Children sad over having no grandparents :’-(

[Call Me Cordelia]

DD7 was crying in bed in the middle of the night last night. She's seeing the other kids in the neighborhood have regular and sometimes even daily interactions with their grandparents. Grandma is main caregiver during the work day. Another family just went on vacation with grandma and grandpa and cousins. Another family goes to grandparents every Sunday for dinner. And so on. You get the idea. Normal stuff. There are a lot of kids and the grandparents are mostly a big part of their lives. She doesn't have any family except mom dad and siblings and she feels like it's not fair. It's not fair at all, little girl. 

We've kept all the recent drama away from her, but both she and her older brother have asked us direct questions periodically about when we'll see them all. We've been honest that it wasn't going to happen when putting them off clearly wasn't going to work. We've tried to work things out and that none of the grandparents are willing or able to be kind to mommy, and we could not trust them sadly. And mommy and daddy don't welcome people into our home who are not kind to us. Instead we welcome people who bring joy to our family. (And it's true, our house is constantly full of their friends and DH's and mine.) T said this explanation checked out, and we've repeated it on occasion when the kids have brought it up.

Anyway, the kids seem to accept that explanation... mostly. And we do our best to validate the grief and that yes they did have fun times with them.

But the questions have been ramping up, with seeing their buddies do extra stuff with grandparents during the summer. Bad timing for me.  But DS even suggested a week or so ago that maybe I was the one who didn't know how to get along with them and was causing the problems. Because it's all of them. Can I please try to fix things so they can go visit them? Can you go back to the feelings doctor? (His word for my therapist.) It was fun there and I want to go back. That did hurt. And I guess it's good he felt safe to say that to me? I said I know this is really tough and I still get sad about it too sometimes. But I really cannot fix it, I know because Daddy and I both tried really hard. I'm so sorry.

Now he asks to write them a letter asking them to be nice to me so he and sis can visit. He heard her crying last night and wants to help. I feel like I way screwed up. Of course I'm not going to allow such a thing to be sent. Oh my gosh. Sweetheart, this is an adult problem and not your job. You are a kid. If you want to write a letter write to your friend back where we moved from and tell him all about your swimming and how you and your friends had a lemonade stand and made lots of money and blew it on pizza.

[Fiasco]

I can hear your anguish reading your post. None of us wants to let our kids down, we love them so much and want them to have everything, especially things we didn't have. May I suggest that you try to separate your own feelings about not having parents that were safe for you and are not safe grandparents from your kids feelings? The "need" for grandparents is a pale shadow of the need for good parents.

In regards to what you tell your children I'd just be straight up that sometimes other people have things you don't and that's life. My girlfriend whose son has a serious peanut allergy doesn't agonize that other kids have pbj sandwiches and hers can't. It's a matter of his safety and it's not negotiable. You're doing what's best! You're doing a good job! It's ok that your kids are upset, it's because they are sweet and loving and want to love grandparents. But it sounds like it's not negotiable, and sometimes that's ok.

[Call Me Cordelia]

Thanks. I'm not questioning the NC, just grieving. You're right I hate to see them hurting and not being able to fix it.

[StayWithMe]

If your kids spent a couple of days with the grandparents, what is the worse that could happen?  and try to work back from that.

We got to the point that we would call my mother's mother the mean grandma.  She was hateful: calling me fat and other names and then laughing like a laughing machine.  I guess I am hoping for you that something not so serious might happen that you won't have this problem anymore.

in any case, trying to visualize these scenarios is a good exercise.

[Call Me Cordelia]

UNF would make up all kinds of stuff about how my children are malnourished and afraid to go home and report me to CPS. Not kidding. Not happening.

[StayWithMe]

Maybe now is a good time to tell them the unvarnished. Not everybody is happy with their grandparent.  Sometimes they feel neglected.   I feel like a lot of things my father and made us do was a result of dealing with his father.

[Kiki81]

Yes, you are grieving the NC, and in exposing your children to your grief, you confuse them. Are you in or are you out? Are your parents unstable people who aren't consistently safe enough and responsible enough to participate in your family's life, or not?

Until you are certain, it's just more unpredictability for your children..

You mention that your children are receiving an unfairness in the grandparents lottery. Life is not fair. Sometimes the unfairness bonuses, sometimes it detracts. Fairness is not a good road to go down when the other people have personality disorders.

[Sidney37]

Mine are a teen and pre-teen.  Had I gone NC like the therapist recommended when I was pregnant with my first, I'd be asking the same questions you are.  My kids would be crying that they didn't have grandparents.  I'd be feeling guilty.  I'm so sorry you are going through that. 

Instead, I'm getting the silent treatment from my parents, trying to decide  if i should totally go no contact and I have a teen blaming me for not just fixing the problem with them.   She just can't understand that I've tried for 30+ years to fix the problem - multiple attempts, countless therapists, only to be walked out on, given the silent treatment, demands, manipulation, insults, etc. Now I'm being blamed by my teen, who is being manipulated by my uNPDm, for being mean to my "poor, just anxious"  mother. 

I'm hoping the therapist can explain to my teen that this is my uNPDm who is doing this, not me.  Maybe you can get a therapist or pediatrician to explain.  I can say for sure, this would have been easier if i hadn't let them have contact for 10+ years. 

[treesgrowslowly]

I want to chime in here.

I agree, NC decision is for good reason and is staying NC. I also don't think your kids are old enough to be told the unvarnished truth. So I disagree with that suggestion.

You're doing really well with parenting the first generation Out of the FOG.

This is a special kind of grief. One that is easily misunderstood by people in families who don't have this to deal with. Being sad about something we all know that is normal and a healthy part of life. But it is confusing when we have this ambiguous loss- someone exists physically by not in our lives.

You're not causing them confusion. Life is confusing sometimes. You're the one making sure their life isn't driven by the chaos of PD grandparents. You're not the chaos agent here, the PD is. They are learning from you, how to deal with a very challenging situation.

I felt relief when I learned that family estrangement happens more often than we know. As your kids grow they will learn about other kids who don't see a grandma or aunt or cousin due to estrangement. It's not uncommon and so they will meet friends with similar stories as they get older and make more friends and talk about these things together. Which is healthy.

For now you're dealing with a tough age and a tough season of summer. You deserve a lot of support.

You mentioned summer, seeing families out and about more. Reminds me of how I would drive by families having fun picnics and wish I had that too. Instead of these dysfunctional PD led gatherings where everyone just leaves early to get out of there.

At their age, your kids will imagine a lot.  they will imagine that there are easy solutions to things. It is very age appropriate. Like you said, they worked hard to male money from a lemoande stand and then spent it all right away. That's age appropriate. So is their imagining that doctors can fix PD issues. Doctors fix everything according to 7 year old us. Their imagination lets them learn and stay in learning mode. They are trying to learn how their world works and you are helping them. As they grow and you watch them display confidence in trying new things, that will be the reward for your tough parenting work at the moment.

As they grow and you watch them hold boundaries in their own friendships and keep friendships without compromising their needs, and practice their own self care, that will be when you get to see the fruits of your current labour.

PD grandparents can cause damage and that's the reality. They don't have healthy boundaries and then the parent is stuck trying to explain why grandpa is doing x when no one else is allowed to be like this. You're saving your kids from that misery. That confuses kids and it puts a strain on the parent child relationship with a parent who already knows grandpa's lack of boundaries. We need to respect the NC you've worked hard to establish.

I hope others maybe have ideas on ways to validate the emotional experience everyone in your house is having? Like having a specific activity to connect with the sadness and honour it? For example how some people go and light a candle when they miss a person who is not in their life anymore.

Movies are full of the fantasy that as we grieve, we go to a photo album of photos of us and the person smiling at event together. That is so specific to very limited types of relationships! It annoys me to no end.

The grief of a loss of a relationship that can't ever be safe (because of their PD) is not easily soothed. It isn't soothed by looking at photos of the person. Those photos dont even exist.

I cant say I've done well with this myself. How do we honour the grief and sadness and make it something a child can do as well? Personality disorders dont make sense to young children because children are always learning new things. So the idea of an adult not being able to learn how to be safe and loving is beyond them. How do we grieve that? How do we support our children in grieving the relationships they don't have?

We can't fix grief and we can't fix unfair things the life lottery throws at us. Helping children learn what do with that stuff is so hard! I'm so glad you posted about it. Our children learn how to talk to themselves based on us so you validating their grief is the best thing for them. Yes some kids won the grandparent lottery and those kids may not feel this "life is unfair" reality until later. But learning to be gentle with ourselves is something we all have to learn no matter who we are and which lotteries we won.

Your kids are having to learn this sooner than others but your firm grip on reality that PD grandparents are not safe, is going to give them the security they need to develop their way of coping and feeling safe expressing themselves to you. They can't know what you've saved them from until they are adults but those of us here who are raising first generation Out of the FOG know.

[MamaDryad]

You're not causing them confusion. Life is confusing sometimes. You're the one making sure their life isn't driven by the chaos of PD grandparents. You're not the chaos agent here, the PD is. They are learning from you, how to deal with a very challenging situation.

I agree strongly with this. Grief is a natural reaction to this situation. It doesn't mean you're second guessing NC; it means you've accepted that NC is the only way to keep them and yourself safe, but there's an emotional cost. Kids are smart, and they are very attuned to their parents. What would be confusing would be if you were to pretend that everything was fine, because they would be able to sense otherwise.

Saying "I wish things were different, but grandma isn't able to be a kind and safe person, so we can't see her" isn't confusing. It's honest, and it puts the responsibility where it belongs (i.e. not on the kids).

[Call Me Cordelia]

Thank you for the support, Trees and MamaDryad.

Wow a lot has been said on this thread.

When I was a kid, we would go visit my uPD grandparents every so often. This is the grandma who just died. My grandmother would always serve cake. Gramps would take his cake and a beer and watch tv. My sister and I would sit at the table try to choke down this cake, which was always stale. My mother would refuse to eat the cake, or anything in their house, because she had a severe food allergy and on more than one occasion my grandma had denied that the food she was serving had the offending ingredient, while knowing full well that it did. UNF was quite angry about the "unpleasantness" my MOTHER was causing, but it was a cardinal rule never to show anger in front of his parents. And so we kids had to save the situation by choking down truly bad food, with F and GM watching us like a cat at a mouse-hole, while being harassed to take another bite and that I was too skinny. I couldn't always do it. So I got an earful of blame for ruining the visit.

This is pretty extreme, but there are probably some familiar themes in this little story. One is the kids being
made responsible for things that are not their problem. I was upset by my son wanting to write a letter to fix this for that reason. I feel like somehow he's believing he is responsible for adult issues. If so, that needs to be corrected.

Another theme is teaching kids that abusive and messed up behavior is simply part of life and we just have to accept it, or worse, that it's normal. To that I'm saying a hard NO. SWM, laughing about "mean grandma" may have been a coping mechanism, but it is NOT funny that she called you names and your parents put you through that. That's a damaging thing, and I'm sorry they didn't protect you better.

I am really trying hard to be honest and age-appropriate with my children. I also do not give them false hope. I am definitely "all-in" on NC. I am also trying to be honest about my own experience here, again in an age-appropriate way. Trees, your words that I am teaching them how to deal with a very challenging situation are very encouraging. (All of your words, really! Thank you from the bottom of my heart!) I don't let them see everything, but I would hope that saying, "Yes, I still am sad sometimes that we don't have extended family in our life too. But I still am certain this is best for our family," would help validate their own grief and help them trust me and DH and our decisions. Or even, "I'm feeling sad today and I'm going to go for a walk by myself when Daddy gets home," or whatever is a healthy model. Because they aren't going to understand. Not for a long time, anyway, if ever.

Anyway, I really don't know what's a good balance between acknowledging, validating, and even encouraging the grieving process, while on the other hand encouraging doing healthy things and not thinking about it too much. Because truthfully, the grandparents have always pretty much ignored the kids. They haven't lost much in reality. I'm responsible for encouraging the children to send them pictures, etc. In other words take responsibility for the relationship when the grandparents couldn't be arsed. But it made the grandparents seem more important than they deserved. This is definitely an ambiguous loss, and there is not much in the literature about this particular kind. A lot more about a parent in jail than estrangement.

Sidney, sounds like you're dealing with plenty of guilt and pain yourself! I'm sorry you're being vilified by your teen. It hurt enough when my kid suggested I was the problem, maybe, and could I please try? And he was being nice about it! Having a therapist help you out sounds like a good idea.

[Leonor]

Hi CdC,

I just wanted to give you some support. I'm in a similar place and it's painful ... When my children ask me questions about my unNM, I hear the echoes of me as a child, "Why doesn't Mommy want to be with me?"

I think it's ok to allow your children the safety to express all their feelings about their family, from curiosity to sadness to anger (I understand you're sad and that's ok"). I think it's ok to even empathize with them ("You know, sometimes I feel sad about it too"). You are explaining a boundary in an apprporiate way that answers their questions and even showing them that sometimes feelings are hard and it's ok to ask for help and get support.

After very similar conversations with my kids I always give them a big hug and say that they can say or do anything and I will always love them and be there for them, no matter what, and that I love being their mommy and when they are mommies and daddies I will still be their mommy and will love being a grandma!

[Call Me Cordelia]

Thanks, Leonor. I think you're right, my kids can't understand that grandma and grandpa really just don't care about them. At least not enough to take any kind of responsibility for that relationship.

[all4peace]

I love what Fiasco shares about accepting that our life will look different from someone else's, basically that life isn't fair. What I have told my kids in the past is that I'm sorry, this isn't what I dreamed of for them, that what I dreamed of was 2 large extended, loving, safe, healthy families. I've told them I'm so sorry that's not what we all got, but we have each other, and many other family members, and incredible friends and that is far more than many people have. I hope it gives them perspective and builds resilience.

As many have pointed out here in the past, many people don't have grandparents due to distance, death, infirmity or estrangement. Your kids are focused on those who do, but maybe it's helpful to point out that many don't, that they're not the only ones who don't.

I've also found it helpful to frame the picture briefly: "Here's what we offered to your grandparents for the purpose of building a healthy relationship, but they haven't been able or willing for that. That makes us sad, but we don't invite harmful people into a close place in our lives. We save a space for them that is further out in the circle of intimacy." (I've actually taught my kids about Circles of Intimacy) SAFE people have access into the heart of our lives, and it's not automatically available for people just because they're related by blood.

So it's not "CmD isn't able to get along with gma." It's "I'm sorry that gma isn't able to be safe for our family." This stuff is hard.