Paternal family

[Birdsstillsing01]

Hi,

I’ve been out of the relationship now for over (detail removed by Moderator) yrs. it was incredibly hard and difficult leaving my ex, we had police and support from other professionals. Now just finished court process which was successful (detail removed by Moderator).
My question is how do you handle paternal family contact? Kids have just started to see his grandparents again as this wasn’t possible during court process. However they remain firmly on the side of their son even though allegations proved. The kids want a relationship with them, but it’s so painful for me to see them, but I don’t feel able to let my kids go with them without my supervision.
How do you manage this long term, they will always have ‘their’ story of what happened that does not match mine and the kids. Yet the kids really still want to have relationship with them.
We lost almost all of our old life in leaving, the kids have lost so many relationships, I want to keep this one for them, but struggling with the grandparents lack/ability to understand why we left and why they didn’t have contact for a long time. It’s really difficult, but they refuse to look at the truth of the situation (detail removed by Moderator).
Tricky – anyone else with experience of this? Thx

[KIP.]

Not sure what age the kids are but the main thing is they understand who the abuser is and that they aren’t confused or brain washed by the grand parents. I think setting out the boundaries with the grand parents would be a good idea. That you want them to have a relationship with their grand kids but you won’t tolerate them defending abuse or re writing history. Don’t forget your ex will have learned his behaviour from somewhere. It might be you’re just moving from one abuser to another. Perhaps supervised visits will always be the only option if you want to facilitate contact. A difficult one. Your local womens aid or the national domestic abuse helpline might be more helpful. Or the NSPCC have a helpline. Just take it slowly to begin with. It’s harder to reduce contact.

[Alicenotichains]

Hello Birdsstillsing,

My children were keen to see their paternal grandparent, (not their father) and they have done so fairly successfully for the last few years. I had to tell the grandparent that to preserve the relationship with the kids, that they must not try and shoe horn the kids into a situation where they would see him. It needs to be totally separate My children don’t want to see their Dad which is a decision they made after a few years of horrendous contact with him where he abused them both.
The apple never falls far from the tree and I can see that my ex husband is similar in many ways to his parents. But occasional grandparent to contact is ok perhaps someone else could go with them to supervise if they are younger. We always have a full debrief after. Often my kids hear various sob stories about their Dad, which we discuss.
A few times the grandparent berated the children for not seeing their Dad and tried to make them feel guilty. I had to phone the grandparent after that and explain the rules again.

It’s important for my kids that they see their grandparent, not too often, we always have a debrief after to check they are ok.
Go wit your gut and make sure you set down some ground rules. Monitor how they behave and allow it to continue if it’s ok.

[Birdsstillsing01]

Thx for taking the time to reply. Yes it’s difficult trying to work out the boundaries. But you’re right taking it slowly is a good plan. I like the debrief idea. Thx

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