How Do I Talk About Estranged Parents With My Kid?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I have a five year old, autistic, intellectually gifted son. He is highly verbal and highly relational (zero social skills, but man he tries), really wants to be a parent and learn about parenting, and he’s been interested in family trees for a while now. He’s noticed the missing leaves on my side and is trying to put it all together. My husband told me he asked again today about my biological father and asked if he could meet him.

I have talked extensively about my parents on these boards, but the gist:

My biological father was severely alcoholic, literally all we did when I visited him as a kid was sit in bars. As an adult, I found out (or sort, of, I dunno, made the connection with a story I’ve always known) that I was conceived by rape, and then I just didn’t want to see him any more. We have nothing in common and were never close. We haven’t spoken in about ten years.

My mother was severely mentally ill, Borderline Personality Disorder plus probably delusional disorder (mild psychosis), and she made my childhood a living hell with a constant revolving door of terrible men, ongoing violent behavior, and egregious psychological abuse – not to mention treating me like the hated ‘‘other woman’’ while her husband molested me. Despite intense closeness at times, and multiple attempts to make things work between us, I have just stopped trying. I haven’t spoken with her in about three years.

Nobody in my family talks to my mother, so I honestly don’t know if my parents are alive or dead.

My mental health has never been better.

Despite really feeling bad about it, and feeling the longing to reconnect from time to time, I don’t think it’s a good idea to resume these relationships, even for my son’s sake.

But I don’t know what to tell him. He is such a sensitive kid. I’m afraid if I say something like, ‘‘my parents were really mean to me’’ or ‘‘they were really sick’’ he’s going to get that confused with lesser offenses of ‘‘meanness’’ and ‘‘sickness’’ we talk about in every day life (I am ‘‘not feeling well’’ quite often already due to various chronic issues, not to mention the endless bugs he drags home from school/daycare, so I don’t want him to think I’ll ever be too sick to take care of him.)

I don’t really want to introduce the idea in his head that our relationship with him could ever be severed. He already worries a bit about what happens to him after we die.

Up until this point we’ve been deflecting with things like, “Mama’s Aunt and grandmother are the ones who raised her” which is partly true but not really the whole story. He knows I must have biological parents and clearly expects me to produce them.

For virtually every issue up until this point, I’ve taken a radical honesty approach with my kid. We’ve talked about everything from death to miscarriage. But I don’t know what to say here. When my son asked my husband about it last night, he replied, “That’s a complicated question. I have to think about how to answer that.”

So even Sr. Weasel is stumped.

Thoughts?

2

Can you just say, “They are not around anymore” if this morphs into “are they dead?” You can go further and explain they were bad people, and you don’t associate with them.

Be prepared, he’s gonna ask a million questions.
The good thing is he’ll move on to other subjects, pretty quickly.

Yeah. I wouldn’t say “I hate them” or they treated me mean or horrible because they were my parent.

More like they are just generally bad people. He’ll probably ask why? Or what did they did to you?
Age appropriate answers only. I would not mention sexual abuse.

If he’s like you say the questions will keep coming. Short truthful answers. Just don’t go into detail.
Don’t answer questions they aren’t asking.

3

Your son sounds like he’s very high functioning on the spectrum. At least, very verbal. It’s a really broad spectrum. Unclear if he gets very fixated on things or not.

I think Beckdawrek gave very sound advice. That is, if you don’t want to simply outright lie and say they are dead. Not trying to be glib, but having reached 64 years old, and parented a child very much on the spectrum for 18 years (plus 2 others that are neuro-divergent), this might be a time to consider honesty isn’t the best answer (until much older, and your bio parents may actually have passed by then and it’s just a lie around dates). Jus’ sayin’ that not sure what is gained by being 100% truthful in this case.

Your son is 5. Precocious (had to look up the spelling) as may be, he’s still 5.

4

“It didn’t work out. They didn’t want to be parents.” (Which, from what you say about the circumstances of your conception, sounds pretty much true?)

“Parents have to love their kids and care about them. When somebody doesn’t really want to be a parent, it’s hard for them to do that. That’s why it didn’t work out.”

An explanation that has the advantage of being thoroughly inapplicable and irrelevant to your own relationship with your child, which can be very strongly and repeatedly emphasized. He knows you want to be his parents, and that you love and care about him very much, and you can keep on reassuring him of that, so your situation with your parents is very evidently nothing at all like his situation with you.

Unlike the more vague concepts of “meanness” and “sickness” which, as you say, are likely to convey to his young mind more everyday examples of “meanness” and “sickness” that might make him worry that his own filial relationship is endangered by them as well.

5

Take this advice knowing that my neurodivergent kid made it to 12 just by sticking around that long, not because of any really good insight I have into raising a kid on the spectrum.

Can you say your Dad hurt your Mom, so you don’t talk to him anymore, and your Mom hurt you, so you don’t talk to her either? Something along those lines, instead of just “bad” which might suggests they just misbehaved, and so you don’t talk to them.

Maybe even a sickness called alcoholism that makes him hurt other people? “Most adults drink a little bit of alcohol, and they are fine, but some adults drink too much and it makes it so they can’t think right, and they can hurt other people…”

As you probably know, don’t over explain, when the kid stops asking questions you can stop digging your hole.

Might there be an anchor in fiction your kid is familiar with that could help? Cinderella’s step mother, Luke’s dad?

6

When my son was little, and asking tons of questions about everything, I found that questions that hedged issues usually begat more questions. Direct answers that were heavy on information made him happy.

When he was three, he figured out that while usually, grandparents were your parents’ parents, that was not the case in his life.

Explaining that my father had died before he was born, and his grandpap, my mother’s husband, loved him, and wanted to be his grandparent along with my mother (very true: my stepfather, who came into my life when I was 30, treated him the same as he treated his biological grandson) was easy, and satisfied him.

Explaining that his dad’s wife was his grandmother, because his dad’s parents were divorced, and his dad did not see his mother was harder. (And DH’s stepmom was a wonderful grandmother.)

When he was three, we chose to say that usually your family were people you would like to be friends with even if they weren’t family, but sometimes it didn’t happen that way, and dad’s mom was someone who was hard to get along with, and people just didn’t choose to be around. (DH’s sister also did not see her, and his brother mostly kept contact through phone calls.) Yes, it was sad for her, but it was not his problem.

As he got older, he asked what some of the things she did were, and we could say that she sometimes called her children mean names, and did not act like a good mommy who made them feel safe. I think he asked about abuse when he was 10, and learned about it in school.

He also learned that my father was a college professor, and when I taught him to hit a ball, or played catch with him, I told him how I learned that from my dad.

DH never had warm, fuzzy stories about his mother, and the absence of them informed my son as much as anything, but I don’t know if an autistic kid can draw those kind of conclusions, at least at the young age my son did-- but since your son is bright and people-oriented, maybe you can talk him through it-- “Dad tells you stories about things he did with his parents when he was little. I don’t have stories like those to tell.”

If he gets that, then you maybe you can explain something like “If we spent time with them, it wouldn’t be happy, like when we see dad’s parents for the holidays.”

That’s all I got.

7

“There are good people in the world, and there are bad people, too. Sometimes bad people have children who are good people. My parents are bad people, and I don’t want to be their friend.”

Goes a bit into the nature of good versus evil, but that’s a subject you’ll have to broach sooner or later anyway.

8

Good advice so far. I wouldn’t shy away from the “bad people” thing, as suggested, but otherwise some useful feedback here.

I would add one thing. You say you’re worried about putting the idea in his head that the relationship between him and you could be similarly severed one day.

Here’s one possible way to dampen that possibility:

After explaining that your estranged parents are bad people, add this: “I am keeping them away from you because I want to protect you from them.”

Kids are naturally self-centered. This is not a criticism; it’s just how it is. I have two kids, 11 and 14, and it’s a continuing work in progress to remind them to think about other people as, y’know, fully other people. Their worlds revolve around themselves. So something that allows him to focus on himself will feel organic to his thought process.

It also reinforces that you are his protector. The distance in the relationship with your parents is not something that happens to all relationships, it’s a choice you are making because you want to remain close to him in order to keep him safe.

Just a thought. Good luck.

9

(grumble grumble, writes on blackboard 100 times) “do not post before coffee; do not post before coffee; do not post before coffee”…

10

He’s support Level 2 but within a few years he will probably be Level 1. I wouldn’t describe him as high functioning now, but probably that’s the direction he’s heading, according to his therapists and teachers. We’re kind of in that transition stage. And yes, he gets very fixated on things. He is incredibly persistent.

Thank you all. I am considering all of this. I might go the good/bad route but I technically don’t believe in that sort of binary, so I’d at least have to revise it when he got older.

There’s another piece of this, which is that the last time I spoke to her, I told my Mom I would support it if my son sought her out. But I expected him to be like, sixteen. Not five. And the more I thought about it afterward the more I realized I don’t trust her with my son. If they ever had a relationship she would absolutely try to turn him against me. But in the event, as an adult, he does seek her out, I don’t want to like, poison their relationship. Grandparent-grandchild things can be very different. I know this because I adore my grandfather and he was an atrocious parent and husband. I just never actually experienced that side of him.

Do I owe her anything in this case, in terms of the narrative I give him?

11

You don’t owe her shit.

I think this, or something very much like it, would work. Stress that you love your son very much and will never stop loving him. I think it is vital to point out that you won’t decide he is a bad son because of some minor thing that all kids do. You need to tell him that he is loved and wanted as he is.

12

You absolutely don’t owe your mother access to your son at this very vulnerable stage in his life. You don’t even owe your son the opportunity to develop a childhood relationship with his grandmother, simply because the risk to him (at, again, this very vulnerable stage) is too high. Your responsibility to protect him comes first, and sadly, your mother has a well-established history as somebody that children should be protected from.

Play it by ear as he grows older. As you say, sometimes horrible parents make perfectly good grandparents, and your mother and your son may at some point develop a fulfilling relationship. But don’t throw away your very painfully earned caution for the sake of bending over backwards to accommodate what your mother, or your (very young) son, might want.

(Apologies for my dictatorial tone, too: I don’t really consider myself entitled to give orders to strangers about how they conduct their personal lives. But when strangers come looking for advice, my tendency is to say very firmly how the situation strikes me and what I think the best approach is. They are totally within their rights to say “pfffft, Kimstu doesn’t know shit” and ignore it.)

13

You could do what the simpsons did and just give your kid a note that said ‘note, Spice_Weasels parents died on the way back to their home planet’

Short of that, another thing you could try just being vague about them having health problems, and because of that its not safe to be around them. Something like ‘my parents have some health issues that they don’t know how to treat, and that makes it unsafe to be around them’.

When he is older you can talk to him more intensely about mental health, but at his age he isn’t going to understand substance abuse or cluster B personality disorders.

I’d be deeply worried about your mom trying to brainwash him if she had access to him. Considering all the things she did to you, and the fact that she is probably in her 60s and still hasn’t sought meaningful treatment for her toxic behavior, she isn’t going to change or get better.

14

All you owe anyone is, first: keep kid safe.

Everything else flows down.

I wouldn’t bring my child near your parents. If you can’t tolerate them, or feel safe, a 5yo shouldn’t be expected to.

Answer his queries as best you can. If you don’t like a bad/good thing. How about “they are unpleasant to be around, Mommy doesn’t want you to be around that”.

15

I forgot one- I very strongly advise against lying to your children. When they inevitably find out that you lied, two things will happen. They will lose faith in you. They will wonder if anything you ever said was true.

16

My husband and I are both adamant that we don’t lie to our child. I know some parents do, but it’s just my instinct, like, that’s a bad idea with this kid. No Santa, no tooth fairy, no making shit up when he asks a question. And I’m a terrible liar anyway and I hate doing it, so it’s more comfortable for me as well. When he asks us something that’s perhaps inappropriate for his age, I say, “I’m not ready to talk about that with you yet.”

I feel like he deserves something more in this case.

Sr. Weasel had an idea today that we can have a conversation with him about what good parents do. They express love for you, they create safety rules to keep you out of danger (he is well aware of safety rules), they listen to how you feel… that kind of thing. And then to say, “My parents weren’t able to be good parents like that. So as a safety rule, we don’t see them.”

Because, while I draw the line at teaching my son there are bad people, I’m pretty comfortable with saying I had bad parents.

17

That sounds great.

18

It does.
Perfect in fact.

I vote, do that.

19

Mildly neurodivergent guy here, with terrible grandparents:

Three of my grandparents were geographically so distant that visits were off the table more than once every other year or so, and so it was a lot easier to learn about them (in mostly age-appropriate ways: abused children don’t always make the best parenting decisions, though they certainly did their best). I’m glad I was able to have the connections with them that I did, so that I can see the ways in which we’re alike and not alike. I wasn’t abused like my parents were, but my maternal grandparents’ utter indifference was quite hard. It’s harder now with the internet, but if you have any realistic idea that they’re far enough that you can’t easily meet them, maybe that could provide some safety to talk about them more?

My paternal grandmother was local, but because of the nature of her issues, although she could not be trusted with me when I was small, I was actually able to a have a very good relationship with her, in a way that none of her children or their spouses could. Learning about her was harder, because my child’s perspective didn’t mesh with what I was being told, and I wasn’t able to understand the dynamics between the adults. Your parents’ issues seem such that if they are local, it’s a bigger problem, and one you wouldn’t want a small child around. In that case, maybe the simple “we’re no longer in contact” will work wonders, and just small digestible chunks of information for the inevitable “why.”

Good luck.

20

This seems to be the resounding trend whenever that question comes up, yet it always helps to hear it. Thank you.