She sent sad, emotional manipulation texts to my adult children

[LavenderLime]

My undiagnosed-PDM has been in & out of the hospital and keeps trying to suck me in since she has no one. I've seen her once in about 13 years. My children (now in their 20s) haven't seen her at all in this time, mainly since she refused to come see them for anything. She's missed out on most of the big and small events in their lives, including a wedding last year. There's not much of a relationship between them. She texts them maybe once a month or so, asking several questions in a paragraph and gets upset if they don't respond quickly. then they get the sad face gif or emojis to guilt a response.
This month was different. She sent all of them a picture from of them as babies with her and a paragraph about how sad she was when our family moved away from her, how much she cried and how she just couldn't come to visit much because of her health and dogs. We moved 2 hrs away over 20 years ago, closer to my husband's family!! We used to fight a lot about her excuses and how she only wanted us to come to her.  I was so angry, I couldn't see straight. I've always done my best to shield them from the guilting, the FOG, while they were growing up. My husband helped calm me and realize that our children are aware of how she is, don't let her get me upset and give her a reaction she wants.  I checked in with each of the kids after my daughter let me know what was going on. Sure enough, they all blew it off pretty much.  I still told them it was not appropriate for her to dump that on them and there's just no good response to that crap.
Now, I have to decide how I want to handle her. I am fairly low contact, limiting phone calls to once every month to 6 weeks or so, except when she's in the hospital.  Do I bring this up and let her know this is out of bounds? I still feel the need to defend my children from her BS, like a momma bear. I want to yell but I know it won't change her behavior and will make her even waifier. It's probably not worth the emotional expenditure. Probably opting for even less contact. Would you confront this?

[Rebel13]

Hi LavenderLime, I probably would not respond to it. It sounds like your kids have a really good handle on it. Since she did not raise them, and you protected them from her (!) they probably don't have the same reactionary buttons she installed in you. Also, as young adults, they have to start learning and deciding how they will handle difficult interpersonal situations. It sounds like you have given them some good skills to do that.

I have a difficult boss who I'm actively working on coping with differently, and I have been repeating to myself, "Don't wrestle with a pig; you both get dirty, and the pig likes it."

The Toolbox article on JADE makes the really interesting point that, every time we give someone an opportunity to justify themselves, their version of the story gets grooved deeper into their brains as the truth. They don't learn to see things from our perspective; they just become more convinced that their version is right.

Therefore I'm trying to give my boss fewer opportunities to tell me why she is right about everything, or to argue about or weigh in on my decisions at all. It seems to be working because when I don't argue, she thinks she won, and is happy. She doesn't seem to realize she isn't getting whatever she actually wanted, as your mom also is not. Your mom's messages aren't resulting in the outcome she wanted, more contact or a closer relationship with her grandchildren, because she is going about it in an offputting way that will not engage them.

Consequences can sometimes be a much better teacher than anything we could say. And some people are just not capable of learning. And none of that is our problem to solve.

[LavenderLime]

Thanks for the response, Rebel! I like your pig wrestling line - I'll be keeping that in mind! And so many good points to keep in mind there. Glad to hear it is helping you at work when dealing with your boss.
 I referred back to the JADE article you linked about the bias memory. My son even said that he distinctly remembers us mainly having to go visit her when they were younger.

[walking on broken glass]

I agree with Rebel, Lavender Lime. She is likely trying to get a reaction out of you. Your kids seem to be handling this very well, seeing through her lies and manipulation, and not responding to them - emotionally or otherwise. Don't engage with her, it will only make matters worse and will perhaps encourage her to send more messages.

[LavenderLime]

Thank you for the support! I did not confront her. In fact, I didn't respond to a different text she sent me with more medical chaos last week. She tried something a little more lighthearted last night and I responded briefly to it. I figure it was worth a little positive reinforcement .

[footprint33]

Hi Lavender,

It sounds like you're doing great with this situation, I just wanted to chime in to send support your way. I have two kids who are teenagers and they also haven't seen my parents in almost 13 years. They have very little memory of them because the kids were toddlers the last time we saw my parents in person. My parents haven't tried to text our kids. Fortunately, they don't have their phone numbers and I'm not sure how they'd find that out. But if they did, I'm confident our kids would be a lot like yours.

When the kids were babies, I tried to navigate a VLC relationship with my parents, thinking that perhaps the kids could have my parents as their grandparents, mainly in name, but that we wouldn't be very involved with them. This all followed very toxic behavior following my first child's birth, which served as my wakeup call and helping me to get Out of the FOG. However, around the time that the kids were 2 and 4, I read a disturbing blogpost written by a woman who was the SG in her family. She had tried the same thing with her NPD mom, as in, maintaining some relationship with her so that her kids could have a grandmother. What ended up happening was that the grandmother completely love bombed the kids over many years. By the time the kids were teenagers, they were completely under grandma's spell and started to think badly of their own mother. This woman wrote that if she could go back in time, she would have never maintained the relationship with her mother or let her mother have access to her kids. She also said that she would have told her kids more about the truth of her own life, how she'd been treated as the SG by her FOO since childhood.

The woman's story sent a chill up my spine because I could imagine my parents doing the exact same thing--love bombing and stealing my children from me in the exact same way. So it was around that times that I cut ties with my parents. I'm now super grateful that I came across that woman's blogpost and that we haven't seen my parents in 13 years.

I hope that your path continues to go smoothy.
footprint

[Can’tDARVOMe!]

My kids are teens and arguably despise my NPD "mother" even more than I do. They know everything she did to me and she was mean to them when they were little kids which enrages me. She doesn't know their numbers and I've cautioned my kids to go anon on social media, not show face or reveal real names, location etc.

I'm extremely worried that my "mother" will live forever. Evil never dies. It's even taking a long time for "father" to perish from "Alzheimer's." My health is declining precipitously; PTSD and probable autism spectrum disorder.