Do grandparents have a responsibility to take care of their grandchildren?
This grandmother doesn’t think so. When her stepson asked if she could help watch his kids over the weekend, she refused, telling him that he didn’t have anyone to help him due to him “burning that village down.”
Feeling conflicted about her harsh words for her stepson, the grandmother took to the internet to ask if she was in the wrong for refusing to help.
Here’s what happened:
Background
The grandmother, or the original poster (OP), is a stepmother to five children, who are now adults. Their mother gave up her parental rights and vanished from their lives.
OP became their stepmother when the oldest child was nine years old and adopted all of them except for one—Nick.
Why didn’t Nick want to be adopted?
Nick never wanted OP to be his mother. She was fine with this. However, Nick made his disapproval of her well-known. “The moment he turned 18, he made it very clear he doesn’t care about me at all,” says OP.
What did Nick do to make OP feel unwelcome?
Nick refused to invite OP to his wedding. If Nick was hosting a holiday for the family, like Thanksgiving, he would exclude OP.
The final straw for OP was when Nick told her that he would only attend the Christmas celebration she was hosting if OP left the party. After that, OP decided she would go low contact with Nick, rarely talking to him.
Is OP’s husband in contact with Nick?
OP says that her husband is also in low contact with Nick but for very different reasons.
Her husband chose to cut back on communication with Nick after Nick trashed his hunting cabin and refused to pay for the damages.
Does Nick get along with his siblings?
According to OP, Nick didn’t just destroy their relationship. At the same time that he was excluding OP, Nick was also ruining every relationship he had with his four siblings. His siblings, OP’s adopted children, don’t have much to do with Nick anymore either.
What happened?
Recently, Nick surprised OP by giving her a call. While on the phone, he told OP that he now has two daughters, which she didn’t know about.
Nick then started complaining about how he doesn’t have anyone to help him raise his children.
Nick decided to ask OP…
Despite OP and Nick having little to no communication, Nick asked OP if she could watch his daughters on Sunday and “step up as a grandparent,” as OP recounts.
Did OP agree to help?
OP didn’t take kindly to Nick asking her for favors. “I told him the reason the village doesn’t exist to raise his kids is due to him burning that village down. He called me a jerk and hung up,” says OP.
What does OP’s husband say?
Nick’s father, OP’s husband, is “iffy on the situation,” OP says. “[He] told me it’s my call since I would be the one to watch the kids most of the time since he travels often for work.”
Is OP wrong for refusing to help Nick and giving him a healthy dose of honesty?
This is what the internet had to say:
OP can’t be a grandparent if Nick doesn’t consider her his mother
“He said you needed to ‘step up as a grandparent,’ but you can’t be a grandparent if you aren’t his mother.”
Nick didn’t even apologize. He just needed something
“He called to complain he isn’t getting help. He didn’t call, saying he regrets that he messed up his relationships.
“He wants something from you. He doesn’t want you. Please prioritize yourself and the people in your life who actually care about you.”
The problem here is Nick, not anyone else
“If he trusts you enough as a person to help raise his kids, the problem was never you.
“The problem was always Nick.”
Nick is just looking for a free babysitter, not a relationship
“He only called up looking for a free babysitter. He has no desire for either of them to mend the relationship. Even if [OP is awful] she has no obligation to essentially be a free babysitter to people who are strangers at best.
What duty does OP even have to Nick?
“What does he mean ‘step up’ like you’ve been failing in your duty?!
“He made it clear that your presence wasn’t wanted and that you didn’t have a parental role in his life. If he wants to build that relationship with you for his children, then first, he needs to apologize for the times he was [a bad person] in the past…and then he needs to work on actually building that relationship with you because humans can’t be switched on and off like robots.
“As it is, his current attitude of chiding you for not being there and assuming that you’ll be pathetically grateful for the crumbs of his attention just indicates that he doesn’t [care at all] about you. He only wants the material advantage of free childcare.”
This article was written and syndicated by What the Fab.
Is it okay to ban one of your children from your house?
At least, temporarily?
This stepmother didn’t feel like she had another choice.
Do stepparents get to parent their stepchildren?
OP and Nick definitely won’t agree on this one.
When a stepchild was caught bullying her stepsister by spreading nasty rumors at school, her stepfather told her to pack her things and kicked her out of the house.
Instead of his wife taking his side, she was furious, insisting that he had no right to parent her daughter.
Did he make the right call? People are split.
Should teenagers get away with stealing?
Tormented by her stepdaughters who stole from the house and tormented her children, one woman didn’t know what to do other than insist her husband didn’t bring his daughters around the house.
Her mom didn’t agree, and the internet is torn.
Elise Armitage is an entrepreneur and founder of What The Fab, a travel + lifestyle blog based in California. At the beginning of 2019, Elise left her corporate job at Google to chase her dreams: being an entrepreneur and helping women find fabulous in the everyday. Since then, she’s launched her SEO course Six-Figure SEO, where she teaches bloggers how to create a passive revenue stream from their website using SEO. Featured in publications like Forbes, Elle, HerMoney, and Real Simple, Elise is a firm believer that you can be of both substance and style.
