Cheri Register “Are Those Kids Yours?” A great book on multiracial adoption (where, in my opinion, the racial/cultural issues are usually bigger than the adoption issues).
In my family I’m the one who teases my parents and sister about my being adopted. When I was a teenager, it wasn’t as much teasing as mean-ness (“I could’ve had rich/nice/loving parents, instead I got YOU!”) due to issues I had over being adopted. Now I joke to my sister that they were stuck with her, but chose me.
I’m obviously the odd one out in my family, but there has never been one day - even in my horrendous teen years - that I did not know they loved me as much as my sister.
My grandfather, OTOH, made sure my cousin (another adoptee) and I knew just how lucky we were not to be orphans and what our lot in life was due to being bastards. This was the grandfather I followed around like a duckling and spent more time with than my own dad. To hear those words from him hurt.
Thank you so much for all the replies on this thread. It was especially nice to hear from so many adoptees and adoptive parents.
I feel like I need to provide a bit more background and perspective.
My folks adopted me as an infant. After my mom had my brother, she was unable to have more children. They desperately wanted another so they applied to adopt and got me.
From day one, I was absolutely spoiled. They carried me around on pillows, tiptoed around me, generally just went overboard. In retrospect, I feel sorry for my brother who would have been 12 at the time. They actually had a family friend point out that they needed to give their son more attention. I was raised pretty spoiled, not necessarily with things, but in that my parents hardly ever said no to me. It’s hard to explain - they were strict in many ways but basically catered to my every need.
I have always felt like part of the family and until I am reminded in some way, I rarely even think about being adopted. I am eternally grateful to my birth parents (who were very young) for making the unselfish decision to give me up.
I now have a daughter who is six. My mom and dad have watched her for me for 2 years until she went to preschool. They have basically spoiled her in the same manner as me. They cater to her every whim, hardly say no, etc etc. They are absolutely crazy about her and practically beg for her to go stay with them on weekends.
The past few years, my husband and I have struggled to get my folks to respect our parenting methods and authority. They constantly undermine our parenting. As an example, my husband and I will ask her to try something new at the table. She makes a fuss and my mom will pipe in with “why are you being so mean? We never made you try anything you didn’t like”. When we try to discipline her, it’s the same thing.
Early this month, we were at a wedding with my folks and my daughter had a bun while waiting for dinner. She went over and asked my mom for another and my husband suggested that she wait for dinner (as she has a habit of filling up on bread and not eating dinner). Well my mom flipped over this, saying that we shouldn’t question her and she only meant well, etc.
DH and I were invited over to my folks a few nights ago for dinner. Before dinner, my mom and dad sat us down (dad kept quiet) and mom told us that she was very unhappy. She said that they do so much for us (guilt trip) in fact more than they do for their other child (my brother) and they don’t deserve to have us treat them the way we do. (This all stems from the spat between DH and my folks at the wedding)
She said that she never questioned her parents with regards to what they did for her kids and that we were being disrespectful when we overruled them with regards to DD. She said what we do in our own home is our own business but when we are with them and DD, we should basically look the other way when they give DD chocolate, spoil her, let her have anything she wants. They are just being grandparents after all
I was absolutely stunned. I told her that I do respect them as my parents but where our daughter is concerned, my husband and I are the parents and we will make the decisions. She kept going on and on and telling us that she couldn’t sleep at night because she was so upset about this (manipulation) and for good measure she threw in the old “we took you into our home out of the goodness of our hearts and we don’t deserve to be treated this way” (I am adopted). More emotional blackmail and manipulation. Now this is not the first time I have heard this. She’s said it to me several times in my life when I have upset her in some way.
You know, they really do a lot for us. That much is true. They are generous to a fault. They’d give the shirts off of their back literally. If we need someone to watch our daughter, they are always happy to do so. They love her like their own. Etc. Etc. Everyone who knows my parents knows that they are generous people.
But it’s taken me a long time to realize how much of a manipulator my mom is. She is always throwing in our face everything they have done for us. “We watched your DD and saved you thousands of dollars in daycare and this is how you treat us?” I’m so over all this bullshit. I’m not going to let her play this guilt trip bullshit with me anymore.
Now you see why I need therapy??
I think you *boundaries *more than therapy, but the second might help you get to the first. Good luck, and thanks for the expended explanation.
My mother does exactly the same stuff with my brother and sister-in-law vis-a-vis their kids (though they live in England and my mother lives in Florida so it doesn’t come up as often) almost down to the letter.
Bottom line: you’re doing it right. Set boundaries, demand that they be respected, and above all don’t make your husband be the one who has to deal with her.
A gift given with strings attached (even if they’re just emotional strings) is no gift at all.
Wow. Sorry about your mom there, baileygrrrl.
IME, when a parent says, “I never would have contradicted/talked to/treated my parents that way”, it generally means, “…but I sure as hell wanted to!” I know a lot of people, particularly women, who always felt forced to defer to their parents (and other adults, and their hubands, and so on) and resented it, and looked forward to being a parent so someone would finally have to defer to them. So when their children assert their perfectly reasonable right *not *to defer to them, they feel cheated out of their one chance to always have the final say.
I find that this perspective helps keep me from getting so pissed off at people who behave like this, although it doesn’t make the interactions with them any more fun.
“Favors cease to be favors when there are conditions attached to them.” ~Oliver Goldsmith.
I would agree with this except that the OP’s parents have worked this angle successfully for years and she has unwittingly enabled it. Over time, they’ve been reinforced in thinking that they always get their way and that attitude/behavior won’t be extinguished easily. A gentle hint sure won’t change anything. Both barrels between the eyes probably won’t, either. It’s emotional blackmail, pure and simple.
In her opinion, her needs outrank yours, and you’re objectified as someone whose purpose is to gratify her needs. I think you’re seeing the light because while you might have gone along with it as an individual, now you want to respect your husband and your child as individuals as well.
It’s a time-honored axiom that the older people get, the less likely they are to change. I also think that people who didn’t learn emotional boundaries when they were younger can’t learn them once they pass a certain age.
If you want to make a bold statement, withhold the grandchild. Say, “I just don’t feel right about leaving her here, with all the turmoil and wrangling over whose word rules.”
Do your parents have any friends their age, also with grandkids, who respect and understand that it’s up to the parents to decide how to raise a child and that, as grandparents, they need to respect that? Could you bend their ear to have a word with your parents, to let them know what what they are doing is inappropriate?
Sigh. Why? Why? Why ‘disremember’ and not ‘forget’? I am honestly just curious to my very core.
I know it is a perfectly cromulent word and you have every right to use it. I just want to know why.