D6 standing up for herself
 

I have ended all contact with AH's family after their crap of the past few weeks. I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and have the girls talk to them now and then on the phone and give them a chance to be decent granparents. But after the events that I describe below, I have now ended all contact w my daughters too for them.

AH's mother supposedly told AH she wanted to call the girls to apologize to D6 for hurtful remarks she made around xmas which D6 continues to comment about and be hurt by.

Phone from grandmother on Tuesday of this week went like this:

"it hurt my feelings that you said I had a boy haircut" (D6 has learned growing up with an A father that stating how she feels isn't ok and is working a lot on this in T). She cut right to the chase with her grandmother as soon as she called which I was impressed by. Tough little cookie my 6 yr old is!

Her grandmother's response (I had her on speaker phone bc I did not trust her at all): " D6's name.... I never said that. Do you really think Grammy would ever say that to you? Did Mommy tell you I said that? If she did, she is a liar".

I took the phone and hung up at that point and D6 burst into tears and I thought my heart might explode in anger. I kept my cool and hugged D6 and I asked her how she was feeling and she said angry. I asked her why and she said "bc Grammy lied about not saying I had a boy cut". Then she asked me why Grammy would not just say sorry. I said I did not know and I told her that she did a great job stating her feelings and that what Grammy says doesn't change what is true. And then we made Valentines for friends (oh and I unplugged the phone so that AH's mother could not call back).

The only thing I wish I had done differently was record the call so AH would never be able to accuse me of lying. So far he's said nothing about this in interactions we have had since.

I expect that when his family is not welcome to have contact with the girls (bdays, etc...) it will be an issue.

I will deal with it then but I am standing firm bc this was beyond nuts, though not altogether surprising.

To have a grown adult invalidate a child's feelings, tell her blatantly to question her memory and suggest she and I are lying... I grew up with a mother who did this to me and to see how AH's mother functions makes me understand so so so much better why he invalidated every feeling I ever had all the years we were together.

I guess it's clear now to me that mental illness knows no boundaries and his mother thinking that what she said to a 6 yr old is reasonable just made her and AH's behavior so so so much clearer.

Just like AH, his mother isn't concerned with how her words hurt a 6 yr old. She is concerned with her image and getting digs in at me. She was allegedly calling to apologize (she had told AH she wanted to and he told me and I accepted the call) to D6. I hate to think of what she would have said if she weren't apologizing.

My jaw just dropped when I heard what her response was. I wanted to smack the old bat. Good for you for hanging up (and for listening in in the first place!).
Your kids don't need that in their lives.

And good for D6 for stating her case. I just hope grandma's reaction doesn't scare her from continuing to do that in the future. :(

give her a hug from her cyber family! We think she is perfect!

You are a good mom!

I was SHAKING when I took the phone (I had her on speaker and had one handset in my hand and D6 had the other) and hung it up. Maybe I could have handled it differently but I was in shock. Can you even believe that someone would say that?

I think that AH's mom has a few screws coming loose bc she has for yrs kept up this image of "I am so quiet and meek and passive and loving" when I have known all along she was vindictive and maligning me constantly both to my face and behind my back.

Now that I have called her out on her crap and ended all communication with her myself I honestly think she is unraveling... I have been the scapegoat for that whole family for so long that they must not know what to do with themselves?

I always suspected that once my girls were older, she would act in this kind of way-- she has no scruples but fools most I think into believing she does. I used to tell AH that I worried about what she'd do to the girls (call into question their feelings and badmouth me were the 2 biggies) and he dismissed it as me being "paranoid".

As much as I was shocked on Tuesday, I could have predicted it if that makes any sense.

D6 hasn't mentioned it since Tues and I don't want to bring it up unnecessarily but I wonder if I shouldn't tell her that we are done talking with Grammy? I'm leaning toward just saying nothing and dealing with it when/if it arises. I highly doubt D6 will ask for her but I worry about D3 being confused about why she isn't talking to Grammy anymore.

What do you think?

lilamy- I worry too about her not being comfortable stating her feelings again. Fortunately, the people she will do it with from now on won't do what her grandmother did and I am keenly aware that it is something she struggles with and will continue to deal with in T. She has T tomorrow (love her T for having Sat hours!) and I am going to see her for a few min before D6 goes in to tell her about this and let her deal with it with D6 in some way if she thinks she should...

I did tell D6 a lot after the fact on Tues as we selected which Monster High hologram Valentine card went to which kid in her class, that she did a great job stating her feelings.

And the fact that D6 was angry and not just sad and kind of saw through her grandmother lying makes me feel far more comfortable than I would if D6 were just bawling and a mess. D6 is pretty savvy and sees through people's BS quite well. I think she has now seen very clearly what her grandmother is like and I doubt she will be asking to maintain a r/s with her. And if she does, I'll explain why that isn't going to happen and will let her be angry with me if that's what needs to happen.

WTBH, based on the way my daughters handled an incident leading to no contact with my parents I wouldn't worry. Mine were 13 and 11 at the time. Kids live much more in the moment than adults do and to be honest D3 probably won't think much of it.

Kudos to you and D6 as well as ((((hugs)))).

:scoregood

Your friend,

WTBH-

As that one time little girl who almost 30 years later is just starting to realize it is okay to have and state feelings I want to thank you for your daughter.

I don't have kids so I don't think I can comment on the rest of it but just her working on that and doing it once is such a lucky gift for her.

Sending kind thoughts to all of you.

What an AWESOME job you are doing!!!!!!!

I would have done the same thing and like lillamy I wanted to slap the 'old bat.'!!!!!!!!

Hopefully D6 will talk about this in T tomorrow since she likes her Therapist. It is good that she is learning now how NOT to 'STUFF' her feelings. It took this ACOA a long time into adult hood how not to 'stuff' and how to release those 'feelings' in a healthy way and not LASH OUT in anger at the first person who crossed me.

It wasn't until I way way into adulthood and recovery from alcoholism and codieism that I realized during talks with my sister just how dysfunctional our family was. As kids we thought it was normal. Grew up in 'upper' middle class family in 'upper' middle class neighborhood, and both with my sister and I (we are 10 years apart in age) and the kids we hung out with, we thought our family was pretty good when we saw what went on in their homes. Yep the whole dang neighborhood was dysfunctional.

My father was 'the alcoholic'. My mother was the 'valium' addict and the codie/boss/controller, etc. My mother had a great Big Wooden Spoon, and when I or my sister least expected it, she would hit us in the middle of the back between the shoulder blades, with the rounded part of the spoon. Man did that hurt, and it never left a bruise. Didn't find out until many years later, that my grandmother did that to her and my uncle when they were growing up. One of the 'wedding' gifts she gave both my sister and I was our 'first' soup stirring spoon ................................. yep a big wooden spoon. Guess she thought the 'tradition' would continue. Found out later my sister did the same thing with her 'spoon' that I did with mine, threw it in the garbage.

I share the above, to say this ................................... you are helping your daughters to NOT suffer the way all of us did, IN SILENCE. They will be much healthier adults than I or many of us on here were. GOOD FOR YOU.

Your own growth is showing by how you handled and are handling this!!!!!!! WTBH you are making my heart smile!!!!!!!!

On a side note, I am glad to hear that at least in some schools they still give Valentines to their classmates (that was one of my favorites things in grade school). Out here they don't do it at all, but my grandkids have got their valentines that they want to give to their closest friends. And gramma, tee hee, has a small gift for each with a card, that will be placed on each of their beds while they are at school, lol

And no candy, however, they will have 'movie night' once their homework is done, and they don't know it yet, but their daddy is going to make his home made caramel popcorn that they all love so much. rofl and they have no idea. So it will be a 'good' memory for them.

Great job WTBH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Love and hugs,

WTBH...you SO rock. Just had to say that.

PIXIE POWER !

WTBH,

Doing a great job here!
Good God, she actually denied it to your daughter - the one she made feel ugly!

You can forgive Gramma, but never forget, obviously she has some kind of mental problem, and she is trying to change your daughters reality.

I hated that as a kid, I KNEW something was wrong.
But everyone I asked (such as my mother) would give me some kinda BS.
Give the kid a story and then shoo her away.
Never let gramma (not sure she deserves that title) get away with anymore of her lying.

Damn, I want my paint gun!

You are doing a fantastic job WTBH.

Beth

(proud to be a member of the Pixie Power Brigade :))

I'm definitely not saying you didn't handle it "right"....but I wonder if DD6 could have held her own against the old bat if given the chance. Would have been nice to hear her say, "No, Grammy, YOU'RE lying. You said it and it hurt my feelings!!"

No kidding that's how kids get screwed up!! My daughter lived with her dad for 7 years and she's been in therapy ever since she left (including a 5 month residential program) because he did the same thing to her! He constantly distorted reality ("I'm not drunk!") and invalidated her feelings ("You're just being dramatic!") to the point where she couldn't trust her own mind or feelings anymore! It's been hell trying to get her well.

You did good!!!

I'm definitely not saying you didn't handle it "right"....but I wonder if DD6 could have held her own against the old bat if given the chance. Would have been nice to hear her say, "No, Grammy, YOU'RE lying. You said it and it hurt my feelings!!"

No kidding that's how kids get screwed up!! My daughter lived with her dad for 7 years and she's been in therapy ever since she left (including a 5 month residential program) because he did the same thing to her! He constantly distorted reality ("I'm not drunk!") and invalidated her feelings ("You're just being dramatic!") to the point where she couldn't trust her own mind or feelings anymore! It's been hell trying to get her stabilized, but we're making progress.

You did good!!!

WTBH,

Great job with D6, as far as grandma is concerned, she needs a big ol can of whoopass opened up on her.

Please keep an events journal in case this would ever come up as part of a visitation request, I don't know about where you are, but in some state grandparents can sue and get unsupervised visitation, weekend vists, etc.

Also you may want to make sure that if your husban gets visitation that he cannot just dump the girls there when it is his weekend.

Very proud of the way you handled that.

wow. Just......wow. Just reading that gave me a terrible feeling. I can't imagine actually experiencing it! Great job in handling a very ugly situation.

I am in the same situation, kind of. My boyfriend's (or ex, I don't really know what we are right now) family does not see my sons either. His sister has been getting out of control with the harassment and the lying, and after telling him time and time again, I gave up and said none of them can see my kids. I didn't say he couldn't see them. Of course that started a fight. But then after one night of her calling me on all these blocked numbers acting like his ex (I blocked her number because I was tired of all the bs with her) he believed me because she did all this in front of his friend. Which made me mad because I had been saying this for months and he didn't believe me once. And the clincher? The phone number I blocked is HIS PHONE. She is supposed to pay him every month for it, has had it for a year, and never has. She puts pictures of my kids on facebook, I have told her time and time again not to do it, so I contacted facebook about it and they keep removing the pictures (because every time she keeps putting them back up). And then she starts on the manipulation bit. "Oh, well I can't see my nephews, that's so rude, ignorant, whatever." Now would be a good time to mention that she is a meth addict. Supposedly in recovery, but she doesn't act like it. So anyway, my boyfriend turned off her phone because he now believes me, but it's not enough for me, because she is now harassing me at my house, driving HIS CAR that she is also supposed to be paying for but never has. And I never wanted to tell him that he would have to choose between us, but it is what it has come down to. And I know he knows what she is doing to me, and I don't need my kids to see that. My whole thing is, if she hates me, I don't need to be around her. Period. And my kids don't need the influence of someone around who is going to talk bad about me and everything else and blatantly disregard what I have said about my own children. I don't need that in my life. But when I speak up about it, it causes problems.

And it gets so much worse. My boyfriend got really bad on the alcohol and pills a couple of months ago and right after Christmas I paid for plane tickets for his brothers to come out and talk some sense into him. $1100.00 worth. His sister called his dad and then called me, and he called me all kinds of names and everything else, which absolutely killed me, since I had never met the man in my entire life, because they all live in Nebraska. And then he said, but we will probably never see our grandchildren. F*** no you won't, after all that stuff you said. Which my boyfriend took offense to. And then he called him the other night and explained to him what happened. His dad said his sister said that him and his ex were still married, and he cheated on her with me and got me pregnant and they are currently still together. And that SHE was the one who paid for the plane tickets. Although my boyfriend is also a master at the art of lying, because he is also an addict, so I do not know if this is what was really said. But anyway, why would you want to hang out with someone like that?

Sorry for the long post, I have had a very trying day, and I am very upset and frustrated at this point in time. Anyway, I do think you made the right decision, and I hope your AH will stand up for you because that is what you do for your family. I hope that it doesn't come to what came with my relationship. Just explain to him that she hurt your daughter and that is absolutely 100% UNACCEPTABLE and if he doesn't agree with it, that is his problem, but you have made your decision and you are not going to back down.

I don't have kids so thank God I've never had to deal with these types of situations. I think you did great, you're an excellent mother! keep up the good work.

PS-wtbh, I LOVE your avatar!

Laurie- Yes, public school is allowed to acknowledge V day around here. Can't mention Xmas or Halloween but V day is okay. Kind of funny huh?

Willybluedog- My regret in not recording her is precisely bc of the b.s. w "grandparent rights". My state is a big screamer about that and if the horror of Josh Powell should teach us anything, I'd hope that courts/states would stop being so bleepitly bleep concerned about parents/grandparents rights and start caring about kids rights. So, your thinking about the visitation thing are right in line with mine. I'll fight tooth and nail for that to NOT happen. It's one thing to be careless with words, insult me, insult me to my kids and it's a whole other ball game when she tries to distort my 6 yr old's reality. Mind washing.

Tjp- I could have hung on a bit longer to see how D6 dealt with it but I have seen her look her father in the eye when he is lying to her or challenging her perception (ie: he yells at her and she says "don't yell at me" and he responds with "I didn't yell at you") and she already has trouble NOT doubting her reality so I opted to step in. If I hadn't already seen her questioning herself in the past bc of her father, I might have reacted differently or let it go on a bit longer, but the history of her having this experience with her father and now her grandmother made me step in.

Inpieces- My AH will never stand up to his family for me, or his kids. He is my ex- sorry for confusion. I spent 8 yrs waiting for him to stop letting his family walk all over me and I'd recommend that you accept that your bf won't do anything different than what he is currently doing and you move fwd w having him be your ex... Sorry things are so tough for you.

Beth- I grew up being told that what I saw and heard and KNEW was wrong (and I'd speak up vs my siblings who stayed silent) was right and I grew up to be an adult with NO ability to trust my perceptions, feelings, intuition. Identifying what my MIL did in that instant, I had a flood of feelings through me like I can't describe. I hate that for even an instant my daughter had that same experience as me. The difference I guess is that I had no one telling me my perception was right and my daughter has me validating her. Just tonight though (ironically since I said it seemed to be over) D6 was commenting on how much of a boy she looked like in the new photos I've hung up and that turned into a stream of consciousness talk from her (I just let her talk) about how she felt about Grammy. I certainly don't want to put ideas in her head so I said very little except to support her feelings. Much of what she said was about minor issues in the recent past with her Grammy. I suspect that she feels unsettled with the brief phone call but what my MIL did is sort of intangible for a 6 yr old to grasp. So instead of talking about the phone call, D6 was talking about other issues and things she has been upset about w regard to her Grammy lately (being cut off when they are talking-- as in my MIL only cares to hear herself talk so she interrupts D6 when they'd talk on the phone in the past). I don't know whether to dredge up the recent phone call or just let her talk about her feelings without regard for what event they are attached to... Does that make sense? I am so worried about doing something wrong and further upsetting D6.... I am just kind of sticking with telling her her feelings are fine and that I love her...

Thanks to everyone for your support. I thought I was just angry and was mostly over it but talking about it today I realized how many of my own childhood horrors this triggered and it makes me all the more determined to protect my own kids from ever being treated that way again. I expect there to be many fights about my ending contact with my girls and AH's family but if I have to get a court order keeping them away, that's what I will do. I am just kind of sick right now as I re-think this... My poor D6...

You know ..................................... my grandmother ............................ the woman who my mother learned her 'tricks' from ............................................ treated me and later my sister the EXACT OPPOSITE from how she treated her daughter and son. Go figure.

She was a 'safe haven' for me. She would 'validate' my feelings, no matter who they were about, although usually it was my mother. As I got older, more and more my mother would mention how much she despised her mother. Actually she said hated her mother. I have often wondered if gramma was trying to make her jealous? Later, when gramma moved in with my Uncle and his family, she did the same thing with my cousins. Almost like she was trying to put a 'wedge' between her grandchildren and their parents.

I have no answers to this day and I am 66 1/2 years old. I just know that I did everything I could NOT to do what had been done to me by my parents and my gramma, to my kids and grandkids. My sister and I have fully said that the 'dysfunctional' (we hope) chain was broken by us, not to be repeated again in this family.

You too are breaking the 'cycle.' You said you will mention the incident tomorrow with D6's therapist. I am sure if you ask the T after the session if there is something more you should be doing the T will tell you. I suspect though that the answer is going to be that you have been doing the correct things already. I certainly think you have. You are giving your daughter the lessons (although they don't seem like that) that you are available at ANY TIME for her to talk about her fears, resentments, joys, etc (her feelings) and she will be validated, although your daughter doesn't know all those words, she is getting the idea that "Mommy" is a safe person to talk to about ANYTHING.

Good job.

Love and hugs,