Coersive Control

That's so awful. I don't know what you could do short term, but I think long term the granddaughter will realise that things aren't love and neither is favouritism. I don't know what this grandmother is trying to achieve here, but she is knowingly causing pain and upset to her own family and that's never good.

how is grandmother able to take away, are these holidays abroad. does not the mother have custody of her daughter's passport?
does the girl have a father in her life, what does he think.
presumably the gm is single. all sounds v unhealthy, enmeshed, like the gm is using the girl to get one over on her own daughter.
don't know how it can be unpicked. are these people related to you.
could you consult a children's charity for advice, eg Barnado's, NSPCC, local youth advice groups, there are many.
but I guess with the girl being 16 already, realistically she will soon be out of her mother's control anyway.
do you think she will go to live with the gm. tricky situation.

It's easy to say it, but the mother should have stopped this long ago, knowing, as she must have done, what her own mother was like.

Too late now I fear but support for the rest of the family is still possible.

You can only hope that the 16 year old gets wise to her (possibly Narcissitic) grandmother in time.

Killing with kindness is a true saying, although 'kindness' is different things to different people.

Lynne this scenario is sounding very familiar.
Have you posted about it before?

I watch a grandmother of my acquaintance attempt to take control of her granddaughter, not to the same extent as the one quoted, but deliberately undermining the parents' authority, particularly that of the father, so that the relationship has finally collapsed.
However, the mother has immediately moved on to a new partner and moved in with him, some distance away, so the grandmother will not have the same daily contact and control. I think warning lights began to flash.
Unfortunately I don't think there is much you can do to help as the sixteen year old has been made dependent on her grandmother, emotionally and financially, and the parents appear to have passively allowed it to happen. The younger child needs to be removed immediately from any contact with the grandmother, although it sounds as though she is not interested anyway, but it is very hard on her to be denied all the treats. A dreadful situation.

Well it seems it was allowed to happen unfortunately.
Now it too late by the looks of it. Very sad situation.

I don't understand. Who has been "grooming" her? What were the terrible incidents that have taken place? How was that anything to do with the grandmother?

Do you mean "the other daughter protested about the holidays?

The post is very unclear.

Perhaps when the favoured one becomes independent of her family in a year or two, the younger one will get her turn. You can but hope. In the meantime, I think I would let her enjoy it.

Who’s who in this scenario, are you talking about the ‘other’ grandmother to one of your granddaughters ?
Is this a family member or is it not anything to do with you and just your observations? You say you ve watched from afar ...how far? You seem to know all the details so I m presuming you must be involved
I think you need to clarify why you are asking and why you are so concerned
I don’t understand how a child can be taken away or had things organised for them without the mother or father being involved

Very worrying and so sad for the other daughter and their mum. I don’t have any suggestions as to how to remedy this situation.

What is the matter with the girl's mother that she can't deal with this? She/they should just say NO! Is it really your business if she has parents whose job it is to say what is, or is not, acceptable? I admit it sounds 'yuk', but I would put it at the level of annoyance rather than 'coercive control'. In maturity, it's most likely that this girl will come to see how inappropriate her grandmother's behaviour has been.

Nobody stays a child forever. It's easy to exert that kind of determined control when the young one is at hand. An impressionable and self involved teenager will at some point want more than elaborate treats - want a life of her own - move away - and not to live with granny moneybags. Granny moneybags doesn't want real involvement - just an easy means of attention and control. Sadly, though, she will have done much damage by then to the relationships in that family.
What relation are you to this family?

This child is now 16 and a few incidents have happened over the course of the last few months which are frankly horrifying and seem to be the culmination of a long term ' grooming' exercise

I don't understand how you can casually throw that in, and then go on about parties and holidays?

I really want to know what that has to do with anything, apart from being the most important thing in the whole scenario of course. Are you blaming the grandmother for that happening?

This sounds very Gilmore Girls to me. I don't think there is anything at all that OP can or should try to do.

The parents of the two girls involved should have put a foot down long ago, no-one else has the right to interfere.

I find this impossible to imagine, sorry.

Why on earth did the DM and DF (if there is one) allow this to happen? Unfortunately it is probably now too late to rectify the situation. They should have dealt with this when the issues first surfaced, not let it go on until it reached this stage!

LynneLouc
It is not unusual to feel concern when observing over indulgence for one person and not giving the same to their sibling?.You do not appear to be related to the person or the family itself although well informed of the situation so be concerned but is none of your business and could be seen as although well intended interference .

If it's not your family that you are posting about then I cannot understand your concern.

Any favouritism with the grandkids sucks, and it's the forgotten grand daughter I feel sorry for.

I'm afraid you'll just have to let them get on with it, it will run its course , and the favoured one will either see through it eventually or be forever asking her gran to subsidise her through her young adulthood.

Don't understand this. And it's really nobody's business.

If it is all true (I mean, just how many puppies can one kid get?) then this should have been nipped in the bud early on by the mother.

Not sure why it is upsetting you so much, unless there are things we aren't privvy to.

If the mother is a good mother I am sure she will ensure fairness between her children even if her mother doesn't!

Also agree, how can a grandmother take a child away without approval from parent/s? Isn't that kidnapping?

Who are these people to you ?

This happened between my mother, my daughter and me. It was such an insidious process that it took me a while to realise what was happening. Unfortunately, by the time we realised, the damage had been done and any attempt to take back control meant that my daughter felt we were entirely in the wrong which, of course, my mother encouraged. We did family therapy to try to get things put right but all the therapists kept saying was that it was normal for grandparents to spoil their grandchildren so we wondered whether we were being unfair. Eventually, it was engineered by my mother for my daughter to leave home in high dudgeon with me being persona non grata. Guess where my daughter chose to live!!
I needed therapy after that and the counsellor was very clear that I had been given bad advice and that under no circumstances should I leave my other children with my mother without me being present so they didn't get "groomed" too. Meanwhile, my daughter who was thoroughly spoiled by this time found that her GM's partner was not such a pushover so she ended up falling out with him and left her GM's with much unpleasantness.
Fast Forward 17 years and my daughter will not allow her daughter to be in my mother's presence without one of us being around. She can see how undermining my mother is and will not make the same mistake.
I don't know what the answer is and I fear that it is too late for the mother of your young person to take back control. I suspect she can only talk to her daughter about good relationships and support in the hope she can make some inroads into the damage the Grandmother is doing.

Sooner or later the grand daughter will find there is a price to pay for being grandma's favourite. This kind of grandma always eventually wants something for her money.

The will probably hit the fan when grandmother starts to try and control her granddaughter's life. Grandma will be telling her what to study and where, objecting to her boyfriends, trying to bribe her into compliance, you know the sort of thing. 'If you study history rather than engineering atnd come to Bristol you can live with me and I will get you a car. If you accept the place at Manchester to study engineering, I will do nothing for you.'

In fact the reason this woman ignores the other granddaughter is because the younger girl is more clear eyed and assertive and Grandma knows she cannot be bribed or bought.

No - not posted before...

There are lavish favours and presents that the mother can't compete with and never will so unless the granddaughter recognises that this situation is not right I don't really know what can be done..