Estrangement / Cut off Mum

celebgran Thankyou! It seems a shame when a thread gets pulled away into something else when the OP clearly was looking for advice...that doesn't mean they wont hear hard messages ofcourse but even so!

Norah I hadn't picked up that you have children of such different ages-sorry! Thanks for explaining. Interesting point about the differences between those generations.

Smileless*Thank you for trying to explain what I was saying as you were spot on. Unfortunately not everyone on here gets it.
We don't know why my ESS is not speaking to us but my guess is that it's not about the few spanks on his bottom thirty five years ago . I was just trying to explain about my generation doing it and not thinking it was abuse but this generation does consider it abuse and may be judging us on it. My guess is that ESS and his wife had expectations of us and when we could no longer babysit things changed. My DH is a very gentle man who is extremely kind and nice but sometimes it's the smart person who seeks out advice when they have a child who is out of control. Such as what happened. When his son questioned him about it years ago they both had a discussion and all was good.
Happy families? Well who is happy all the time? Every family has something . There are some children who exhaust their parents and then the parents become frustrated. When my ESS got into his early teens he was going around hitting mailboxes with his friends. At fourteen he broke into the school computer system to change grades. He has been in rehab for alcohol abuse twice. So clearly he has had problems and his estrangement is just another example of that.
On the other hand my son estranged himself from us for over a year and then one day I got an email from him saying it was all his fault. He was figuring out his life and didn't want any interference from us or my mother. He took full responsibility and said he was the only one to blame. Sometimes our children need time to figure themselves out. We have had no problems since and he calls us all the time now.

Granmaryn18 U are just saying very well in an articulate manner what most of us think about a certain poster.

Abuse, I have just caught up with some posts on here.

Smilelss as always you put it so well, I did smack my children never spamkned them but occasional smack on hand or leg but I don't think it was hardly ever certainly not regular, and I certainly wouldn't call it abuse. I too think of horrendous cruelty when I think of abuse,

My estranged daughter was very highly strung and quick tempered, I also am quick tempered probably less so now, and we clashed quite often. It didn't mean I didn't work myself ragged caring for her and I know I did my utmost for both my children.
It's sad to call something abuse in fact it is wicked to do so when abuse is just that soemntung horrific and totally unjustified.

It is not considered good nowadays to physically chastise a child.
My father never laid finger on me, my mum would give me Odd smack, usually I deserved it, she was a Wonderful mum and I certainly wasn't abused. My dad would thrash my brother,which made me cry and I don't think that was good.
However if he had lived I would t have stopped him seeing his grandchildren because of it, it wouldn't have occurred to me to be that cruel.

I see a difference in the way my boomer AC think and act compared to my millennials. My under 40's are completely dissimilar to my over 40's AC in ways that are generational. I was a different mum at 16 than at 35 too.

Just an observation.

Araabra Yes I can read and comprehend the word possible!! So what? I was simply making a statement ..its allowed!

I am puzzled by your apparent need to pick up every minutiae in just about every post, pick out and highlight specific posts and then comment on them ...what is the purpose of this, over and over again? I didn't bother to pick out and high light your comment ...but you reply as if I did, about the word possible that you used ...you keep telling others to look at themselves etc etc ...take your own advice maybe about how and what you read into just about every comment ?
I don't want to get into an endless argument but so many have now commented on your posts in a variety of ways and you appear to have not listened or even thought about whether there is any validity in any comments atall ...unless I have missed that somewhere?

What is your motivation I wonder? Are you trying to be helpful? Make people think? Make people question themselves? Make them re-evaluate? Are you angry? Trying to prove your cleverness? Linking things to your own experiences? All conjecture on my part of course ...so perhaps I should have pit possibly as part of each of those sentences....

If you have adult children under 40 and over 40 they are all part of the same generation and 40 is an arbitrary
meaningless figure.

My under 40's are my ac under 40.

I feel they, as a generation view things differently than my over 40's.

Just an observation.

Norah I'm sorry I'm not being obtuse here ..what do you mean by "my under 40's?" Your children, people you know ....???

Gooddaughter

I doubt very much that any case of estrangement is one sided. Everyone has their own ego at play.

I was watching some of my GC argue about legos earlier today. They each insisted the other was wrong. Each in their own way was right and each in their own way was wrong.

If life was always dealt with fair hands how lovely that would be.

Of course not every case of estrangement is one sided GoodDaughter and I'm confident that when I discuss estrangement I always stress that I'm speaking from my own personal experience. In my experience it is the result of one person causing the damage but I'm fully aware that it isn't that way in every case.

So yours is one of the cases where it is the result of one person causing the damage Smileless2012. That doesn't mean every case of estrangement is so one sided.

GrannyRainbow. I wonder how often that is overlooked, never considered. "someone I welcomed with open arms" and an open heart. We loved our d.i.l. and her betrayal of us was heartbreaking.

"Perhaps you should try removing your blinkers Araabra"

I'm afraid that would require far more introspection than she appears capable of Smileless. Like you, I know deep in my heart who I am, and always have been, as a parent. I refuse to allow anyone to doubt that. I am dealing with enough heartbreak, caused by someone I welcomed with open arms. Braggarts on the internet will never come close to that with their uncompassionate views.

Perhaps you should try removing your blinkers Araabra

Gooddaughter "Surely the majority must, like all failed relationships, share the 'blame' for the breakdown equally with their children. Misunderstanding, things said that shouldn't have been or vice versa, outside circumstances adding pressure etc. When people say that they are entirely without fault it's very hard to believe anything else they say."

Well done. There are always 3-6 sides, ways of looking at things. His side, her side, their side, with and without blinkers or outside opinions.

Starlady "As far as ac protecting their kids from gps who are known to spank, etc. does that really mean the ac have to co? Can't they just decide not to let those gps babysit or be alone with their kids? Not everything has to be a total co, imo."

Some AC don't want to be near their abusers, it's too stressful and painful. So they CO their abusers and protect their kids with a CO too. And yes, spanking is abuse in many minds.

Each AC defines abuse and toxicity their own way.

I see I posted this in the wrong discussion.

A difficult child may will put pressure on a family Gooddaughter but it doesn't necessarily mean that the family is an unhappy one. Rhinestone didn't say her DH repeatedly hit his son with an object she said it happened "several times", for me repeatedly is more often/frequent than several.

A responsible father seeks help from a professional counselor to help him manage the difficult behaviour his son is exhibiting. He regrets following the advice he was given by this professional that was supported by the social worker he was married to at the time. This isn't a man with a bad temper and no self control who "repeatedly hit (his) child with an object" because he couldn't be bothered to find another way.

Deciding to estrange yourself from not just your parents but your entire family is a huge step to take. Of course "life is rarely black and white". I guess you must "find it very hard to believe anything (I) say" because our estrangement is neither mine nor my husband's fault. We do not "share the 'blame' for the breakdown equally with" our son. No we weren't, aren't and never will be perfect parents. Our ES isn't a perfect son; I can't bring myself to say he never was because in reality he was the best that any parent could have wished for; he was that way for 27 years.

Yes, we all have faults; yes we all hurt the people we love from time to time, that is the nature of relationships. It is also the nature of relationships to forgive one another.

When we saw that our relationship with our son and his wife was deteriorating we tried desperately to find out why, so we could stop doing anything they didn't want us to do and start doing what they did want. It was all to no avail because they weren't prepared to try and resolve any of the issues they had which incidentally, we still don't know what those issues are. Once they'd finished with their lies told to justify their behaviour, all we heard afterwards was that our ES has 'issues'.

Their failure to even try to deal with the situation led to the estrangement. They didn't want to try and heal the relationship, they wanted out so no, we are not responsible, they are. This is what they wanted and there wasn't a damn thing we could do about it.

Do happy families go to a counsellor because a child is 'always making trouble.' Do they repeatedly hit a child with an object and when apologising blame it on 'bad advice'?

There are lots of estranged parents. There must be some that are estranged because their children or D/SIL have behaved badly and are self absorbed individuals who through ill health or personality are incapable of seeing the other person's point of view. There must also be some who are the self absorbed ones and their children have cut them off as a result. Life is rarely that black and white though. Surely the majority must, like all failed relationships, share the 'blame' for the breakdown equally with their children. Misunderstanding, things said that shouldn't have been or vice versa, outside circumstances adding pressure etc. When people say that they are entirely without fault it's very hard to believe anything else they say. We all have faults. We all hurt the people we love from time to time.

Oh yes FE (hope you don't mind my shortening your name) you're quite right, I'd forgotten about that one.

Well Gooddaughter Rhinestone's been posting on GN,and the other thread on estrangement for some time now and there's never been any indication that they weren't a happy family. As with so many of us, after many happy years of our parent/child relationships, we suddenly became disposable.

Smileless, yes, lying, and also (and this is genuinely a trait, not me being mardy!): selective amnesia i.e. believing certain things didn't happen, or didn't happen in the way they actually did - generally in relation to the person's own behaviour e.g. "I never said that".

I'm sure there are happy, loving families where those kind of 'discipline' was used that are still in contact. Maybe this wasn't a happy family?

I agree with your definition of toxic FightingEstrangement and would just add lying.

I agree that an apology "can't undo the damage" but it doesn't necessarily justify estrangement. Rhinestone's DH was given this unfortunate advice by a counselor, a trained professional and sought the advice of his wife at the time, the child's mother who was a social worker, a trained professional. No, that doesn't absolve him of all responsibility but it does go some way to explaining why he took the course of action that he did.

Perhaps, without the advice given by the counselor and the support from his wife at the time, a social worker, he wouldn't have considered disciplining his son in that way.

If this is the reason his son's given for their estrangement, for his refusal to have anything whatsoever to do with his father, I wonder how his son would feel if at some time in the future, one of his children has an issue with the way s/he was parented, despite it being recommended by a professional and cuts him out of his/her life?

There are people now who would still justify hitting children with objects as punishment. There were people then who would never dream of it. An apology that they had 'bad advice' can't undo the damage.