Support for all who are living with estrangement (2)

In my area, we have grandparents rights. The thing is, though, that they are about the best interest of the children. To qualify for GPR, you must demonstrate:

1) that there was a relationship with the grandchild;
2) that the relationship has been severed;
3) that it's in the best interest of the child that the relationship be continued.

If the parents are married, one must ask leave of the court to apply.

Frankly, if I don't have a good relationship with someone I'm not willing to subject my children to that person. I consider myself relatively easy to get along with. I would only CO someone if that person did something truly toxic. In that case, I don't want my children around that person.

Another thing to consider: if the parents are not together, by definition they are single parenting. If you go to court, that gets expensive. You could be taking food out of your grandchildren's mouths by requiring the parent to pay for lawyers and court fees. "Sorry kids, we can't afford to go on vacation this year, Grandma's taking us to court." Moreover, if your efforts fail, it's unlikely that the relationship will ever return to what it was. Certainly if someone tried to take me to court to see my kids, if they were unsuccessful, there's no way I would be letting that person around my kids again. Ever.

Same old, same old from you agnurse "You could be taking food out of your grandchildren's mouths by requiring the parent to pay for lawyers and court fees".

I remain hopeful that one day you'll desist from posting your inflammatory and nonsensical rubbish on this support thread.

agnurse please can you stop now? This is a support thread. The people who post on here are generally estranged and just want somewhere to come to find comfort, or people to speak to who know how they feel. I don't think that estrangement has happen to you, so as this is a SUPPORT thread for those who have suffered (please read the op) you really don't need to be on here. You are upsetting people.
Again I second Smileless2012.

I'm not estranged from my family, very thankfully, but I can empathise and sympathise with those who are and I can see that the pain and anguish from posters on here is palpable. So I'm wondering why Agnurse is wanting to wade in and offer yet more unqualified, unsolicited and unwanted "advice" that simply adds to the raw pain of posters. Its such a mean and cruel thing to do, especially when it's been explained to her from those who are suffering. I second Dontaskme polite request, please stop now Agnurse; it's awful seeing you stirring the pot of misery and pain.

Please STOP agnurse. Whatever motivates you to come on a support thread and give out unsolicited ‘advice’ escapes me. However, what is obvious, is that you clearly lack empathy and/or sympathy.

My advice to you is quite simple, try to put yourself in the shoes of a devastated grandparent who, for no clear reason, has suddenly been cut out of their AC/GC lives.

Yes, mean and cruel sums it up nicely Chewbacca

Dear oh dear,always one who wants to stick a knife into the wounded. agnurse are you estranged? do you understand the pain it causes? I somehow don't think so, I see a new poster crying out in desperation and may not post again because of your comments.No one has said their entitled to see their grandchildren,but also no one deserves to be cut off in such an awful way unless of course through being totally toxic or a danger to the granchild/children. As for the lady in Bristol she is a good friend of mine and I personally am over the moon for her.
As has been said this is a supportive thread, hurtful words are not supportive.

I think there are cases where grandparent rights are in the best interests of children, but those cases are relatively uncommon. Specifically I'm thinking of cases where the parents have substantial mental health and/or substance use issues and the children have been living with the grandparents while the parents are unable to care for them. In those cases the grandparents can provide a stabilizing influence on the children that they may not get from their parents.

Sadly, in most cases from what I've observed, GPR seem to be the "go-to" for grandparents who aren't getting what they want. Any time I hear of a grandparent screaming "Well, I have RIGHTS, you know!" my first thought is that they're not really talking about the best interests of the child. It's about what they want. Let's say the parents are not together. In most cases you should be going through your adult child to see the grandchild on your child's time. For example, if you've got two divorced parents and two sets of grandparents, if each set of grandparents gets one weekend a month, that gives the parents only one weekend a month each with their own child. Some grandparents will ask for holidays, too. How is the child supposed to have time with their family? What if they want to go to a weekend camp? Who's supposed to give up a weekend that month?

Admittedly maybe I'm a bit jaded because I've heard so many cases of extremely poor behaviour on the parts of grandparents. These include but are not limited to:
-insisting on being in the room during the birth
-holding the baby before the mother was even able to do so after the birth
-false CPS calls that had no basis in fact
-telling the mother she was "selfish" to breastfeed
-insisting that the mother should just give the baby to the grandmother for a few days right after birth so the mom can rest and Grandma will do all the baby care
-attempting to kidnap, or have someone else kidnap, their grandchildren
-playing favourites among grandchildren (probably the most dramatic case I heard about involved a family expecting their second child, a boy; the grandma couldn't be bothered to even see their daughter but when she found out they were expecting a son she showed up on their doorstep with an IKEA TRUCK full of baby gifts and furniture for the new little one)
-using a key they were given to sneak into the house in the middle of the night to see the baby while the parents were asleep
-telling people that the parents had decided that when their baby was born they would be giving it to the grandma to raise
-telling the parents that they should drop the grandchildren off on Christmas Eve because the grandparents wanted to be the first ones to see them wake up on Christmas morning and they could have the grandparents' gifts first thing and the parents could have the children open their gifts from the parents later in the day
-stuffing someone's mailbox full of pancakes they had made
-physically assaulting their child in law, including their pregnant daughter in law
-talking about taking the grandchildren to Disney in front of the grandchildren when this had never been discussed with the parents
-giving gifts to their grandchildren and then saying that those gifts have to stay at Grandma and Grandpa's and can't be taken home
-refusing to allow children to contact their parents while staying with the grandparents, or telling young children to keep secret the fact that the baby wouldn't settle and eventually fell asleep from sheer hunger and exhaustion

I'm not exaggerating. These are all behaviours I have read about described by the people who were victims of the behaviour. Please tell me which of these behaviours, if any, you think does not warrant a cut off. At what point does behaviour become "toxic"? My feeling is that if someone treats me with disrespect, I don't want that person around my children because my children will learn from that person that it's okay to treat me with disrespect. "Well, Grandpa says you're fat and you're just using your medical condition as an excuse. You let me hear that, so it must be right because Grandpa said so." That's not acceptable.

Agnurse, some of your previous posts have had some valid points, however these last few are just inflammatory. The reasons you state about grandparents not having contact are just so extreme, a tiny minority of people with severe mental issues, of course someone behaving as you say must not have contact, but these are things most loving grandparents would never, ever do. I would never go to court to get access to my grandchild, too late now anyway, for a couple of reasons, I love my d, what she has done is wrong, but the door was always open to her, if I had gone to court that could never happen, secondly, how can I take a grandchild I hardly know from her loving family, I can only see the child becoming upset by it all as there would be resentment from her mom and dad at this being forced on them, that would affect the child, so for me it wasn't an option. For other grandparents who feel it is the right path to take for valid reasons it is good they can do, the courts are daft, every case is taken individually and not lightly. For you to slate everyone as these abusive, selfish and mentally unstable people is wrong, as a nurse I don't know how you can do that to those on here you have upset. It seems that you are deliberately trying to upset, I do wonder at your motives as to why you want them to suffer. It doesn't affect me what you say, the pain I edured years ago has made me stronger, the person I am. All families have their skeletons, it's how we deal with it that matters. Think about what you are saying and ask yourself why you feel the need.

Sorry, it should have read, the courts are NOT daft.

I’m so sorry to see that this support thread has been derailed yet again. Please try just to ignore the upsetting posts, and perhaps agnurse will move on eventually to a forum in her own part of the world that would benefit from her wealth of experience.

Morning to those other estranged GN's on this thread, hope that you are all well and looking forward to a day of lovely sunshine. I don't usually post on here but feel the ethos has gone askew so lets get it back, ay?

I haven't spoken of the estrangement the whole of our side of the family are experiencing, including our DS, as its too painful tbh (just thinking about it is making my heart bang), but I have been reading posts for a while and have appreciated the calm support that is given, directly or indirectly.

I've got the thrill of vacuuming under the bed as one of my chores today - thrilling, I know . Hope to get out in the garden for a while before the sun goes for good, although I don't really like getting tanned on my neck now its gone saggy as I end up with weird sort of stripes round it so factor 50 it is!

None of the extreme behaviours you've referred too have been exhibited by the posters on this thread agnurse so simply aren't relevant on this support thread.

Like Luckylegs your comments don't upset me but they make me veryas they may upset others and have it would seem, prevented Rosa from posting again when she was clearly in need of support and understanding.

Maggiemaybe.

Dontaskmethat made me laughwhat exciting lives we lead; vacuuming under the bed. That is a chore isn't it.

I plan to get things done early so I can enjoy today's warmbefore it cools off again.

Blimey, don’t know where agnurse lives but some of the cases she cites would be headline news in this neck of the woods. (The grandma wanting to feed the baby, eh?). Very rare and extreme.

Going to enjoy the sunshine before it disappears...

I think some of her examples would make headline news anywhere Fairydoll, if they actually happened of course.

A baby falling asleep from "sheer hunger and exhaustion", really!!! Blind me, how did those GP's manage to raise their own children? How would the parents of that poor baby know when they weren't there?

Maybe we should never refer to agnurse again? To me they don't exist. Just ignore them now is my advice.
Have a lovely day everyone

You too Dontaskme enjoy the lovely warmwhile it lasts.

I think a good chamomile tea would do to calm those fears Agnurse.
Those examples are extremes and in the state I have seldom heard of that much grandparent interfering.
I can’t speak for others but my DH and I were loving ( kissing) and fun grandparents. We knew our place and always deferred to their parents first. They trusted us for three years of care weekly and then for no reason we were cut off. What harm could come to children for having more people to love them and enriching their lives?

I'm worried about Rosa. Hope she's ok. Please post just to let us know you're ok.

Smileless

The baby falling asleep from hunger and frustration did actually happen, to the best of my knowledge. It was described by the mother. They had two children, a toddler/preschooler son and a baby girl. Their son came to them a few days after it happened and he was upset because Grandma had made him keep what had happened a secret.

Needless to say, Grandma won't be baby-sitting again.

Rosa

I'm sorry if my posts caused offense to you. I wasn't referring to you in particular; just speaking in general.

I would strongly encourage you to find a licensed mental health professional to discuss your concerns. If you are actively suicidal, this becomes even more important.

You might check to see if your area has crisis hotlines available. These are usually staffed by professionals and/or trained volunteers who are familiar with handling the concerns of people in crisis.

Realistically (and I mean this very sincerely), seeing your grandchildren is likely not going to be the sole solution to your depression, especially if you are actively suicidal at the time. (I have no prejudices against the mentally ill; it's just that small children are not equipped to emotionally handle someone who is severely depressed and/or suicidal.) Getting yourself healthy needs to be your first priority. If your estranged child decides to eventually contact you, this will put you in a better place to be able to see and interact with your grandchildren on a positive level.

No harm at all Rhinestone but it's not the children they're thinking of is it, it's themselves and let's face it children are the ideal weapon aren't they. Withdrawing them from loving GP's causes the ultimate pain to those GP's.

It took our DS more than a 2 hour conversation to get his brother, our ES to concede that it could be construed that he was using his C, our GC, as weapons against us but he still denied that was the case.

As we've said so many times on these support threads, an AC not wanting contact with his/her parents doesn't have to stop their C having contact with their GP's.

We know of a couple where this is the case. The son totally blanks his father if he sees him out, but his parents see their GC fortnightly, take them for day's out and have them for sleep overs.

Smileless

I think it would depend on the reason the relationship was poor. If I didn't trust someone I certainly would not hand my children over to that person.

On the other hand, if it was something different (e.g. AC had a dispute over the parent's lifestyle and it wasn't something safety-related, dispute over finances, just generally didn't get on, etc.) then I think it would be reasonable to have them see the grandchildren.

I think that in many cases of estrangement the children aren't used as weapons. Rather, if the parent genuinely believes the grandparents are not safe people, they don't feel comfortable having a relationship with them. I think sometimes grandparents simply want to have a relationship with their grandchildren without those "pesky" parents around making rules about what they can and can't feed their grandchildren, what they can and can't buy for them, where they can and can't take them, etc. In that case I don't feel a relationship with the grandchildren would be healthy because the goal is to do an end run around the parents to get to the grandchildren so the grandparents can do what they want.

*Note I did say many, not all. YMMV.

I don't think it's necessary to keep posting the same old mantra that if P's don't believe their C would be safe then it's reasonable that they don't allow them to see their GP's agnurse.

That isn't the case with Rhinestone, doesn't apply to us and doesn't apply to any of the EGP's posting on this thread. In may cases of estrangement the children are used as weapons.

I have an email from our ES about 4 months before the final CO in which he stated "we will never stop you from seeing ..... because we know how much you love him". So why did they, because as he said, they know how much we love him and they knew how much it would hurt.

Maybe its not about you at all? Maybe instead of seeing it as they are using their children as a weapon...think they might be trying to do what they feel is in the best interest of their child/children?

Im glad I wasn't on here during my time of estrangement...I would have been the opposite of uplifted and supported to hear such harsh things about estranged children and their assigned for them motives. Just sayin'.

I was afraid to talk about it, for just that reason..I dind't want my child vilified by those quick to judge.