Posted by:
bob...not registered
(
)
Date: September 22, 2014 02:07PM
Married 20 years. 18 years ago, my son was 1 year old. My father in law is an alcoholic, and used to hit his kids.
We made 1 rule: Grandpa shall not be left alone with the kids.
It was a good rule, and was the right thing to do. We would see them about 3-4 times per month, sometimes we would stay overnight and MIL/FIL would watch my son so DW and I could have a movie night or whatever.
We got back one night, grandpa drunk, baby asleep, MIL gone (she went out to play bunko).
So, absolutely nothing "bad" happened to my son. But the rule had been broken, so we stopped inviting MIL/FIL to babysit. Now, the new rule was, "You can visit as long as DW or I are with you." The rule was primarily for MIL, as she is the one who made the commitment not to leave baby alone with FIL.
It got very ugly, very fast. They called the police to say we were abusive. They called a lawyer to say their grandparent rights were being violated. They called a private detective to try to scratch up some dirt on us. So, we decided to increase the restriction to "no-contact."
After all of that, what do you think happened?
We didn't see them for almost 15 years. We saw them a couple years ago for 25 minutes one afternoon. Other than that, there has literally been no contact, and I count it a net gain on our part. (I actually had lunch with MIL about 3 years in, and she degraded my DW. I mistakenly had believed that she wanted to reconcile at that time. I was really wrong...but I handled it well because I knew going in that my boundaries were the ones that would govern, and I'm REALLY good at not being manipulated).
Selfish, manipulative relatives don't need access to my (now grown) kids.
If they had been able to recognize the small mistakes, and simply say, "Sorry, we realize you are responsible for your kids, and we will respect your boundaries," then none of this would have happened. The fact that they escalated with cops, lawyers and private investigators shows that they never really cared about us or the kids, but only their own selfish reasons for wanting to see and know our family.