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Rejection by adult sons

Started by Wonderland2, February 14, 2014, 10:10:10 PM

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Wonderland2

February 14, 2014, 10:10:10 PM Last Edit: February 14, 2014, 10:15:39 PM by luise.volta
I am the mother of three sons (51, 47, & 44). Each is married and each has two children. Since the wife of the eldest son arrived into our family there has been a gradual erosion of our sons's loving attitude towards us until now. Each has rejected us completely, and the middle one is overtly aggressive. In fact I am afraid of him.
We have been good to each of them providing home loans, business advice and wise counsel over the years. Our grandchildren have delighted us but at at various times we, for no apparent reason, been prevented from seeing them. Often that will suddenly change and we are allowed to see them again - go figure!
However, the situation now is that the two older grandkids, who are adults and university graduates will not see us.
When we ask our youngest son about his two sons at high school he will not answer us, and he won't answer anything else either just saying that he wants to be left on his own.
There are two younger sons of our middle son and up until two months ago we could see them when we wished. Last week their father had a meltdown when we popped in to their home after being interstate for two months: the boys (9 & 4) were thrilled to see us. Their father appeared and told us to leave immediately and if we didn't he would call the police. He said that he was getting a restraining order against us so that we would never see the children again. His behaviour was atrocious and loud. We have been so upset . . . My husband and I adore these two beautiful children,
I am sooo very sad and feel desolate and broken hearted.
We have done nothing wrong that we can figure out, it is a repetitive pattern in this family first started by our first DIL. I'm sure she has problems, that she hasn't spoken to her brother nor her parents for years typifies her behaviours. They are all good people.

Thank you for reading this, I have no sisters or brothers only distant cousins and my parents died many years ago. My in-laws are lovely kind people but I can't burden them.



luise.volta

Welcome - We ask all new members to go to our HomePage and under Read Me First, to read the four posts placed there for you. Please pay special attention to the Forum Agreement to be sure WWU is a fit. We are a monitored Website.

You placed your post under another person's thread, so I moved it to give you your own. The whole family appears to be involved. I just posted it under the "Grandchildren' category because that seemed like it might be your major concern.

While you are waiting for other replies here...please know that you are being read and that we care. Most of us came here because our extended families became unmanageable in one way or another. It may help to step back...take a deep breath and look at what in your life interests you beyond your expectations not being met by your adult children. My take is that they get to make their own rules and mess up their lives and the lives of others...if they so choose. Your parenting job is done and you are in charge of how much abuse you will continus to take. What worked for me was to stop trying to make sense of the senseless. There are many other approaches, of course...that's just what worked for me. I let the whole thing go. and walked away...since I didn't have anything to say about it in the first place and it was driving me nuts and breaking my heart. Hugs...
Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible. Dalai Lama

Pen

Welcome, Wonderland2. I'm glad you found us; you most definitely are not alone! I, too, have no other family to turn to - my sib followed a spouse to another continent, my dad followed my 3rd SM across the country, and my mom passed away when I was young. No aunts, uncles or cousins. I never imagined I'd also lose an AC to marriage, but it wasn't up to me.

Luise makes a good point about our adult children choosing for themselves to not remain involved in our lives. It's very sad but unfortunately all we can do is take care of ourselves. Sometimes there are very good reasons to create distance in families (horror stories about evil MILs abound) but many times not. In my case my DIL & her FOO decided they didn't like us (admittedly for nothing we'd done wrong, they just didn't like us) & we were shunned. DIL has finally become more accepting but we still don't see or hear from her or DS very often. Her FOO is in constant contact w/them, however.

Finding this site was the turning point for me, though, and I hope it will help you, too. Letting go was hard - I still have "a day" every now & then, but nothing like the bad days I had a couple of years ago. (((hugs)))
Respect ... is appreciation of the separateness of the other person, of the ways in which he or she is unique.
-- Annie Gottlieb