How Can I Talk to My Children About Family Estrangement?

Posted on by

A dysfunctional relationship with your parents – to the point where you find it necessary to end all contact with them – is painful enough. But when you have kids who start to wonder why Grandma hasn’t visited them for a long time, old wounds are reopened over and over again.

How do you talk to young children about alienation from a close family member? This is the question one reader posted to Parental Advisory:

We have been excommunicated from my relatives for several years, and it is difficult for us to explain the situation to our two children, who are 7 and 4 years old. The situation with my father-in-law is easy to explain. He abused my wife (and many others) incredibly even in her middle age, and she broke off contact with him over a decade ago. He and my mother-in-law divorced when my wife was in college; my wife continued to live in his house and did errands for him, as he is the kind of guy who doesn’t want to do anything for himself at all. The first time I met him, I walked into her house and he yelled at her because of the cost of his internet account, and then because of what her mother did, and neither could she. control. I was absolutely shocked because I had never seen any parents treat them like this before. He probably does not even know that he has grandchildren, and may not even know that we have been married for 10 years. So, it’s pretty simple: when it comes up, we just tell the kids that their grandfather doesn’t know how to communicate with people.

The situation with the mother-in-law is harder and harder to explain to young children. As a child, my wife always thought that she and her mother were close, and they were close. Only later did my wife realize that MIL treated her more like a friend than a parent. For example, before MIL and PHIL divorced, she began to see another man behind him. At the time, my wife was about 18 years old, and MIL told her about this secret and expected her to hide it from her father. While this was clearly inappropriate, MIL also expected my wife to be happy for her as she finally found love! It was kind of the first signal that something was wrong in this relationship.

My FIL eventually found out about this relationship, and MIL moved to live with her boyfriend. As I mentioned earlier, FIL abused my MIL and my wife. His anger at his wife’s unfaithfulness only intensified this, and my wife was left with him. This arrangement lasted a couple of years until my wife and I moved together. The entire time my wife lived with her father, MIL was chatting with her as if they were friends, and acted incredibly happy that she was now living with the man she loved. She never once expressed concern or regret about my wife living alone with her terrible father.

After my wife and I lived together, the relationship between her and her mother continued to change, and the parent / child relationship almost completely changed. My wife called her mom to spend time together, and her mom never wanted to. At that moment, MIL contacted my wife only when she needed a favor and, often, to borrow money. Keep in mind that my wife was still graduating from college at the time, so she’s not exactly wealthy. It seemed to me that MIL was not interested in the relationship, but she liked the feeling of control over her daughter.

When my wife and I got engaged, her mother reacted very strangely. Instead of being happy, she cried, and these were not tears of happiness. From a conversation with her, it became clear that she was afraid of losing control of my wife. After we got married, my wife and MIL’s relationship continued as before; MIL declined invitations to spend time together, but always turned to us if she needed help with something or she wanted to borrow money. She even showed up unannounced at the retail store my wife worked for and asked her to borrow money while she was working!

The situation became even worse when our first child was born. When my wife told MIL she was pregnant, she reacted in much the same way as when we told her about our engagement. She even asked my wife if she was going to terminate the pregnancy, and it was a completely shocking question. Throughout her pregnancy, MIL made it clear that she would prefer a granddaughter. After the birth of our son, she had little interest in him. Sometimes she came in for 10 minutes, took pictures and left. I don’t want to start arguing about gender toys, but she even gave him toys that were clearly meant for girls. It seems that it was all part of the desire for something “her”.

Life went on as usual, and we talked less and less with MIL. Eventually, it became clear that MIL’s relationship with her boyfriend (the same guy from the novel) was starting to deteriorate. She was suddenly more interested in trying to talk to my wife. The fact is that she had unfounded requests, and she was angry when my wife turned them down. For example, one Thursday she unexpectedly called my wife and asked if she would go with her on a short weekend trip. For me, that would be a ridiculous request for immediate notification at any time, but we had a baby at home and that would leave him and me alone with zero notification. My wife told her that she would not be able to go, and MIL got angry and didn’t talk to us for a couple of months.

Finally MIL spoke to us again, usually to borrow money. In the end, my wife refused and told her that we could no longer do this. MIL was angry but stopped asking. By this time we had two children. We still tried to see the MIL, and she still showed little interest unless she needed a favor. I should probably also mention that every time my wife turned down one of her requests, MIL placed an incredible sense of guilt on her.

These events leading to our alienation from my MIL were cumulative. The final straw was that one Friday MIL unexpectedly called me and asked my wife to take her for a few hours the next day so that she could carry out various errands. We already had plans for a day trip with the kids and my family that day and she told MIL she couldn’t do it. MIL was very angry that my wife would not agree with her, they had a fight and have not spoken since then. That was three years ago.

At the moment, my wife is not interested in reconciliation. She believes that her mother is narcissistic and that she does not understand what she did wrong. My son is old enough to have memories of this grandmother, and the children get caught up in a few photos from time to time. My wife suffers from anxiety and depression (she is being treated), and the mere mention of her mother makes her anxious. We tried to explain to the kids that the reason we don’t see this grandmother is because she’s not very kind to people, but that doesn’t seem like a good enough reason to completely rule her out. We would greatly appreciate any advice on how to handle this situation. I don’t think MIL will ever change.

How do I deal with this with my kids?

Obviously there is a lot to unpack here, as you would expect when estranged from a family member, especially a parent. I thought about cutting back on your question, but as you said, the alienation factors were cumulative and I didn’t want to minimize this by trying to summarize further what you have clearly summarized already here. But I’ll start by saying something that I hope will help relieve stress: Your kids don’t need to know all of these details, at least not now – and not anytime soon, if ever.

Children aged 4 and 7, of course, cannot understand the complexities that play in the dynamics of this relationship; but I think that you are wrong when you feel that you need to summarize what happened, according to age, and also to capture the enormity of the problems associated with it. In other words, you don’t want them to think that you will exclude someone from your life – including them in the future – simply because they had a moment when they were not “good.” On the other hand, “grandma is a toxic narcissist who only comes along when she needs money” is also not a good option.

I turned to clinical psychologist and parenting expert Dr. Regina Muradyan to get information about your situation. For starters, Muradyan says, if they haven’t asked about these grandparents yet, there is no reason to point out their absence right now. For example, you don’t need to emphasize that they had some grandparents in their lives, but no others. (They will likely get curious at some point and ask you about the spouse’s relatives, but if that doesn’t happen until they’re teenagers, that’s okay.)

If they are now asking you about your relatives on the part of your husband, although it seems that at least your oldest child is, Muradyan advises that your explanation of their absence be simple and vague.

“I think parents should be as vague as possible with this age group because you don’t want to create any kind of feeling [fear] that the child will be abandoned or rejected when they think, ‘Oh, are you going? do it to me? “- says Muradyan.

In this situation, there is no ideal formulation – it will always depend not only on the age of your child, but also on his maturity, his personality and his sensitivity. In general, however, you can stick with basic explanations, such as “Granny hurt Mom” or “Sometimes when people hurt us or treat us badly, we need to stay away from them.” You can even say, “We love grandma, but she hurt, and sometimes we need to defend ourselves against people who hurt us, even if we love them.”

As they get older, Muradyan says, you may feel comfortable revealing more information about the relationship, especially if they have specific questions. The most important thing is to be open to their questions and honest in your answers, because you are their main role model in building relationships based on this type of communication.

“You want the child to feel comfortable enough to come to you as a parent and ask [about the situation],” Muradyan says. “If you’ve been avoiding, avoiding, avoiding questions, and they’re like, ‘Well, I won’t ask this question because I don’t want to hurt Mom or Dad’s feelings,’ that can create, I think, a pattern that starts to develop in something unhealthy. “

She also emphasizes that it is very important for parents to keep conversations of adults, especially those concerning conflicts between them or other family members, out of earshot of their children. Children learn more from adult conversations than we think, so it’s always best to discuss these issues when you’re alone.

And finally, you mentioned that your wife’s anxiety can be triggered by mentioning her mother, which is certainly understandable. And it’s great that she is being treated for this anxiety and depression – and that you support her in that. Since her concern about her relationship with her mother can also affect your ability to talk about it with your children, Muradyan says it might be helpful for both of you to meet with a psychologist or parenting expert in your area to work through your specific problem. … situations and discuss how to talk to your children about it.

Additional resources:

This information is not intended to be used as a substitute for consulting a professional psychologist or other professional healthcare provider.

Do you have a parenting dilemma? Send your questions to [email protected] with “Parental Advice” in the subject line.

More…

0
Parental Advisory

Leave a Reply