My daughter cut me out of her life and the life of my 2 year old grandson 24 years ago. She had another son 2 years later and wrote to tell me he was born and his name which was one I suggested after the first one was born.
Long story..lets not bother..grandsons grow up and become adults.
What I dont understand is why these estranged grandchildren dont seem to want to find their grandparents. Obviously they have been groomed to think badly of them or to believe they dont exist. Have they no curiosity?
I use ancestry and findmypast to trace ancestry and you often see stories about people find relatives they did not know existed. I also think there are probably grandparents oblivious of their own grandchildren. It seems to me that it is almost fashionable, amongst young people, to have a nana and/or granddad. If they have not why dont they ask....really?
Young grandchildren pick up conversations their parents are having about their estranged parents! ( grandparents) to me that is a form of brainwashing the grandchildren!
Kids knowing whats going on is brainwashing????
Wouldnt that be the opposite of brainwashing?
If AC want to slate their parents it should not be done in front of the grandchildren! and yes it is a form of brainwashing as all the grandchildren hear is their parents slating the childs grandparents! this has an adverse affect on the grandchildren.
Lies are brainwashing
Truth is respect
And if the parents never talk about the grandparents at all...is that also brainwashing?
If AC want to slate their parents it should not be done in front of the grandchildren!
It doesnt need to be in order for children to pick up on the fact that the GP makes their parents unhappy!
Kids pick up on things!
Kids also are the most terrible eavesdroppers/nosy parkers
I agree Wibby AC shouldn't slate their parents in front of their children. One can only imagine quite rightly, the vitriol if a GP said they slated their GC's parents in front of them.
Kids notice if their parent is sad/upset/tense/edgy whenever a certain person phones or visits even if the parent never says a word and plasters on a fake smile
Sometimes if kids pick up that somethings amis but arent told why that can make it 10x worse as then they use their imaginations to fill in the blanks...
If someones just not spoken about that person can take on scary monster/ villan status in the childs mind when the truth may be less boring.
Its not that simple as "just dont talk about it" on front of kids.
Kids ask
Kids imagine
Kids work stuff out
My mum was the one doing the slating to my children about me, which was worse because I am the person they are supposed to trust and depend on most in the world.
They soon worked it out though. They were so relieved when I estranged. So many memories ruined by their nanny. Their other nan they have never met because she chose her boyfriend over her son after he was taken away by social services because the stepfather was beating him.
They don't seem any the worse for it but it still saddens me they don't have a bigger support system.
The main issue is that you simply cannot have a normal GP relationship with your GC if you have no relationship with your AC.
Even if you ARE in touch, it wont be that sort of relationship
Your GPs are your parents parents. The people that tie together your parents and aunties and uncles and cousins.
They are a part of a bigger whole. A piece of the puzzle that makes up your family.
Separate from those dynamics and theyre just a stranger that expects you to act towards them they way GCs whose GPs are part of the family act
This probably won't help but it is the truth. I didn't have a relationship with any of my grandparents growing up because of various reasons, none of which were estrangement. However, I think parents "give" their children grandparents and if they don't children may just never feel that connection or interest. I feel a connection to the family line on my dad's side just because he use to say your grandma this and your granddad that. My mum, on the other hand, use to talk about her parents by saying her mum that and her dad that. The content of what they said about them didn't matter. Just the name they gave them and whether they talked about them as theirs or mine. When my dad died I traced his family tree. But I have never felt that my mum's parents were anything to do with me. Even today I can easily refer to Grandma (insert next name) but I stumble over calling the other set of grandparents anything other than my mum's mum or my mum's dad.
Really depends on situation. My maternal grandfather whom I met a few times was not a nice person and I would never have sought him out. I have adopted children. My son met his birth mother once and never wanted to meet her again so his children will never seek out that branch of the family. My sister was estranged from my mother and siblings for 20 years. She has 4 grown children and none of them ever responded to contact. There is no easy answer to estrangement however it occurs.
What notanan said. It’s one think to be interested in general info about ones ancestors. If they were to all come back to life today I can’t say I’d want a relationship with my great great grandparents several times removed! You don’t miss what you don’t know, and seeing as how men, generally, are less motivated by relationships and staying in touch with relatives, id be very surprised to see grandsons showing up one day to seek out their grandparents.
Actually I can't say I had ever been interested in my grandparents or other ancestors. I knew my grandparents and I spend time with them when I was a young child or a teenager but then I grew estranged. I just never felt any personal connection and I've never bothered to know their stories. I don't know why it happened, maybe because of my family, where there were no close relationship at all. I also can say that I've never been really curious to learn something about things or people I don't feel interested in. So yeah, maybe it's this kind of situation
I was particularly close to my maternal GM but not as close to my dad's mum even though we probably spent as much time with both.
I suppose the GC/GP relationship is like all relationships; there will always be those we feel instinctively closer too.
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