Second to becoming a parent, becoming a grandparent has to be one of the most exciting times in a person’s life (maybe even more exciting since your responsibilities are technically fewer, but you still get all of those sweet, sweet baby snuggles). That is, unless you are Redditor throwRAbabyannounced, who posted about their mom’s unusual grandparent move.
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According to throwRAbaby, her mother’s trouble with the g-word started a decade ago when she got pregnant at 17. She had two children with her ex-boyfriend before he left her. During that time, her mother refused to recognize her grandchildren, who are now 7 years old and 9 months old, which sounds like the act of a grandmother in a 19th century novel, not present-day Reddit.
“I’m now married to someone else, and we had a baby back in January,” throwRAbaby explained. “Now I’ve had a child in wedlock, mum wants to be a grandma.” And it’s not just her daughter’s older two kids that grandma doesn’t recognize, OP’s husband also has a 4-year-old that she refuses to acknowledge as well.
Because of the tension, OP says she didn’t tell her mom when her newest baby was born, instead letting her find out the way most of the rest of their friends and family did, via social media.
“When we announced on Facebook, this was also when mum learned that the baby had been born,” she wrote. “I already told dad and stepmum personally. This caused a fight between us and I blocked her for a bit.”
Now that she has unblocked her mom, throwRAbaby has discovered the lady has been posting nonstop about the joys of being a grandma. “I then made a few passive aggressive comments on her posts about how she’s been a grandma for almost a decade now and she’s never met my newborn.”
A few hours later, throwRAbaby noticed that her mom had deleted all of her comments so she created her own post to acknowledge the people who have always recognized her children as part of the family. A few people mentioned that OP had forgotten to name her mom in the list that included her dad, stepmother, and in-laws, but with some big “I said what I said energy” she explained that everyone who deserved to be mentioned was included on the post.
“Mum has called me and yelled/cried over the phone, saying I’m a horrible daughter and making her feel and look like a shit mother/grandmother and I need to take the post down,” she wrote, adding that she refused, which has caused some tension in her family. Meanwhile, her mom has said that the older kids aren’t allowed to call her “grandma” because it makes her feel old.
Family dynamics can be tricky, especially in blended families. And we get that a lot can change over a decade, but it seems really unfair to the children involved that their grandmother refuses to acknowledge them based on choices that were made before they were born. And apparently we’re not the only ones who feel that way, because as usual, the commenters jumped at the chance to share their take on things.
Yepanotherjennifer told throwRAbaby that she wasn’t in the wrong for her behavior. “Fuck that shit. You don’t want a relationship with ALL my kids, step or bio, you don’t get a relationship with ANY of them,” she wrote.
And while user Mirianda666 thought that the way OP handled the situation was a bit immature, it was nothing compared to how Grandma was behaving. “Yeah, it was a bit middle-school to make that post, but I totally get that you saw red after reading how she’s ‘loving’ being a grandmother to a child she has never met after spending the last decade ignoring your oldest children completely,” they wrote. “Of course her posts affected you — she was lying about you and your family, pretending to a relationship that does not exist in order to get ‘likes’ on social media.”
Airing your grievances on social media is never the way to go, but we get it. After years of neglecting her older children, it had to be painful for OP to see her mom acknowledge a baby she’s never met. For grandma’s sake, we hope she reaches out and tries to make amends. After all, these are the people the older woman is most likely going to rely on in the future, and we have a feeling that they’re not going to feel too compelled to be there for her when she has spent a lifetime not being there for them.
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