You recently gave my husband and me some fantastic advice. We definitely utilized it, but there is still conflict with my husband’s parents. For example, instead of allowing them to manipulate us as to when we would have our son’s birthday party, we just picked the weekend that was best for us.
Their response was that they were going to be visiting their other grandchildren that weekend (my husband’s sister’s family) – there was nothing special going on, they were just going to hang out together. We stayed true to our plans, and had the birthday party anyway. They ended up missing it.
I have many more examples of their spending time with their daughter’s family over ours, or making plans with her family without checking with us first, and then saying we can join them. We are now going on six months since they’ve seen our boys, yet they travel to be with the other grandchildren every few weeks.
So, here is where you can help us. How do you navigate parents’ conditional and disingenuous love when you’re an adult trying to raise your own family? It’s toxic and we don’t see them changing, so what are we to do?
I dread future interactions with them with the neglect they have shown my kids. I would end a relationship with someone who treated my kids like this, but when it’s your in-laws/parents, how do you break up without breaking up?
When I am asked for advice about problems with inter-generational relationships, my first inclination is to focus on how to improve or make things better, especially when there are grandchildren involved. However, based on the history and examples you give, I am in agreement that it makes sense for you to be thinking about ending, or curtailing, your relationship with your in-laws. It is significant that you say the relationship feels disingenuous to you – that is, it feels insincere, phony, like you’re merely going through the motions.
When people have a falling out in a relationship, such as breaking up or a divorce, a variety of reasons are given: the major ones are a lack of commitment and mismatched expectations.
Lack of commitment
It seems clear that your in-laws’ primary commitment as grandparents is to their relationship with their daughter’s children, with a secondary, almost non-existent one, to your family. You shared several examples, such as when they forwent attending your son’s birthday party to be with their daughter’s family, merely to “hang out together,” something they do on a regular basis.
Mismatched expectations
Your in-laws’ expectation seems to be that your family should accommodate whatever plans they and their daughter make – and then, to add insult to injury – with you receiving a half-hearted invitation that you and your family “can join them, if you’d like to.” Your expectations are that your in-laws should give the same kind of consideration for and priority to your family’s schedules about getting together as they do with their daughter.
You and your in-laws are far apart on this, and even though your husband has talked with them about this disparity between how they treat your family and his sister’s family, they have not been willing to make changes. I also want to point out that you say your in-laws “ended up missing” your son’s birthday, but it is more accurate to say that they chose to miss it. This is an important distinction.
Sadly, your in-laws consistently make choices that are exclusionary toward your boys, choices that have the potential to hurt your boys in critical ways, with long-lasting implications.
Going forward
You ask how you might navigate your way through such a relationship. I suggest that this is the wrong question. The question you want to answer is: Based on how my in-laws behave as grandparents toward our boys, how do my husband and I protect our boys from their developing feelings of self-blame and unworthiness?
Intellectually you know what you need to do, but doing so emotionally is another matter because it is beyond comprehension that grandparents could ever be so unkind, so intentionally uncaring, towards their grandchildren. However, as with anything toxic – your word to describe the affect your in-laws’ behavior is having on your family – you either minimize or eliminate the source of the toxicity. You and your husband have to decide whether minimizing, or eliminating, interactions will work better for your family.
At the very least I am going to suggest you stop, immediately stop, talking about the in-law situation with each other, and especially stop discussing it in the presence of your boys. Just stop. You are, in effect, allowing this unfortunate and unchangeable situation to dominate in negative ways your husband-wife relationship, and perhaps it is even contaminating your family environment. Enough already! Instead, talk about all the fun things you and your boys are going to be doing with their other grandparents and your friends, that is, with those who share your love and adoration of your boys.
Regarding your future relationship with your grandparents, I suggest you are always cordial and pleasant. You aren’t rude, disrespectful, nor do you try to explain why you are distancing yourselves. To repeat: you are cordial and pleasant. And busy. “We have so much going on that we’re going to pass on your kind invitation to join you (and the other family) for a vacation.” And you stay busy until such time you may decide you’re not quite so busy. Emphasis on You Decide.
In closing, you may find the following situation telling and helpful. One young couple, the parents of two boys, described to me how one set of the grandparents in their family was cold and aloof toward their boys. These grandparents, too, always set the terms of visits and during those rare times they visited, they were not warm and friendly towards their grandsons.
For example, when these grandparents agreed to attend one of the boy’s 9th birthday party, their grandson, Mark, spent his entire time sitting with the grandmother trying to please her, trying to get her to act as if she were having a good time. She remained her usual sour self. Mark was devastated, erroneously thinking it was his fault that his grandmother did not enjoy his party. The truth of the matter is that Mark would have been better off if his grandmother had not been present. Then he could have enjoyed the celebration with his family and friends.
All the Marks out there, your two sons included, need to be protected from unkind and/or unloving grandparents. Otherwise they may feel there is something wrong with them. Grandchildren in this kind of situation don’t have the maturity and experience to truly understand that it is not their fault that they are dealing with a grandparent who is beyond being pleased by them. An additional factor is that your boys could be even more deeply hurt when they become aware of their grandparents’ preference for their cousins.
As you well know, you and your husband need to make decisions that will be in your boys’ best interests.
Ask Dr. Gramma Karen is published every other Tuesday.
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Karen L. Rancourt has a new book,
Ask Dr. Gramma Karen, Volume II: Savvy Advice to Soothe Parent-Grandparent Conflicts
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