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MIL asked our 7 year old child about our sobriety
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I shared my post over at r/JUSTNOFAMILY and was told that it would be appreciated here so here it goes. I'd link the story about my SIL that I originally posted so you could have some back story but I'm not sure if it's allowed here so I won't.

Summarized SIL story:

So a while ago I told a story about my crazy sister in law who we (my husband and I) let stay with us for a short while. We kicked her out because we were newly sober and she brought alcohol into our house and then when confronted about it, went on a screaming rampage and locked herself in our daughter's room and started calling everyone in the family shouting about how we're awful people who are nothing but trashy alcoholics who are obsessed with her. She later hired movers to come get the remainder of her things and then claimed that one of the bags on the porch was hers and threatened to sue us over it, even though we told her to come herself that same day so we could prove it was ours. She threatened to call the Air Force commander, yada yada.

MIL Story:

My mother in law was highly pissed that we threw her daughter out, so much so that she made us come and get our daughter, who was in her care at the time (so we could get our first sober months under us and clean up our lives) early. Instead of letting her finish out the school year like we'd planned. While my daughter was at my mother in law's house we told her she could have a phone so we could have a direct line of communication to her without having to go through my MIL because a lot of the time she would never answer the phone. When we told my MIL we were sending her a phone she immediately shut that idea down and so not wanting rescind on a promise we had already made to our kid, we let her have the phone when she came home. Hindsight is 20/20, no 7 year old should have a phone and I realize that now, but, alas, parents make mistakes.

The other day I was doing a check on her phone, making sure she wasn't doing anything she shouldn't be doing, and I saw she'd been texting my MIL. As I'm going through the messages I see things like "I want you to come live with me permanently, I'm thinking of moving, don't say anything" and my personal favorite, "Has your dad been drinking again?". My husband and I both hit 8 months sober TODAY thankyouverymuch. She hasn't expressed any concern about our sobriety to either one of us, and, come to think of it, she hasn't even called us to check in and ask us how we've been doing.

Before our daughter came home we agreed to not use any drinking vocabulary around her, we make it a point to not talk about ANYTHING regarding our previous drinking or current sobriety because we feel she's still too young to speak about adult topics like that, she's only 7. If our daughter had a question, we'd of course have a sit down and explain whatever she wanted to know the best way we could, but that hasn't happened yet. I felt like these things she was saying to our daughter were interfering with her transition back into our home (she'd been gone 6 months), promising these happy dreams of permanently living with her and also flat out asking our child if we've been drinking again. Not once did she come to either one of us with that question, we would have happily told her we're still going strong. I can see why she'd be concerned because of our previous lifestyle, and I fully expected her to eventually question us, but I never once thought she'd talk to our child about it the way she did.

After my husband and I recovered from the initial shock of all this and calmed down we decided to text his mom (since with phone calls she usually talks over us and never lets us gets a word in or hangs up on us). We told her that the things she was saying were completely inappropriate things to say to a 7 year old and that because we wanted our daughter to focus on being a kid, and not have to deal with adult topics, we were taking her phone permanently until she is older. My MIL was in town about two weeks back and the only reason we knew about it was because our daughter's cousin told her about it, we never got a phone call, text, nothing. We told her that if she was at all as concerned as she seemed that we wish she would have asked to come over, see our place, our daughter's room, to see that everything is how it should be, see how well we're doing. We let her know that she can call either one of us anytime to speak to our daughter whenever she wants, and that we know she loves her, and that if she has any questions or concerns about our sobriety to please ask us.

She responded begging us to not "take her only form of communication with her granddaughter from her" and denied ever saying anything to her about my husband's drinking. So, I pulled out my handy dandy screenshots and forwarded them to her. I then let her know that we aren't taking her "only form of communication" and reiterated that she could call either one of us at anytime whenever she wanted to speak to her.

Now, see, I know that she doesn't want to have to deal with going through us and so she won't call, but that's not my problem. Her relationship with our daughter will sadly suffer because of it but she needs to grow up and bite the bullet and call us if she wants to talk to her. And we told our daughter that if she ever wants to speak to her grandma to let us know and we'll give her the phone, too.

She replied back "Don't be sending me screenshots!" Haha okay, don't lie and I won't need to send you my receipts, lady.

She messaged us again this morning saying "How dare we block her, we are disgusting people, she took care of our daughter for 8 months! God don't like ugly! I bet we didn't block her other grandma how dare we!" First of all, it was 6 months, not 8, but I let that one go. All I replied back was "We didn't block you on anything". Because we didn't! I have no clue what she's even going on about, and she replied back "I would hope not" and that was that. I mean my mom has to call us to get through to our daughter, too, now.

We haven't blocked her yet, but we're seriously considering it.

EDIT: MIL is in a separate state from us, I googled grandparent's laws in our state and google says we have to either have to be deceased or have our rights terminated for any of that to apply to her.

MIL is also low income and is already permanently caring for SIL's child so I doubt she could hire lawyers to try to take our kid from us. She's sort of unofficially my other SIL's caretaker (she has some mental health issues) and they all live together, too. Also, I'm assuming us being in a separate state than her works to our advantage.

I'm a stay at home mom and our daughter isn't in school during summer so she'll be under my supervision for the next couple months. When she starts school back up the first thing we're doing is letting them know about my MIL and SIL. We're going to have a serious sit down conversation with our daughter about how grandma's on a time out right now and for her to never go with anyone anywhere unless mom or dad are present.

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5 years ago