Hello grans of gransnet!
I hope you'll forgive me as I'm cheating abit as I'm not a gran! I won't be for a long time, I have a one year old little girlie.
I'm hoping that you can possibly help me to try and salvage some sort if relationship with my daughters paternal grandparents, mainly for my husband & little girl.
We've had a really terrible time with them, I won't bore you all by subjecting you to the gory details. Of course there is always two sides to every argument but in this case I feel I'm fully justified in saying that most of the 'blame' (hate using that term) lies at their door. But I don't want to dwell on that, I'm just trying to give you all the necessary back story. We had a 4 month period of estrangement last year, due to a fall out between my husband & his parents.
In hindsight, we should have probably accepted that we would never have a good relationship with them and just left it there but it made me terribly sad and I really feel that grandparents are o important that I felt we owed it to our baby to try again. So contact was made and things have been strained and awkward ever since. I'd hoped things would improve over time, but they seem to be getting worse.
I have tried and continue to try to put the time before the estrangement behind us and forget all the old arguments (because if they were re-approached I know that sadly it wouldn't resolve anything, instead cause a further, more permanent fall out this time).
My problem is this. Since contact was re-established, they seem to be trying to detach themselves from our little one. I know they must feel great pain that they don't have a relationship with her, but they don't seem bothered about her. We see them once every 5-6 weeks ( the visits are so hard) My main bone of contention is that during these visits they show no interest in anything we say about our little one, they don't ask anything about her. They talk to her, but she's shy & they give up easily. They spend the whole time talking about themselves. In between visits we hear nothing from them other than a text to arrange another visit. They never ask about our baby! If I (which I used to a lot) send a text with a funny story about her or a photo or video, if I get a response it says 'lol' and mostly I don't get a response.
I had thought maybe they weren't asking in case it looked like they were interfering so i sent a lovely message saying that they could ask about her whenever they liked, ring or text, everyday if they wished! I got back 'that's great' but they haven't bothered to actually ask anything yet.
The question I have really is what should I do?? Their behaviour is making me feel anger towards them, which I don't want and making me feel reluctant to
See them more, which I hate because that's awkward for my husband.
I can't seem to just let go of this issue, I think about it frequently everyday, it keeps me awake at night and everything.
Any ideas? Or thoughts? Or anything!
(I should add, I hope you don't think this is intended as a negative mother in law post, I had a wonderful relationship with my last mother in law and think it should be as close as possible to that with your own mum! And I'm a massive grandparent advocate I promise)
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