MRG
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
- Joined
- Apr 9, 2013
- Messages
- 11,078
The best wisdom I ever received from a talented HR person. 'There's three sides to every story: yours, mine, and the truth".
Simple thing would have been to ask "can we buy granddaughter a bike?" and accepted a no if she had plans for her daughter already. But if they didn't ask permission, then they overstepped...
I agree with Aerides above, I'd be pissed if my parents or parents in law bought my kids their first bike as well. That is totally robbing the parents from a very special purchase in a childs life. Now if it wasn't the first bike then I would say she is acting inappropriately.
Does this faux pas deserve a capital punishment to cut off the grandparents? If it were me, I might get offended a bit, then got over it after telling the grandparents what I felt.
The way you act towards other people, your children will observe it and learn from you. If you are so difficult, wait until your children are grown up and punish you for your own little mistakes.
Well, if you are never going to make mistakes, then this will not apply.
And here's another thing. I may not agree with my inlaws on everything, but they genuinely love and care about my children. I never let my feelings about them interfere with the relationship between them and my children. I never badmouth about people and let my children hear it. I would discuss with my wife privately about things that I do not like.
I disagree. My parents bought our son his first bike for Christmas when he was six. We were overjoyed. We couldn't afford him a bike at that point. We always looked at anything the grandparents bought for our kids was a gift to us as we didn't have much money then anyway.
I hope you can get all the problems worked out. Give it a little bit of time and you took a good first step by setting up a meeting with a counselor.
My DH and I will never be grandparents. Both our kids have stated they are not having kids. That was a hard one to accept, but alas, it is their life and if they are happy, we are happy.
Does this faux pas deserve a capital punishment to cut off the grandparents? If it were me, I might get offended a bit, then got over it after telling the grandparents what I felt.
The way you act towards other people, your children will observe it and learn from you. If you are so difficult, wait until your children are grown up and punish you for your own little mistakes.
Well, if you are never going to make mistakes, then this will not apply.
If this was the straw that broke the camel's back then yes. I can't believe for one moment that they had a great relationship up until they bought the bike and then KABOOM. The fact that the DIL told them something about an incident years earlier means that for her, they've been doing stuff to her/against her for years and she finally lost it with them. If she had been hurt/disrespected repeatedly, that makes it a more likely scenario.
Even if they don't agree, they should listen, weigh the hurts she's told them about and come from a place of love and reconciliation rather than "we are the blameless victims here" and their DIL/son are the jerks.
And all you that are overjoyed at gifts, grandparent/parent involvement without any issues... you have to realize that your experience is not every experience. People do dumb things. People do hurtful things. And they sometimes won't make amends or even worse, they'll argue that they are justified for doing whatever because they are related, and sometimes they are wrong. Stating that because you have a good relationship with YOUR inlaws must mean all inlaws are the same is really unhelpful since the OP's situation may not be your situation, and them doubling down on their righteous indignation and anger over their DIL/son's estrangement is not going to build any bridges here.
To quote my DM again , you know you can literally take offence at almost anything someone says to you ..IF YOU WANT TO...
Or it could mean that the DIL can easily take offense and ruminates on stuff endlessly. This a common issue with depression/anxiety. You know what else? people with this issue can hear what they want to hear and not hear what you actually said. To quote my DM again , you know you can literally take offence at almost anything someone says to you ..IF YOU WANT TO...
If this was the straw that broke the camel's back then yes. I can't believe for one moment that they had a great relationship up until they bought the bike and then KABOOM. The fact that the DIL told them something about an incident years earlier means that for her, they've been doing stuff to her/against her for years and she finally lost it with them. If she had been hurt/disrespected repeatedly, that makes it a more likely scenario. ...
Here's an example.
I told the story of the wife of my BIL. Her attitude now spreads to my BIL.
They bought a new car. The other BIL, his own brother, saw the car and asked "Was there something wrong with your old car?", and he got offended.
He told me, "Did they think I did not have money to buy another car, just because I wanted to? They thought we were so poor? I did not ask him for money, did I?"
I was flabbergasted. I knew the other BIL has the tendency to say dumb things, but I would not take offense so easily. I would just say "No, I just wanted a new car".
Another reason we try not to talk to them about much, because anything could be misinterpreted. There's little to gain from just making conversation.
Seriously Give me a break. Robbing parents of buying a special purchase? Totally lame. The kid will learn to ride the bike from the parents. Sounds like the DIL has issues.
I have been estranged from members of my family for 15+ years. I can assure you it wasn't over them buying a bike for the grand kid.Not sure where to post this concern. Wife and I both 69 are retired. Retirement life is a dream except for one problem, grandchildren alientation. Son and daughter in law live 5 minutes from our house. Son encourgaed us to move close by so we could enjoy and help with the two granddaughters.Everything was good around Christmas 2018. We bought a bicycle for six year old grandaughter. Daughter in law was furious that we bought her a bicycle.
Had a meeting with son and daughter in law in April with wife and I. Daughter in law blasted my wife for supposedly something she said at wedding fourteen years ago and blasted us for buying six year old granddaughter.
No visitiation with grand kids since Christmas. Do you all know of any support groups for alienated grandparents? I found a group,Alienated grandparents anyonymous, on the internet.
Any help or suggestions would be apprreciated.
Thanks!
Whatever you do, don't buy her a bicycle.In all likelihood, we will not have grandchildren. However, my sister does not live far away, nor does my niece, and we see our 3-year-old grandniece quite often.
Whenever she was brought to visit us, she would ask "Grand Uncle, can I chase you?"
We stumbled on a game, where I would tickle her, and she would tickle me back. Then, I would run away, and she chased me. It became a chasing game where we ran around my house, and I would slow down enough often for her to catch me.
It has become a routine game that she looked forward to on every visit. And we would roll on the floor laughing afterwards.
Her grandparents serve as babysitters, but we occasionally step in. We are her most favorite grand uncle and aunt.