Sign for grandchildren

My neighbour has been the one and only trustworthy, dependable influence in her grandchildren lives, and I am including social services in those that have done more harm than good.
I don't know why anyone with a modicum of common sense would seek to deny the children that.

Times are changing and emotional and sexual abusers are being exposed in courts. I’m so sorry that this is your experience but Not all that are estranged are abusers .This is where I for one would welcome my day in court.

It’s so sad MissA. That whole situation needs to be investigated to its core. But money resources and such like play a part. In the meAntime again the children are suffering. It s awful.

Granniesunite

Times are changing and emotional and sexual abusers are being exposed in courts. I’m so sorry that this is your experience but Not all that are estranged are abusers .This is where I for one would welcome my day in court.

This to Violetsky

Thanks so much Minty I've signed it.

Granniesunite

Times are changing and emotional and sexual abusers are being exposed in courts. I’m so sorry that this is your experience but Not all that are estranged are abusers .This is where I for one would welcome my day in court.

With all due respect I don't think you have any understanding of the power and control emotional abusers have over their victims.

When you grow up in an emotionally abusive home, that is your normal. You have very likely internalised that it's your own fault, that you are bad, that other mothers love their children because their children are different to you somehow.

I estranged in my late 30s because MY children who have not grown up with abusive started pointing it out and I went to get help.

There are members of this forum STILL in contact with their emotionally abusive parents unable to break free. There are members here whose parents died some time ago who only realised when they felt free upon the death of their parents.

You need a deep understanding of the damage abuse and trauma does to a child's developing brain to even get close to the truth about the damage emotional abuse does.

And when it is my word against hers, tell me, how do I prove it?

So you think in light of your experience, other children should be denied the right to see non abusive relatives, violet?

No Missadventure

I'm not sure what I have said that would make you think that.

What I know is that the can is full of worms.

I went no contact to protect myself and my children and I won't stand for MY RIGHT to protect my children to be taken from me or anyone else.

I understand the emotional abuse thank you and know how hard it is to be heard. It it can be done through the courts . I’d try their first I think if I was in your position .

Sorry there….

Granniesunite

I understand the emotional abuse thank you and know how hard it is to be heard. It it can be done through the courts . I’d try their first I think if I was in your position .

I have.

I couldn't even get a restraining order as there was not enough proof.

I think that as much as you have this beautiful idea, the bigger picture is not what you think at all.

Anyway. That's all I have to say for now, I shouldn't have to defend my motivations or my thinking against assumptions. That's deeply unkind given the circumstances.

We’re all defending our motivations though aren’t we.

Other people feel every bit as strongly as you, violet.
My neighbour is unrecognisable as the woman I got to know, before all of her problems (though they never were actually "hers")
Her mental health is shot to bits, she has had 2 strokes, and suffers badly with depression and anxiety.
It has been about 16 or so years of dealing with this, the grandchildren are now grown, and bringing a whole heap of other issues into the mix, due to their utterly chaotic upbringing.

Nobody has asked you to defend anything, violet.
Not at all.

Agree 100% with you MissA. I've signed.

I think signing these types of petitions is pointless.

It is too big an infringement on parental rights. It’s not going to happen.

It's just a matter of when, rather than if, as far as I'm concerned.

Absolutely not. It does not help children to deal with the tension that is created in the family when their parents are forced to facilitate a relationship that they might not think are in the children's best interests. It is a parental decision who is involved in the lives of their children.

I think protecting the relationship when it is compromised by divorce or death of a parent can have a place. Where both parents are united in not seeing a particular family member, it should be unusual that this is challenged. In that last instance, I think it says a lot about why the particular grandparent isn't involved if they are willing to put a young family through the stress and expense of something to enforce their own wishes. Something that will not help their GC through loss of family income and stress.

Any GP willing to bring such a case would have me accepting a job overseas.

My neighbours grown children can't manage to work in this country due to their very many issues,let alone abroad.

CafeAuLait

Absolutely not. It does not help children to deal with the tension that is created in the family when their parents are forced to facilitate a relationship that they might not think are in the children's best interests. It is a parental decision who is involved in the lives of their children.

I think protecting the relationship when it is compromised by divorce or death of a parent can have a place. Where both parents are united in not seeing a particular family member, it should be unusual that this is challenged. In that last instance, I think it says a lot about why the particular grandparent isn't involved if they are willing to put a young family through the stress and expense of something to enforce their own wishes. Something that will not help their GC through loss of family income and stress.

Any GP willing to bring such a case would have me accepting a job overseas.

I agree completely

MissAdventure

It's just a matter of when, rather than if, as far as I'm concerned.

Can I ask why you think this?

If it were going to happen, it would have happened by now.

No one is going to give automatic contact with a child to people who are not the child’s parents and in some cases, where grandparents have never ever met the child, strangers.

It’s ludicrous to think the current legislation is going to change. It is far too big an infringement on parental rights.

If we decide that parents are not able to make decisions for their own children, what’s next?

I think it because the days are long gone when decisions are made on behalf of the most vulnerable in society without any recognition that they may not be made with best interests at heart.
As I've said,recent events have highlighted that better than I ever could.
My child my rules just doesnt cut it anymore.

Yet there is more oversight of children than ever before. Things people turned a blind eye to in the past are now reported.

Parents should make the rules for their child unless it can be shown that they are harming their children. That does not include differences in values or choices that we just don't agree with.

In most cases, children that grow up without grandparents (and there are many that do so for no other reason than geography rather than estrangement) tend to be just fine. I never knew mine, so that was normal to me.

We're one of those families abroad. Some family members don't even own passports, last I knew. Covid has kept us apart from those who do have the passport to travel, yet we manage just fine as a unit.

I don't have an especially positive view of not having known my grandparents now, as I've got older, but that was the choice my parents made for us, as was their right. I doubt any of us like all the decisions our parents made for our lives.

I dont think its acceptable to wait until it's clear that parents are withholding access for nefarious reasons.

You manage just fine, as did me and my daughter - just the two of us.

Others manage much less fine, and end up much worse for having access denied.

"Disagreement with the daughter"

As usual, very vague details in the request.