Controlling people with money

In My Humble Opinion
1

Sorry if the title isn’t sufficiently explanatory. I wanted to discuss gift giving, and the accusation that someone’s generosity is motivated by a desire to control others.

Specifically, this involves my 3 kids - now in their 20s. In the past, at least a couple of them accused my wife and me of trying to control them with money. I think the common situation was when we said our paying for college was dependent on them attaining certain grades - and sharing their grades with us. At other times I’m sure we said that if they did not wish to comply with our household rules/expectations, and if they weren’t willing to be sufficiently pleasant, they could move out and pay for their own room and board.

Personally, I don’t think such a position inappropriate. I know we were not perfect parents. We did not insist that the kids attend any particular school or study anything specific. Our main goal was that they become self sufficient and as happy as they could be. If they wished to pursue an apprenticeship or other path which would lead to their independence, we would have supported that as an alternative to college. Now, they all graduated without debt, are employed, and live independently. On balance, I’m content that we could have done far worse.

As our kids are all independent, we’ve begun gifting primarily cash. Also, our situations have improved such that the gifts are getting larger (amazing what losing 3 tuition/board bills can do for your net worth!) Just this week, one of our kids chose to tell us some pretty hurtful things - how she does not respect us, we were horrible parents, etc. I’m not sure how this will play out over the long run, but in the short run, we are just about to write 3 pretty sizeable, equal checks to give to the kids for x-mas. This one kid would get another sizeable check for her birthday in January. And we had been discussing putting together and regularly contributing to a college fund for this daughter’s child.

Instead of making this longer, I’ll respond to questions asked. Ought we gift all 3 children equally? In what situations is the charge of trying to control someone through money valid? I don’t think I’m trying to “control” someone when I think that I’m not terribly interested in being generous towards - or sharing my good fortune with - someone who professes not to respect me or appreciate our shared past.

So - whaddya say?

2

“Controlling” with money only happens if they are dependent upon your money. You say your children are all independent so your gifts should affect their lives as gifts, not “Thank God, now we can pay the mortgage”. Towards that end, I don’t see where you are controlling them to give or not give a gift. Of course, at this point you don’t owe them anything even if they ARE dependent on your money. But “I’m not giving you the $1,000 for your life-saving cancer drugs” is different from “I’m not giving you the $1,000 you’d use to buy new kitchen cabinets”

That said, I would consider still gifting the one child as usual only because I would hope the situation can be resolved and things she said can be gotten past. Treating her differently right now would only seem to escalate the situation and hurt feelings. Also, I get the impression that you can afford it. If things aren’t better after the holiday, of course, that would affect future gifts and perhaps her birthday gift (where there’s no immediate comparison to the other children).

That’s just my off the cuff impression though, knowing nothing of your full situation.

Edit: I’ll add that things such as “We expect you to be respectful and wash the dishes while you’re living here” or “I’ll pay for your college as long as you maintain a B average” are perfectly reasonable and hardly “controlling”.

3

Initial gut reaction: “OK, if money makes you feel controlled, here’s a sweater. Merry Christmas.”

I don’t think your requirements for grades was outrageous or even out of line. When I went to college I was paying my own books and tuition but living at home, and my folks agreed that as long as I was using my part-time job earnings for my education, I didn’t have to pay room and board. Even as a snotty 19-y/o, I didn’t consider that to be out of line.

As to the daughter who said those awful things - there’s the dilemma as I see it. If you don’t give her a check, you’re punishing her. If you do give her one, you’re trying to buy her love… Wish I had some wisdom to share here. I have to wonder what else is going on in her life.

From the other side of it, my mom writes us really nice checks every year, and while I appreciate it, I’m 62 years old and kinda, sorta retired (working a lower-paying job than the one I retired from.) I feel weird taking the money, altho I know Mom is quite comfortable financially. I don’t feel like she’s trying to control me, nor am I trying to control my daughter when I give her a check. Dunno…

4

Most people spend their entire adult lives controlled by money. I go to work to get paid. I pay my rent to avoid being homeless.

My sister gave her children a dollar for every year in their age every week. They got another dollar for the additional good things they did, and got a dollar taken away for any bad things.

5

So help five old ladies across the street, and kill one of them, and you’re up four bucks?

As parent of six, with the last two filling out college apps, I’d say that tying room and board to “moving forward” is absolutely appropriate.

6

Thanks all. My strong preference is that we gift all 3 equally - to be possibly revisited later. And my hope/expectation is that things will improve. As observed, while I’m pretty sure the amount of the gift will be sizeable to each kid, we can easily afford it.

I’m hoping that things improve with this one kid. We’ve gone through rough spots with each kid - and with each other. We had had the impression that this dtr was not particularly happy. She has a young child, which we know is stressful. And our relationships have become more superficial - not what we would hope from our nuclear family. But we were shocked to hear how critical she was of our child-rearing, our marriage - etc.

I’m hopeful that time and discussion will allow us to reach a better equilibrium. At the very least, I hope we can maintain a pleasant superficiality. The grandkid complicates things in so many ways. What contact/relationship with the grandkid do we have? What do my daughter and her husband tell that kid about their grandparents? And the amount we were considering gifting the kid for college would have been significant WRT our budget/worth.

Most frustrating is that we thought we had been supportive, loving, and generous. PParenting is the single part of our existence we thought most important - and we thought we were reasonably successful at it. My wife and I are both opinionated on many matters, and neither of us is the “happiest” person around. We know that, but we are who we are, and tho we’ve tried, have not been able to change our natures terribly. We don’t have a ton of friends, but have always considered our kids to be our favorite people. My wife and I also had some issues with our parents/siblings. Possible that we modeled behavior/said things that could have been better.

We’ve always thought that our honesty and openness is the greatest and most consistent gift we’ve given out kids. Bothers us to think that our daughter was not reciprocating. Makes us wonder how badly she has thought of us for how long?

If she wanted to hurt us, she sure picked a good way to do so.

7

I’ve seen a few people do things like this over the years. Apparently they feel compelled to express these thoughts. I don’t quite understand it as I haven’t shared that compulsion. I’ve always thought it seemed rather foolhardy to risk offending and alienating people you (presumably) love this way. There are other avenues for getting something off your chest.

If it’s a one-time thing it’s probably something she felt she had to do to resolve some inner turmoil. Things may proceed more “normally” from here and I’d lean toward forgiving and looking to a more pleasant future.

If it’s something she just can’t let go of and repeats, I’d be inclined to distance myself emotionally and financially until a change of heart has been evidenced.

8

Maybe she was stressed about other events. Maybe she felt attacked by something you said and lashed out to take the wind out of your sails. Maybe she just had a slow build-up of things that all came out at once making it look much larger than it was.

That’s why my gut instinct, not knowing any details, is to gift her equally so you can work past the event without adding in more complications by making the gift an issue. You certainly don’t OWE it to her and it’s 100% in your right to withhold it but, tactically, it’s little cost to you if you can easily afford it to make reconciliation easier.

9

You’re just controlling the money. Your kids are controlling themselves in such a way that they think will bring them more money. You aren’t actually controlling them.

10

How are her comments connected to money? Were they? It’s not super clear.

I mean, some people are moody and lash out for no good reason at all.

11

I’d be inclined to give less equally to the child who is acting shitty.

12

Concur. Unless there’s a consistent pattern of such anger/abuse/attack, just sigh and know they love you.

13

If she’s critical of your child-rearing and your marriage, why are you talking about your gift-giving? You say that you and your with are both “opinionated”… I’m guessing that means you both feel you can speak your mind about whatever and expect no repercussions from doing so.

You need to realize that your children are not obligated to accept whatever treatment from you just because you’re family. Your daughter apparently has a family of her own. You’re a couple of people competing for attention with her family. Why should she want to spend time with you? You say you’re not the “happiest” people around, and that she wasn’t happy with growing up - why would she want to spend time with people who don’t make her happy? It’s no wonder your relationship with her is superficial; she’s deliberately drawing away from you.

And you’re focusing on your gift-giving habits.

14

This time they weren’t. But in the past, she’s said things like we forced her to go to college. And that she’s not interested in having anything to do with her GF (who IS a shit and whom I believe DOES attempt to control people with $) once he stopped sending her checks for birthdays/x-mas. (Curiously, that GF just reached out requesting info to set up an acct for my gdtr.)

I think I drew the connection, simply because we were about to gift a decent sum - especially if our 28 yrs of past efforts are not appreciated. If we are as horrible as she claims, I’m not sure why she would want anything from us.

15

We’ve had periods of… difficulty with one of our kids, who went into a deep judgmental mode for several years. (ETA: For largely imagined offenses and much Mt. Molehill-ing; just too many years away at college sulking about things with no discussion.) Such things can usually be worked out with patience and time.

Give her a check. In very gentle words, tell her it’s not about control, but if she feels that you’re using it for control or to “buy love” or such, she can tear it up and you’ll find her another Xmas gift.

16

No, we do not feel we can speak our minds with no repercussions. I was merely suggesting that we think about things and form opinions about them. Many of our beliefs are such that we’ve long learned the benefit of not sharing our opinions widely. When our family ASKS us things, we are honest and open. We have been very aware of not criticizing - or even offering much advice/opinions - regarding her parenting or housekeeping. Also, we are extremely liberal, nontheistic - very strongly held core beliefs/values which my dtr professes to share. We suspect her husband is more conservative and theistic. We know his family - very nice people - are.

By saying we are not “happy”, I did not mean to suggest that we were not “content” or socially pleasant. I’m comfortable that we’ve always been very supportive of our children - tho we told them growing up when they did things we thought ill-advised. I’ve posted in the past about the transition to parenting adult children. While I’m sure we could have done better, we’ve been pretty darned good about respecting their ability to make decisions as they wish. With rare exceptions, we only offer opinions when asked. Those exceptions are few and far between - limited to situations where we think a significant misstep is possible, and we make the decision that it is better to offer advice beforehand, than to risk dealing with avoidable repercussions after. On those occasions, we simply express our opinions, and let it go.

We live 10 minutes from them. They’ve been married 5 yrs, 1 kid. Our suspicion was that her husband did not care for us - and we weren’t sure why. We were somewhat disappointed over the past months/yr that our relationship with this dtr did not seem as open and authentic as the relationships with our other 2 kids. We thought we had done a pretty decent job of raising our kids, maintaining a household, handling our finances. We also made our share of mistakes we’d just as soon out kids not repeat. We thought our life experiences - mated with our truly having their best interests at heart - were more valuable gifts than any cash or “things” we could offer. We thought it odd that our dtr (and certainly not her husband) never asked us for advice about anything. Our other kids do somewhat regularly.

I cannot think of examples when we mistreated them. Sure, on occasion we may have reacted poorly to minor things when they were kids, but certainly not anything significant anytime recently. And we are VERY aware that her nuclear family is the most important thing to her now. We do not want to compete for time and attention. We just want to know how we fit in. We always try to host them and share time with the, at their schedule, in ways they find most enjoyable. Overtime, we’ve realized that they do not seem to initiate as much interaction - which caused us to wonder as to the cause.

When we ask her very simple things - like whether she and her dtr want to go to the zoo - her invariable response is that she has to ask her husband. Even on really minor things. Despite her proclaiming to be a strong feminist. Strikes us as odd, but we respect her choice. Tho, we wondered if there was something going on with her marriage dynamic. Now we suspect it may have been her way of deferring doing things with us. If so, it may have contributed to our characterizing her husband as the one responsible for any friction.

I’m only “focusing” on gift giving because that is a specific act I’ll be doing immediately, as well as wondering about the impact of this specific act on our overall relationship.

But thanks for your thoughts.

17

My son criticizes my parenting a lot, but he’s four. I was kind of hoping he would grow out of it.

More seriously, you could just ask her what she prefers. Tell her that you heard what she had to say, that you’re willing to keep listening, and that you want to move forward based on dialogue. Accordingly, how would she like to handle holiday gift-giving?

18

Is putting the money into an account for your grandchild’s future college expenses an option? Behavior should have consequences, regardless.

Also, forgive me if this is out of line, but something in your description of her marriage is getting off a vague alarm bell on this end. Could she be stuck in an unhappy/abusive marriage, and is basically lashing out at those closest to her?

19

Wow, I’m sorry your daughter said such hurtful things to you. That sucks, and it’s obviously sticking with you.

My best advice is to completely separate the conversation from the gift-giving. Go ahead with three equal gifts as planned.

The first reason for this is about you – it sounds like you are reflecting on how these things might be connected, and if you have been (or appeared to have been) controlling with money in the past, for better or for worse. Let that be in the past, and going forward, let the Christmas gift be about you, the giver. It is a good thing that you are a parent who has the inclination and the means to be generous financially, so feel good about that, and that is IT. No “… but only if it’s really appreciated” or “… but not if I’m not happy with my kid right now.” No buts at all.

The second reason is about your daughter. Obviously I don’t know her, and have no idea what her motive or thinking may be. If she is feeling firm in her convictions, receiving a lesser gift or no gift will make her more entrenched and less open to improving things in the future. If she is feeling worried that maybe she spoke too harshly, or even expressed true feelings in a way that was unkind, a lesser gift will seem finger-waggy and shaming and none of that is good for moving forward in a positive, productive way. It will come across ONLY as you doubling down on being the party that controls the relationship, regardless of your intent. Don’t even think about if that is fair or logical … just don’t go down that path, it is not applicable to this situation. I suspect that might go against your grain, but right now your grain is working against you.

On the issue of the college fund for your granddaughter … this is the tough love portion of my advice (so, you know, prepare yourself :slight_smile: ). The fact that you are including the college fund as part of your thought process about your daughter’s recent comments and your daughter’s gifts is setting off some alarms for me. Your granddaughter is a child, and obviously cannot have an independent relationship with you and your wife. That is just reality – for now, and for the reasonable future, the mechanics of your relationship with your grandchild are caught up in your relationship with your daughter. I think it would be decent and kind if you resolved not to let the issues between you and your daughter impact your giving to your grandchild, so I strongly urge you to consider deciding what you feel you would like to do in a perfect world for your granddaughter (and any other/any future grandchildren) and go ahead with that, and emotionally keep it very separate from your interactions, positive or negative, with your daughter. **To sum up: you are overthinking this, and that is what is sending the message that your approach to giving is controlling. **

20

Your daughter may be dealing with depression. This can cause emotional outbursts life that. You do not know what it is causing it or how long it will last.

The ideal thing to do would be to say that you love all your children equally and are willing to put up with this. However, there is a limit to how much of it you are going to be willing to take.

Send the checks like usual and include a note to let your daughter know that you’re there for her to help her and your grandchildren, no matter what. That is a kind and generous thing to do regardless of the size of the check.

The dick way to control your children with money is by telling them that you don’t plan on leaving them anything, that you are going to try and spend as much as you can on yourself and then give the rest away to some guide dogs or some Museum or something. Then, after you die, you leave all the money to your kids. But in different amounts so that they can fight each other for the rest of their lives over it.