what you have told us, but the way you describe your relationship and the problems does not strike me as characteristic of the type of estranged parents we were discussing or of the kind of discussion that goes on in a lot of the forums. I am sorry that you are hurting and I hope that things work out for you both in the best way possible.
On estranged parents’ forums, the participants often talk about how the most painful part of estrangement is knowing that their grandchildren are growing up not knowing them, or meeting their grandchildren and then not getting to see them again (having them taken away by the estranged child, I think Issendai has written).
I have no doubt that these parents are suffering greatly. But what it is about grandchildren that causes this, why is it more painful for them to not see their grandchildren than their children? Is it because they consider the grandchildren innocent victims? The parents certainly value their own parenting and grandparenting skills highly, but their unhappiness is probably not caused (or caused completely) by the thought of the grandchildren being deprived of a grandparent relationship. Meanwhile, on the forums for estranged adult children, the wisdom is that grandparents tend to use grandchildren as props (GMOTY- short for grandmother of the year- pops up a lot) or as new sources of narcissistic supply or other satisfaction. I can’t figure it out. Does anyone have any ideas what estranged parents get from their grandchildren and why they suffer so much from not having a relationship with them?
The impression I’ve gotten from reading grandparents’ boards is that being extra-attached to your grandkids is common for all types of grandparents, not just toxic ones. Normal grandparents don’t talk about it as much because they get to see their grandkids, and when they’re separated for normal reasons (like the parents moving for work), they can handle it like adults.
That doesn’t answer the central question about what toxic grandparents get from their grandkids. But I think the strength of their attachment is a normal behavior amped up by their toxicity, not something inherently abnormal.
Thanks, that’s the conclusion I’ve been leaning towards too. Maybe it’s that people can be so extreme- after posting this I saw a video in which a woman told estranged adult children that “the love a grandparent has for their grandchild is like nothing you’ll ever know,” or words to that effect, and was left astonished that someone would really believe this and not understand how terrible it sounded.
I don’t know though. My mother plays the aggrieved deprived grandmother to the max, but when she was living with us, part of the agreement was that she would be home during the couple of hours a week my child was home after school without supervision. It wasn’t a requisite as child is a teen and can be home alone, but we all thought it would be nice grandparent/kid time.
The first day, my mother told my husband she wouldn’t be there because she had “better things to do,” and she went to the mall. If she was ever home, she was shut away in her room. She barely said two words to the child in the three months or so she lived there.
But she could win an award for the act she is putting on now. She cares no more for her grandchild than she did for me, but the separation anguish plays extremely well to her audience. I imagine she feels something, but it is mostly the deprivation of entitlement rather than real sadness.
Wow, I’m sorry about your mom. Your post made me wonder, are all (some?) of these parents more or less playacting to each other? Are they upset because they’re not getting what they want and have so little emotional awareness that they’re mistaking that for missing their grandchildren? There’s really no way to get answers, but it’s interesting to consider.
I don’t believe that my mother feels the same emotions that other people do. I think that she feels deprived of something she is entitled to (not that she would actually do it — it’s enough insult that she’s not allowed to) and I think that she knows how outsiders will see it if described out of context. I don’t think she feels the actual emotions of love and connection.
Though there has been a long history of problems, the final nail in the coffin was that she went to my ex-husband and urged him to file for full custody. We were amicably co-parenting at the time, but she also knew that our child was actually unhappy with the arrangement as it was, and that child wanted to live with me full time. So not only was she betraying me, but she was betraying the child she professed to love so much. She did this because at that point I required her to go to therapy to continue the relationship. Somehow that seemed a better course of action than simply going to a (free under her insurance) therapist.
The truly telling bit is that she continues to try to contact me and does not at all understand what was wrong with what she did.
The postscript is that I now have full custody of child with the full agreement of my ex. That’s how much weight he gave the lies she told to try to convince him.
But, yes, I believe that she mistakes the pain of deprivation for the pain of separation from someone she loves. I don’t think she is capable of feeling the latter, so she doesn’t know the distinction.