[QUOTE=PunditLisa]
For those who say that the OP should threaten to cut off their visits with their granddaughter, keep in mind three things:
a) The grandparents are helping out financially for speech therapy. If the daughter needs it, then you don’t want to cut off her daughter’s therapy to spite her hair.
b) The hair thing is bizarre, but I’d think long and hard before I’d cut my parents off from my children. My parents act completely differently with my kids than they do with me and I really think it can be a great thing for both of them.
c) If you have a special needs child, it’s not easy or cheap to find caregivers. No matter what, she knows that her daughter is loved and being taken care of in her parents’ hands. The hair thing is a crappy situation, but cutting off visits with her dad would probably create a real hardship for IndyGrrl.
Advice to the OP? Can you pull her hair back into a pony tail when they see your dad so that your father won’t obsess over its length? Can you ask your mom to hide all the scissors when your daughter is around? (I’m serious.)
[/QUOTE]
You have hit the nail on the head. All of what you say here is true, and I’ve talked to my mom about not letting my dad cut my daughter’s hair. As long as I make sure her bangs are not in her face, we should be able to keep him away from it.
I have always been in a bad position with regard to my dad and his help. It started when I was in college and he’d throw it in my face every time I said or did something he didn’t like. And that led me to tell him to keep his money, that I’d figure out a way to pay for it myself. And I did find a way. I went out and became a stripper and paid that tuition up to the very end. When he found out about that he went off the deep end. But from where I was sitting it seemed like a much better alternative. It kept him from owning me like he had my whole life.
The screwed up thing is I’m watching him do the exact same thing to my little sister. She’s a junior in college and he’s paid her tuition so far, but she’s had to bend over backwards and listen to what an ungrateful brat she is, etc. She’s far from ungrateful, and she’d definitely not a brat. Before she went to college I know she judged me for dancing, but shortly after she started getting it from my dad she told me she understood why I did what I did. She wouldn’t go out and strip, but I know she’s thought about ways in which she could pay for it so she could be free from him.
Once he started helping me with my daughter I had to resign myself to the fact that he would always be able to hold that over me. But I felt like I didn’t have a choice because I really needed the help.
We have two brothers also. He controlled both of them for a long time by having them work for him. The younger of the two got sick of it and told him to take the job and shove it. Last winter dad told everyone that my younger brother was doing crack and that’s why he quit the company. My brother was holed up and depressed, but crack? Only my dad could come up with that. The older one still works for him----he HATES it but he does it anyway.
And he’s helped me and my brothers buy our houses (by helping us with the loans so we’d get a decent rate). After that I pretty much resigned myself to the fact that he owns me. I’d rather have the house and have help with my kid than cut ties with my dad, which would really mean cuttng off ties with my whole family.
This is all just .0001% of the controlling things my dad has done to us our whole lives. He’s really sick in that way and will never be able to see it. And he’s in denial about anything he’s ever done wrong in his life. He’d be a good case study for someone who wanted to study his personality disorder, whatever its called. Hell, he may have invented a new personality disorder. I’ve certainly never known anyone else like him.
