Spiteful mothers

My eldest son split with the mother of his 2 girls when the youngest was about 10 months. She then found a new boyfriend, moved house (to live with this boyfriend), and stopped replying to my son's calls/texts, etc. She would refuse to answer the door when my son called round. She posted photos of the boyfriend holding my son's baby, onto Facebook etc. She did some pretty nasty things to hurt my son.

My son kept up the payments to her, for the children. He flatly refused to think about taking the ex to court, but instead kept up with going to the house, ringing, etc. He stayed polite and calm, and eventually, it all was resolved. The best thing your son can do is to keep up a friendly, decent approach, and to carry on the communication.

3 years on, my son's ex is completely different - she's reasonable and decent, and access is fine. The children are the important people in the situation, and their happiness & stability is what matters.

Always two sides to a story, however, my ex-daughter in law never ever denied us access to our grandchild neither to our son his father, so they can't all be tarred with the same brush, get the message

My heart goes out to you, when my son split from his partner, he and us, the grandparent, were not allowed to see my grandson or contact him in any way. He was nine when they split up, last year when he was 22, he made contact with his dad and then us, we were over the moon. He is a lovely young man, we see him and his partner occasionally, I don't think his mother knows. I cannot put into words the pain and sorrow we all went through for all those years of not seeing him, just to know if he was ok would have helped. I do hope that your grandchildren come back to you when they can. Flowers

not just mothers im sorry to say . my daughters grandmother wouldnt see my kids because her son didnt want to see them there loss . i fought tooth and nail so they coyld see their dad but he was busy msking babies elsewhere

I know Dockersgirl

It's awful to make children suffer, or use them as pawns in a relationship.

In an ideal world, children should grow up not being aware of hatred, animosity and warring parents. Why make children, scared, troubled, bewildered and insecure? It's a hateful thing to do - to play games with their lives.

Unfortunately i have been in your position and for now I'm still in this nightmare. My precious GS and my D lived with me since he was born in 2013 one day his sporodic father took him out on a visit but failed to bring him home. I haven't seen my GS in almost 2 years now. However we're adults and we do not believe or do we have a justice system. If only one of these people stopped to think of the detrimental impact this has had on someone so beautiful and loving as my little GS surely these evil monsters would not sleep at night one can hope ?

and young children are involved the first thing that the mothers do is use the children to cause further upset as in denying the father acsess and grandparents too.

I wish you;d written SOMEmothers in your OP Sweetpea60

In the terms of my divorce I went against solicitor's advice which was to limit my ex husband's access to the children. He was never bothered with them but I didn't want them to grow up not being able to see their father, or to be able to form a decent relationship with them when they became adults. I'd have been depriving THEM. Why would I want to hurt them like that - even though their father was a distant, uncaring and bad tempered person when they were young?

As it happened I arranged for him to have them one Saturday soon after our separation, and he didn't show up. He was drinking in the pub. Now, however HE has grown up and appreciates them more. I think he is jolly lucky to have such lovely young adults in his life personally, and to be able to enjoy their company, given he was a useless, distant and often angry father to them.

But I am glad for my children that he has learned to appreciate and value them. I'd say that's some good come out of a horrible situation.

MIL's have to take the initiative with their ex-DIL's. My MIL was wonderful with the DIL I replaced. She would babysit for her, make cakes, offer help, etc. Unfortunately, she was rewarded by losing every one of her grandchildren when they were moved 250 miles away.

I especially agree with Bathsheba and LiveLaughLove. I do hope your sons can sort out an amicable situation with their ex's. The children suffer mostly but also the parents and GP's if there is a war. I do agree 'some' DIL's use the children as ammunition. Thankfully, not anymore in my situation (there was animosity to begin with) with my own GC. After a sticky patch where she said if he didn't do what she wanted (it would've meant losing his job) then she wouldn't let him see them. He calmly pointed out that if he did what she wanted, she wouldn't get any child support as he wouldn't be in work. Oh how complicated it all is. One small piece of advice Sweetpea60 is that if you make yourself 'useful' with offers of babysitting (parents will wanting to get back out there) you may find you get to see your DGC. Just a thought.

One of my relatives is not with his child's mother, but is co-parenting his toddler son. He and the boy's mum have gone to great lengths to ensure that the child sees both sets of grandparents regularly, mum and dad take turns at hosting him at Christmas and Easter, take part in some joint activities so the little one sees them together sometimes (including birthdays to which both sets of relatives are invited) and, so far, both parents have ensured that the child's well-being is paramount.

My point is that there are likely to be many families that do work hard to get it right after a relationship breakdown, but we are less likely to hear their stories than those whose experience is not so positive.

Weird that I was thinking this morning if I should remind her father (and so my exMiL) that daughter has big birthday coming up. He texts her annually, well I suppose that's regular.

I'm sorry that you sound like you're having a tough time OP.
I think there's something to be said for remaining neutral if you have had a good relationship with this lady previously. I know you want to vent but I'm not sure name calling will get you far.
If I've understood your post correctly you have more than one son who doesn't get to see his respective children? In my mind that says to me either they haven't pushed for access in court, they've been denied access in court or they don't want access?? As the resident parent it is very difficult to go against a court order I'd imagine??
I have the opposite situation. Father of my dgd doesn't bother, like she doesn't exist. He's seen her in the street and ignored her. I'm only glad that she doesn't recognise him. But it breaks my heart. She asks about him. I have never understood the other grandparents attitude either. They ignore her too. Nasty if you ask me.
I hope your son sorts out his current contact situation and you in turn get to keep the bond with your grandchild.

I have experienced this cruel alienation and have not seen my grandchildren for 18 months.
I would love to have arranged a meet up with ex DIL but she has blocked my calls. I tried contacting her parents , with whom I had always had a good relationship and her father put the phone down on me. I
The family courts has been involved but things move so very slowly . Difficult to see what can be done to improve things in these circumstances, having been frozen out by the very person I would have wanted to support after the divorce.

Emotions will be running high. Stand back a bit and let the dust settle. A marriage break-up is a very fraught time and things will be said in the heat of the moment.

You need to play the long game here and avoid labelling your DIL at this stage.

I know it is hard and I feel for you. Time will hopefully be your friend.

Very sad isn’t it I always feel so sorry for the families who are denied the company of their gc.
You can go to court and so can your son.

When my first marriage ended it was me who ended it as hubby was violent & had a drink problem. I still have a good relationship with his mum 25 years later, I always took the DCs to see her. When my 2nd husband left me for someone else our DD was 7. I didn't stop any of his family seeing DD but did say OW could not meet her for a few months as DD had enough to cope with, & as it had been an online affair Hubby did not actually meet OW until he left & she moved to our country. Hubby & his family spent next few months moaning that they couldn't do things all together. My mil ignored me. We weren't close before the split but got on ok.
I wouldn't dream of stopping grandparents seeing grand children. I have 9 grand children now & cherish my relationships with them..
I hope your d-i-l comes round & let's you see the children soon.

I tend to agree with Live, Laugh, Love's sensible comments!
I do think it s worth a try with the suggestion I made earlier in the thread. But overall this is definitly for your son to sort out if he wants to see his children and then for him to ensure that they see you. Also, it is very unusual to not see any of your GC...why have 3 DIL's reacted the same way?

I know you are hurting and I really understand why. I hope that it can be sorted for you.

In every relationship breakdown the focus should primarily be on the children.

My manager said "contact is only ever for the benefit of the child, not for the adults", and I think this gets lost in everyone's determination to exercise their "rights".

I don't understand why the mature part of an adult's brain seems to leave them when a relationship breaks up, and instead of thinking "what can I do to make this easier on our child", the focus appears to shift to "how can I make things most difficult for my ex" (this is not gender specific of course).

Unless your sons have shown themselves to be dangerous to their children (is. physically or sexually abusive) then there should be no reason at all to stop contact. Whatever went on in the relationship between the parents should never impact on the relationships between parents and children.

I would go along with the suggestion to try and speak with the mothers of your grandchildren and say how much you miss seeing them. Remain calm at all times, even if you have to perforate your tongue by biting on it hard, and do NOT take sides in the relationship between you sons and their ex partners, but focus solely on your relationships with your grandchildren.

I wish you well, and hope you can see your grandchildren again soon.

My story is similar to yours, Cobweb.
My ex, their father died in Jan at age 81. They kept in contact throughout his life and they all went to his funeral.
I didn't - a step too far.

Sadly, it’s a way of striking back and taking the upper hand. Grandparents are so necessary to the grandchildren when marriages fail. I do hope you can at least see your DGS soon.

When my friends sil has the kids he does beans on toast, has none himself ,then tells kids he won't eat tomorrow as he'll probably be homeless. He can still spend £40 on scratch cards every week.

That's very sad but not all mother's do this and fathers are guilty of doing this too. When I divorced my first husband, who was a violent drunk, the only time I stopped him seeing them was when he would turn up drunk to collect them. I allowed them to build their own relationship with their father and any negative feelings they had towards him were due to his behaviour and not anything I had said or done. I also tried not to bad mouth him in front of them - not an easy task! I hope the situation resolves itself over time Sweatpea60 and I do feel for you.

I split with my Exh because of his conduct and also his family's constant emotional blackmail of my entire family. He had shown no real interest in the children and didn't have a clue about children or the care needed.
He took me to Court, Judge said NO. I was branded the bad one. However, my view is that neither he nor his family would have dared to take it up with the Judge as to why he said No Contact.
It was his and his family's own doing that they were out of the childrens' lives.

My daughter has just split with her cheating husband. She asked me if I thought twice a week was a reasonable amount for him to see the children. I agreed it was, and I know he takes them to see his parents. So, not all mothers are unreasonable.

I have a feeling that my ex mil would have said this about me. Yet, I would have loved them to see my children. And their father too. It just didn’t happen much to my regret.