Messages By: mmcturk

We have a situation that is probably fairly common among many families in the U.S.  We have a son who has blessed us with 5 wonderful grandchildren, and yet, last year we only saw our son and his children one time.  Yes, one time. Our son only lives about 15 miles from us and is healthy and quite capable of visiting with us. 

Our son runs a small business in Virginia and works long hours.  He is a nice man who is dedicated to his wife and children and has built a nice way of life for them.  He has a million plus home, top of the line cars, has wealthy, or well-off  neighbors, and enjoys nice vacations and many activities with his immediate family and friends.  In other words, our son, who we love dearly, is focused on what he believes is the most important in his life--his business, his immediate family, and his friends.  Given our daughter-in-law's unfortunate standing disagreement with us, we are an after-thought in plans and activities with our garndchildren and our son.  But it is also safe to say that our son is somewhat selfish with his time and with his children when it comes to involvement with his birth family.  He has worked hard to avoid conflict and to minimize his time with us.

We, as our son's parents and his only brother, are generally left out of his life because of a long-standing disagreement with our daughter-in-law.  We have had discussions with our son about this matter  and our being left out, but his argument is normlly to defend his wife and place the blame on his mother and or what we haven't done to make things better.  Now, we know our son loves us and he cares in his own way.  He has been generous in helping me and my wife at times and has tried to be a good son.  But the real issue is our daughter-in-law, who has harbored ill feelings toward my wife for many years, but particulary the past 5 years.  My wife had an exchange with her while we were visiting my son's home a few years ago.  But because my wife was being honest about her views concerning a surgical enhancement, our daughter-in-law became upset and retreated away from us for the rest of the day.  This happened to be on a Christmas day and she even refused to be with us as her children were opening gifts we provided.  We considered this to be extremely selfish and irrational behavior. To rectify this situation, my wife called our daughter-in-law three times immediately after this incident to apologize, but the three calls have never been returned.  Unfortunately, our daughter-in-law is very set in her ways and has been supported by our son and her family to believe she is right in her behavior.  We have tried to heal things with our daughter-in law over the years and have been nice and approachable to her.  We have also tried to work through our son to reach her but all has failed.  She has remained stubborn in her belief that my wife is wrong and humiliated her in this discussion.  In return, she has continued to keep distance between us and has received support form our son who wants to save his marriage.  He has been in marriage counselling over this and other issues.  Examples of her treatment of our family is that she does not call our home or try to make things better, she has been selfish with her children in limiting our son's time with us, she treats our family as if we do not exist, she refuses to send new pictures of our grandchildren yet sends pictures to other family members, and she has influenced our son to defend her indifference.  Our son has failed as a son to reach a good resolution in this matter.  But we do not entirely blame him for this and we all share in this situation.  From the beginning we did not have a good relationship with our daughter-in-law because of her negative opinions and controlling attitude.  As long as our daughter-in-law does not have to spend any time with us and continues to be encouraged by our son's support and her isolation from us, this problem will remain unresolved.  We feel sorry for our son and his inability to work through this problem.  Our grandchildren are getting older and hardly ever see us except for holidays and when my son can bring them by our home.  My wife and I have reached out to our son and our daughter-in-law but things do not change.  My son and his wife continue to enjoy, for the most part, a separate life from us.  We are very disappointed and angry with both our son and his wife for the impact that this daughter-in-law grudge and his indifference and support  of his wife has had on our family and the loss to our grandchildren.  We also have a disabled son who my oldest son has only seen once in the past year.  This issue with our daughter-in-law has also spilled over into our ability to communicate with our son and my plans to work with my son in his business.  He would rather avoid this conflict and thus he has limited time and involvement with his mother, father and brother.  This is shameful and we are going to continue to work to correct this before our garndchildren are grown up and gone.

We know that many families are facing the same situation and are struggling with relationship isses.  We would appreciate your thoughts and any good resources that our family could consider.

  For almost 3 months my 4 year old and I have been living with my brother. My brother and I disagree severely on the ways that my son should be disciplined. He thinks that spanking is okay, and I do not. He also wants my son to eat vegetables and thinks that if my son doesn't want to eat the vegetables that his plate should be taken away and that when my son gets hungry enough he will eat. I do not subscribe to these tactics for getting him to eat vegetables.

My brother also thinks that I am too sweet to my son and that I should be tougher. My brother likes to tease/torment my son by taking his toys away and claiming that the toy is his , while my son screams and cries. If I have to leave for even a few minutes there are occasions when I come back to hear my son shrieking while my brother is growling and making monster faces. My brother thinks this is funny. I do not and have explained that it is stressful and unacceptable to me.

Despite my sentiments, my brother continues to tease/ torment my son, with threats like"I'm gonna get you one day." And comments like ,"your mommy may not spank you, but I will, and I'll smack the pea out of you if you ever do that again,and I don't care what your mommy says.' My son is a typical 4 year old , and IMO he doesn't warrant this sort of treatment. My brother likes to constantly lecture him about the importance of being behaved and will lecture me about how my son will end up in jail if I don't correct behavior problems.

There are many other instances of what I consider to be toxic behavior occuring here. What I would like some feedback on is how harmful  these interactions may be to my son. Sometimes I think that I am the one who hurts the most, but another voice tells me that this could be potential disaster.

When my son awakes in the morning and locks our bedroom door  and tells me that this is so uncle B can't come in and bother us. (My brother,  does on occasion wake us up to engage me in conversation, and then becomes angry and yells at my son when he wants to interrupt us, or wants my attention.) breaks my heart. 

Sorry for the rant, any feedback is appreciated