#9 Should I take grandson from my daughter? / Should I train my grandson to be like my daughter?
Dear Prudence: My daughter is engaged to a 27-year-old abusive idiot. He chokes her, calls her unbelievable names and does anything else he can come up with. I have been trying to get her out of this relationship for well over a year. He has been married before and has two children by two different women. He doesn’t work three-fourths of the time, and he is taking my daughter for what little she has.
My daughter has a two-year-old son, and now I’m worried about what he might be doing to him as well. I am seriously thinking about filing for full custody of my grandson. I know this will end my relationship with my daughter if I do this, but what else can I do? Please help! –FRANTIC GRANDMA
Dear Fran: If you think the child is endangered, by all means go for it. Your daughter sounds so far gone that removing the child from the household might be a blessing. The man you describe will certainly not add anything positive to the little boy’s upbringing and might, in fact, cause harm of one kind or another. Good luck. —PRUDIE CORRECTIVELY
Gabby's Reply
Hi Fran: It’s good that you wrote but your solution comes from the mind that created this situation.
Keep in mind that you are the one who trained your daughter to attract, incite, and put up with abuse. Unless you first undergo extensive therapy you would produce the same results with your grandson.
To call another an "abusive idiot" and to call him this behind his back is badmouthing abuse. You blame him for your daughter’s creations. I assure you she is equally abusive. Both are merely mirroring your own addiction to blaming and to abusing and being abused.
You’d do well to look and see what you must have done to drive your child to want to punish you so much that she would destroy her own life and that of her child’s. She has been absolutely committed to making sure you do not think that the way you raised her is normal or healthy, or, that you are by any standard a successful mother or grandmother. That represents a lot of unacknowledged dramatized anger (disrespect) towards you.
Do get some therapy. There is a way to communicate and relate that will inspire your daughter to opt for aliveness and the therapy she so badly needs. Do not interact with her anymore until she has completed 25 50-minute sessions with a therapist/counselor and has not been in communication with her betrothed for a period of six months in a row. A communication skills coach would insist as a condition of accepting her as a client that she agree to not interact with you ever again until you have completed your own 25 sessions—so tied to you is her addiction.
If you wish to report the abuse to the authorities do so, however, first inform him and her that you will be doing so unless they both separately enroll in individual therapy within one week. And most importantly, do not follow up (call the authorities) to see if/what action they took or what they are doing. If the situation warrants they will put the child in a foster home. Part of your addiction is to fight about something so that you don’t have to address your sickness. The child-custody-reporting and ensuing battle would just preoccupy your mind with another fight. In short, it is hopeless.
You must be willing to let go of your grandson as you do the starving children elsewhere in the world. The best you can do for him and your daughter, and all others, is to heal yourself. The pain you have to be willing to choose to experience, in order to heal just yourself, will be close to unbearable. In effect your daughter is forcing you to heal, think of it as a gift of love. Thank you, Gabby
Please read about The Spouse Abuse Tutorial. Although you are presently not eligible* to do the tutorial reading about it will provide you with considerable insight.
* One of the eligibility requirements is to not be interacting with someone equally addicted to abuse. No phones, no listening to messages, no cards/gifts—no contact except for, logistics (handled by a third party when possible), and life-death emergencies.