My recent disagreement with my son and daughter in law is complicated. There is some back story. In my culture before the wedding there is a night where the bride and groom split from each other for a festive meal wither friends and family. In some cases all the men, the fathers, uncles, friends go to one celebration and vise versa. The other way it’s done is that one of the families host the bride’s dinner and her immediate family including men and, females in the grooms family. I offered to host this event and her wonderful kind parents declined and said they take care of it, which I was fine with cause saves me a huge expense. The mother had to fight with my now DIL for days to get her to agree to have me, and my immediate family present. Her mother put her foot down and insisted we come when she couldn’t convince her daughter. In our culture this was mean, disrespect and rude. Says a lot about the DIL and she and her mom’s as well. We went and it was a lovely gathering. Her family are angels! The next year I came there to visit the newlyweds in another country, and meet my new baby grand. It the daughter in law said I could only stay 3 days!! And they had plenty of room! I tried to negotiate other arrangements and she wouldn’t budge.a few weeks ago the moved back to the USA and flew into Chicago to stay at her parents for a few weeks. It’s an hour flight or 8 hour drive for e. I told her I’d rent. Hotel room so I could. One see the baby if only for an hour, and that meanie said NO. The thin is she and my easily manipulated son agreed On this. After Chicago they planned to move to FL and I asked if I could meet them there and hep them out, the answer was o, they’d be too busy. By now I know the doesn’t like me and doesn’t want me around. Ok. But the think is not that, it’s that they are alienating the baby from me. They clam these are their boundaries and I’d need to respect them. I told them they were being mean, rude and disrespectful to me for treating me this way. I’ve only been nice to my DIL even though she so difficult. Until now. I told the how pissed I was that they are treating me like this, that I’m hurt and don’t understand their issue. My son yelled back at and I haven’t spoken to him sine, where we had been back to chatting since 2020. It’s a mess now, and I’m wondering how to handle the upset. His wife is hard to lie, and right now I despise her as I believe she manipulated my son into agreeing with her.

@Donna Mitchell I hear you.

@Donna Mitchell well stated, and I get it. I also have some of the same issues you describe, guilt for not knowing what I know now so I could have been a better mom, though I thought I was doing fine at the time. I did my best with what I knew, but it’s hard to withstand the guilt for what I didn’t know.

@Susan Maclean my grandbaby is only 1, they may not learn the lesson till after I’m dead, as it’ll take so many years for my kids to get to that place.

@Theresa Osborne ditto that @Tammy Whicker. Again, my story is very similar to yours. I look forward to supporting each other on this challenging journey of learning and growing together.

@Lisa Hatchett so sorry. I really see things in common with you and our other friends, and I’m feeling confident that we’ll have a lot of support to offer.

Thank you for the lovely introduction Karolina. Glad to be here on this journey. I feel good knowing that I'm making every effort to do what I can to heal myself to have have a relationship with my kids. Woohoo!