Ahhhhhhh, they’re leaving tomorrow morning. My mother is driving them to Naples tomorrow, and I dunno if I’m supposed to go along or not. Either way I will be sleeping in my bed or in the car.
InternetLegend,
Thanks for the advice.
(Sigh) I tried the “Go away, I’m busy” one, and got a reproving glance from grandma who said, “They’re only kids, Lissa, you’ve got to have patience!”
While she was gone, they come over one night and asked to stay with us because their mother couldn’t find a sitter. I refused, because I don’t want to be responsible for them. (What kind of mother sends her kids to stay with people she doesn’t know, anyway? She knows grandma, but for all she knows, Hubby and I cook and eat children for breakfast.) It also occurred to me that if one of them fell down the stairs, for example, we could be roundly sued by Exotic Dancer Mom. We’re already facing ONE lawsuit from the house situation, and I don’t fancy inviting another.
I was chatting with grandma later that night, and mentioned my refusal to let them stay. “Oh!” she cried, “Call them back and say they can! You don’t know the kind of people their mother will leave them with!”
I told her that we did not want to be responsible, and grandma pleaded with me, saying that all I had to do was put them to bed, that they would just go to sleep and not bother us. Again, I refused, and she said, “Lissa, you’ve got to learn to have a little charity.” I got the deluxe, all-inclusive trip to Guiltsburg for that one.
Well, the kids survived the-horrible-people-she’ll-leave-them-with, and came over the next morning, beating on the door at 7:30, as if the house were on fire. I stumbled down the stairs, and opened the door. “We just wanted to know if you were going to get us any Christmas presents,” the kids asked.
I was tempted to say, “Well, I might have, if you hadn’t been so rude as to ask for them,” but I just said shortly that we’d see, and shut the door. I could understand it, if they were three years old, but these kids are six and ten years old! I was appalled. Grandma, when I told her that just chuckled, and explained it as their mother had never taught them anything, and I OUGHT to get them something, because she was afraid that their mother wouldn’t.
Hubby and I went out shopping on Crhistmas Eve, and he started feeling sorry for them, and said that maybe we should get them something. “I don’t know these children that well,” I said, “and I woudn’t have the slightest clue as what to get them. Thus, we could get them something they wouldn’t like, and it would be worthless. Plus, it’s probably better if they DO stop liking us.”
Oh, but they do love Hubby and I. Every time they see us, it’s big hugs, and squeals. The youngest one chirped to Hubby when he cooked for them that she wished he were her daddy. Of course, this made resentful Hubby feel like an orge for wishing they’d leave him the hell alone.
The point of all of this is that Grandma thinks we’re being rather crabby and uncharitable in our wishes for peace and quiet. No help there.
Apologies to ssskuggiii for hijacking your thread, but I’m just so pissed off right now, and I wanted to post this where the background is already posted.
I went downstairs for my morning cup of tea, and who do I spy? The little girls and their mother. One of the little girls is lying on the floor, industriously coloring in a book. I make my tea, and ignore her, grabbing myself a chair. My grandma happens to look down and see exactly what she is coloring in, and it’s one of my childhood momentoes.
When I was six, or seven I wrote a little book about my grandma, which my teacher found charming, and had professionally bound for me. And the little snot was writing and coloring in it! I was enraged. I was shocked! I was horrified!
I snatched it from her, my throat constricted to the point I could not even speak. My hands trembled, my jaw clenched, and it must have been the grace of the gods that I did not kill her on the spot.
“It’s just the first few pages,” Grandma said hurriedly, as the mother of the little girl sat and watched passively.
I still could not speak. I went upstairs and wept.
I came down an hour later, and the children were gone. “She’s only six, Lissa,” grandma said softly.
I said nothing, and grabbed my keys and left. I was still in shock over losing something so precious to me. Her age, in my opinion, is no excuse. At six I would have known better than to scribble in someone else’s personal property. I would no more have taken a BOOK and scribbled in it than I would have shat on the floor. I would have understood if the child were three or four, but SIX?
What blows my mind is that her worthless mother just sat there, like a cow chewing its cud, impassive as a statue, watching this whole incident unfold, and the child never even apologised to me.
I have never felt such hate toward a child before. I’m actually ashamed of it, but I’m just so incredibly angry at the desecration of my little book that I feel physically ill, even 11 hours later.
I have up to five months more of living at Grandmas, and I don’t think I’ll get out of this experience without therapy!
Lissa,
Man that must suck. Maybe you should sit down and have a heart-to-heart with your grandma before any more of your stuff gets ruined. Even if they’re only children, they need to know the rules and the limits. Letting them do anything they please is not a good idea and your grandma needs to realize this too.
I really feel for you. 
Lissa- sorry to hear about that.
Man…what’s the matter with kids today?
You shouldn’t have to put up with this. I mean, they aren’t your kids and they aren’t your responsibilities. They have to realize they are guests and they don’t have these rights in your home.
They aren’t being disciplined, obviously…I don’t know how to improve the situation, but your grandmother can’t expect you to let these kids walk all over your husband and yourself.
Lissa,
Those kids seem to be first class manipulators and con artists already, and if no one ever says no to them they’ll never grow up to be civilized human beings. Letting them get away with it now will do them a lot more harm than good. There is nothing wrong with telling a child that you would like some time to yourself, that they need to be quiet in the mornings, that they need to find things to do on their own to amuse themselves, and that they can’t just take things of yours and color all over them. InternetLegend is absolutely right!
Alas, Lissa, unless you can persuade Grandma to move in next door fulltime while you and hubby inhabit her house in peace, or can convince her of the ultimate harm to the kids by indulging them in obnoxious behaviour she likely wouldn’t have tolerated in her own children and grandchildren, you are royally stuck. Unfortunately it’s her territory, her charity/guilt trip and her rules (or lack thereof.)
One assumes your finances are such that you can’t move elsewhere for the remaining months; unless you are paying Grandma some form of rent, in which case you can try arguing forcefully that you have rights to a bearable lifestyle. Any chance at all of enlisting other help; if not dircectly for the brats, then someone who can get Grandma to back you up in practicing tough love and house rules? The mother knows when she has it made; there’s no hope there.
Sounds like a hellacious few months left, and we’d sure hate to find you in the media for multiple homicide! Maybe industrial-strength earphones, tranquilizers, and sturdy locks on your room and personal belongings… Here’s wishing you strength to survive.
Lissa, I don’t think you should be ashamed of the way you feel about this at all. It’s not as if you snapped and hit the child! Hell, you didn’t even yell at her. If anything you should be proud of the fact that you were able to control yourself. You say you were enraged, and I think it’s really hard to address any situation effectively when you’re in that kind of state-- better that you retrieved your book and removed yourself from the room until the kid was gone, as opposed to losing it and screaming at all involved.
I’m curious about what happened between your grandmother and the girls’ mom after you went upstairs; I hope for your sake that it wasn’t just patched over with the usual “It’s ok, don’t worry about it” kind of stuff.
I haven’t read your other thread in its entirety (I will now, though) but I hope there’s some way you guys can get out of this really soon. I understand a little of how awful it must be for you-- when I was living with my parents, I spent one entire summer developing ulcers over the truly horrid behavior of a pack of neighbor children. My mom and dad thought I was overreacting at all times, but eventually another neighbor’s boarder moved out and refused to come back thanks to these kids. Their parents were as unresponsive and passive as the mom you mention.
Good luck to you!
Lissa, that’s outrageous! It sounds like your grandmother is acting like a grandmother to these kids. I’m sure she’s doing it out of the goodness of her heart, but she’s not doing them any favors at all letting them get away with this kind of crap.
My mother-in-law (and, to a lesser extent, my mom) act this way with my kids. They let them get away with murder, don’t enforce many rules, and suggest rather than order. The reason they can do this is that they know mean old Mom is standing in the background glowering and making hand signals. If my kids weren’t learning the basic rules at home, the grandma treatment would be spoiling them for life. As it is, grandparents spoil, parents enforce, and the world keeps turning.
Perhaps your grandmother could be made to understand that you aren’t trying to be mean to these girls (although at this point that would be pretty understandable), you’re simply acting as a reasonable adult and trying to set reasonable limits. If the girls’ mother is inadequate, that makes it all the more imperative that the other adults in the kids’ lives set firm and clear boundaries for their own good.
Thanks to everyone for your support. I’m gonna need it.
Our financial situation is fine, Phrogge. Our problem is that if we’re facing a lawsuit, we don’t want to buy another house yet. If, for some weird reason, we should lose the case, we would be saddled with a judgement plus a mortgage, and this sort of scares me. Being the worrywart I am, until this is settled, I prefer to keep pur assets fluid so if the need should arise to defend ourselves in court, we have plenty of funds to do so.
Plus, Hubby’s job offers nice houses to lease to their employees at astonishigly low prices. (You couldn’t find an apartment on the wrong side of town for that amount.) Problem is, one doesn’t become available until May. This house-buying experience has been a nightmare, and now we’re a little gun-shy of buying another home, anyway. What we plan to do is to move into one of the company houses for a few years, save up the money, and build our own house.
We’re not paying grandma any rent-- just utilities, phone and food.
Grandma loves children, and suffers from an empty nest. She sees it almost as her community duty to take care of these children because their mother is a joke. What little time the mother is awake while the children are home she spends in the bedroom with her married boyfriend.
I honestly don’t know what was said after I left the room with the ruins of my childhood heirloom in my arms. I’ve completely avoided all parties involved since the incident. as Rosebud said, it probably WAS patched over with an “Oh, no, it’s okay!”
My grandma does correct them, but either it doesn’t “take,” or it’s not harsh enough. She takes the line that “they’re only children” and has a lot more patience with them than I. Her point is that they’ve never been taught anything, and it will take time before they learn what’s right and wrong. She thinks I should be more patient with them as well, and have more charity.
She raised me as well, but I was a well-behaved child anyway. All I wanted to do was sit quietly and read, and didn’t need much discipline, so everything worked out well for us. I’m just trying to find a way to say to her that you can’t use the same method on children who are NOT naturally well-behaved. Saying “No, no!” gently to a child who’s doing something patently awful doesn’t make any impression.
The rest of my family agree with me. Plenty of support there, but it hasn’t helped matters, because whenever someone brings it up, grandma gives the person a reproachful look and talks about how they haven’t had any “raising” and how we all must be understanding.
She’s absolutley horrified by the fact that I won’t take them in while she’s away. She honestly expects me to participate in these children’s lives the way that she does. She can’t even imagine that I wouldn’t want to. She thinks that it should be an almost automatic response: if the parents won’t do it, then someone has to, and that someone is me!
Lissa, next time Grandma goes away, you should take the kids in. And take off the kid gloves. Let them know in no uncertain terms that this is your house also and you (and your husband) will not be putting up with any of their crap. Use this as your opportunity to do one of two things: either impress some rudimentary manners upon these little barbarians or cause them to hate you and thereby, leave you alone. Yes, it will suck for the time being but afterward, you should have some sort of resolution. Otherwise, I suggest trying to find a little apartment and be sure and let Gran know you are doing it, too. If she asks why just explain that it is completely about the monsters next door.
I would LOVE to get an apartment, but none will take my large dog. I called every complex in town, even the one that listed that they accepted large dogs. Their definition of “large dog” and mine differed gratly. Their definition: 25 pounds or less. I said, “That’s not a large dog. That’s a lap-dog. My dog weighs 60 pounds. That’s a MEDIUM sized dog. A large dog is a Great Dane or a St Bernard. My dog is smaller than a Golden Retriever.”
“That’s an outside dog,” they replied.
“No, this is emphatically an inside dog. She’s never been outside for more than 20 minutes. Tell you what. I’ll give you a thousand dollar damage deposit plus first and last months’ rent.”
No dice. I made the offer to several others, and none would accept us, even for a thousand dollar deposit.
We tried the hope-they-won’t-like-us thing already. One of the kids came over and knocked on the door, asking if we were planning to get them any Christmas presents. I was tempted to say that I might have, should they not have been so rude as to ask. I didn’t get them a present, because, as I told Hubby: Christmas present means Birthday present, and pretty soon you’re picking out a goddam Easter basket as well. My hope was that they were shallow enough children to leave us be once we didn’t give them anything, but this didn’t even phaze them. They still grab and hug us whenever they see us.
We’ve also gone the ignore-them-maybe-they’ll-go-away route, but that didn’t seem to bother them in the least. I suppose they’re used to it from their mother.
I am in hell.
Dear frustrated Teen!
If you live alone: lock all the doors
If you live at your rents house: always have something very important to do when somebody is visiting (unless they might leave some of their money to you…)
Parents are nice people, as long as you dont get in contact with them more than 2 minutes per day.
At least mine are… mostly.
Yours
Dr. Do Little
I like your Grandma, she sounds like a very kind and understanding woman, someone to emulate.
Ooh, Lissa, what kind of “large” dog do you have?
Anyway- Bare, the grandmother may be kind and charitable but she’s encouraging negative behavior in these kids. And you can’t force charitability…(so I made word up :o) on someone else.
Actually, [b/]bare**, it looks like Grandma is allowing her own family to be harassed – all but terrorized. That is not the behavior of a kind or understanding person.
Grandma’s taken on some responsibility for the girls, which is indeed good of her, but she won’t make any attempt to do what is best for them and demand that they behave in a civilized manner. She is, in fact, interfering with the efforts of other adults to help these girls by giving them reasonable limits. That’s not kind or understanding. It’s selfish and destructive. Hey, the kids continue to grow up like animals, but Grandma feels popular and loved.
No, it’s not the girls’ fault that they’re budding little sociopaths. But their mother and Lissa’s grandma aren’t going to have to live with the consequences of their lack of sensible upbringing. The girls, and everyone who ever comes to care about them, will suffer for it (unless the girls wise up on their own; it does happen).
Lissa, if moving is not an option, it’s time to put everything you value behind locked doors, or, if you can’t get a lock for the doors, into locked boxes. It’s outrageous in your own home, but it doesn’t sound like you have much choice.
As for the book, that’s heartbreaking. Try, when your life is a bit more peaceful, talking to a professional book restorer. There may be something that can be done to save your memento.
And good luck with all of it.
It sounds as though Lissa and her hubby recently moved into their Grandma’s home, and that the relationship between Grandma and the neighbor children has a rather lengthier history. Bottom line, both Lisa ad the children are invited guests in Grandma’s home and all should accede to her wishes and desires.
I would never advocate that children should be allowed to run rampant or without correction, but I do believe that the level of tolerance and discipline is up to your Grandmother while the children are visiting her.
It seems obvious that Lissa despises the children and their mother. If she can’t stand being around them all the time, she could retreat to her room and lock the door.
I too commiserate with the damage to the book you made as a child. WAG here, but did you give the book to your Grandmother Lissa? Mementos belong where visiting children and crayons can not come together. Perhaps if you had been more generous and given the children a couple of one dollar coloring books for Christmas, they would have applied their artful talents in them rather than your book.
It would seem to me that rather than possibly ruin the relationship with your Grandma or her relationship with the neighbors, it would be best for you to pursue another place to rent harder. You could get rid of your dog, but you are probably nearly as attached to it as most of us are to our children. In which case maybe Grandma would be willing to care for your dog until your situation allows for it. If not Grandma, perhaps a friend.
And, I still like your Grandma!
Bare- (and congrats on your 123th post!)- I don’t think she “despises” them, and if she does she has good reason. The mother has proven herself to be irresponsible and unsuitable for the care of a houseplant, let alone two children.
And i don’t think it was her responsibility to buy the children colouring books. How can you comment on her benevolence (or lack of it)- they aren’t even her kids…
Yeah, you’d be surprised how quiet they get when you put a pillow over their little faces! 
Ok, anyway, they left before I woke up new year’s eve morning. Yes, the house is quiet again!!!