Hi Di, MCN and all.

Here we go again and the kid isn’t even back from school yet. I just need to rant!

The latest development is my partner’s mother phoned at the weekend and was nasty to him saying that he was a liar and she didn't trust him any more and that he had never in his life accepted any blame for anything. (Not true from my experience, in fact the opposite)
It transpired that the child FP has told her he didn't want to go to boarding school but was put under pressure by all the adults in the room during the interview. Nothing could have been further from the truth. There was only N and R and the Headmaster (I didn’t attend) and he was given the opportunity to go home and think about it, which he did and was keen we should phone back and accept the place, This is another example of his triangulation. Now N’s(my partner) mother wants nothing more to do with him. She also said there is nothing wrong with the child because he was fine until I came on the scene. I think she must have forgotten telling me when I first met her about his stealing and bedwetting, etc. This is the child that even his own bio mother has got rid of him at 6 years old (and long before I met him) because of his bad behaviour

She said all he needs is tender loving care and he will be fine. It's now too late but I wished we had involved her in every step in the process and she might not be in denial to this extent. She believes her grandson not her son.

Isn’t this just typical P behaviour. I am so mad with her after all I’ve done and gone through with her grandchild and I’m now getting the blame for making him like this.
That strikes me as a contradiction that she says there is nothing wrong with the child but then she goes on to say he has problems that she can’t sort and she is really worried about him. She doesn’t seem to grasp she is saying the same things about that we are. She is just blaming me.
If I met up with her face to face I would tell it to her like it really is. She has never once asked what she can do to support us by keeping to the same routines as we do when he stays with her. She actually does the opposite of everything we ask to spite me and lets the kid know it. No wonder he is a total sh** when he comes back from a visit there. She fans the flames. Now who isn’t accepting any blame?

I feel so sorry for my partner, he has lost the only other person he can rely on for support. She won’t tolerate what she calls his lying and untrustworthiness but expects us to accept everything this little monster is inflicting on us without question.

I think this is it with her. I decided that she in no longer in my life and I can breathe a sigh of relief that I don’t have to be polite and considerate to someone I don’t give a toss about. She won’t deny herself the right to see her grandson so for me it’s a win-win situation. She can have him during the holidays and tell him what a terrible person I am and how bad his father is and if he comes back worse from there then he is one step nearer going back to his bio mother. She knows this is now an option.

Hey….she might be doing me a favour! She’s not bright enough to see the consequences of that because if he does go back to his bio mother she might never see him again. His bio mother is prone to “moving” around.

I feel better for that.

Jan

Hi Jan, what a terrible blow. I don't know if you have mentioned this so pardon a repeat question. What kind of mother was she to your partner when he was growing up?

This seems to be a pattern to "blame" the parents/partners for these kids. All they need is love sure seems to be the drum beat that I read at other forums about RADs. I suspect not based on any first hand or scientific degree that these children are the ones who do the rejection thus the cycle begins.

It must have been very difficult for your partner to listen to these false accusations from his own mother. We normally expect support from our parents not wild accusations.

Does she plan on taking care of the child during his break from boarding school? Out of curiosity is she in touch with him while he is away at school or is she bringing up something she learned during his last visit with her?

I wonder how long he will even be able to stay at the boarding school as his problems escalate.

In your heart of hearts do you really think if she (your partner's mom) had been more involved step by step that this outcome would be any different? It appears she has ignored any kind of rules or programs that have been attempted to modify the childs problems? Her denial is astounding and sounds like she has many issues of her own that she is now projecting on you. Perhaps guilt because she thinks she should have done more earlier? Now it sounds like the guilt has moved into full blown denial.

Di

Hi Di

You asked about my partner’s mother and his upbringing. She has always admitted she didn’t want a second child and waited 7 years after her first son before she had my partner. It was only because her husband was promised two children that she gave in. By this time she was nearly 40 and quite late to have a baby. The first son she hot-housed, educated him and wouldn’t let him play outside with the other kids. Although from what my partner says he was such an objectionable child no-one would have played with him anyway

She even admitted in front of my partner that she was disappointed he was a boy as a girl would have softened the blow of having to have another child. My partner says despite this she was a good mother and doesn’t have any feelings that he wasn’t wanted or was treated any differently from his brother. He became “his father’s son” because he was a man’s boy whereas his brother was a mother’s boy. He is gay and still lives at home with his mother, he likes to shop with her and chooses her clothes, shoes and even jewellery. I would say he has Narcissistic Personality Disorder (you can begin to see the family genes here-R has a few Narcissistic tendencies too apart from being an FP)

My partner’s father died when he was 21 and it was then that he and his mother had a deeper relationship. It wasn’t until I came on the scene that their relationship deteriorated to what it is now.

From my point of view I thought they had a strange relationship, she was very cloying and would tell my partner what to do about things which I would have called interfering. She used him to rant about his brother who constantly wound her up so their phone calls were one long tirade of her gripes, she very rarely asked how my partner was. She stopped phoning when I lived with my partner because she didn’t want anyone outside “the family” to know her son wasn’t perfect. She does not like anyone to criticise her family and is prepared to lie on their behalf. I don’t mean huge untruths more that she is economical with the truth.

She is too “mumsy” for me but she did one good thing for my partner when he was in his late teens. He was rebelling about school, mainly because he didn’t want to become like his brother, She made him finish his schooling ad he did very well. But when he wanted to leave home and make his own life she tried to stop him but his father stepped in and approved it.
She falls out with people easily and would fall out with him over choice of jobs for example. She also fell out with her sister who she only made up with when she was dying. She fell out with the Church and now me.

She will have R for some of the holidays but she is old now and he is hard work because he doesn’t lift a finger to help her so she is at his beck and call all day. She is the old fashioned type that thinks men don’t have to do anything. She also told me she thinks of R as a substitute husband. I felt uneasy hearing that and don’t really know what she meant by it. She had a deal with R that if he wrote to her every week she would send him pocket money and he did for a while but when he got a bad report he didn’t want to rattle her cage by contacting her. She had to do this otherwise he wouldn’t bother contacting her.
I think the last blow up with her was because my partner said he was going to send R back to his bio mother during the holidays and she probably panicked she wouldn’t get to see him.

I honestly don’t think it would have made the slightest difference to R if his gran had been involved with this whole process but it would have given me some credibility. She thinks psychologists are a waste of time and thinks they don’t know anything. I wonder what Dr. Essi Viding would make of that!

She has deliberately ignored what we have asked her to treat the kid as it’s a way of getting at me, So selfish if she is concerned for the boy. She puts an even bigger wedge between the kid and me. I have noticed how incredibly selfish she is and even my partner is saying so.

I think one thing has really got to her and that is when my partner was on his own with his son he used to take her on all his holidays. Now we go together she hasn’t been invited partly because we have the type of holidays not suitable for an old lady.

I don’t believe she feels she could have done more for the kid earlier as her denial is total-she firmly believes it’s all my fault that he was a lovely kid before I was around. To me that’s like saying if someone has MS it would have been obvious when they were a small child.

You have probably got the picture by now without me stating it but there is no affection between us. She says she is pleased that her son has the person he wants to spend the rest of his life with but I don’t believe her. She wants to control him still. (More genes?)

I could go on for pages but it’s too much for people to listen to but it helps me feel better to write it down.

All the best
Jan