agonyaunt | (no subject)

Dear Annie: My grandchildren are not allowed to receive gifts from me. I crocheted a scarf, and it was tossed in a dumpster. I bought earrings, and the post was broken. You get the picture. So, I have been putting money in the bank instead. Problem solved? No!

Now when a passbook indicates that my grandchild has $7,000 in the bank, there is a sarcastic comment that it won't even be enough to buy a book in college. I ignore the statements because I know where they come from, and there is no reason for me to upset my son. Problem solved? No.

Now, I understand that the problem is that he feels ignored in my company. It's not that we don't speak to one another. We do. I think that the attention-getting tactics are frustrating for my son because they no longer warrant a reaction from me. They're predicable after so many years. Why bother addressing such behavior? It only reenforces it. -- Hurt Grandma

Dear Hurt: You keep addressing the problem behavior because it is just that -- a problem behavior. Without tackling it head-on, it will continue to be a problem. Being so rude, dismissive and ungrateful as your son sounds can't make him feel good about himself. The way he is speaking to you, or how he treats your gifts, is unacceptable. If he can't stop making rude comments about your gifts, then you might stop your generosity. But if you do that, the ones who would be hurt are your grandchildren.

Try to have a serious and noncritical conversation with your son, and make sure that your attention is focused solely on him. He might open up. If he remains cold and hostile, then encourage him to seek professional help or offer to go to family counseling. If he refuses to go, seek therapy yourself as a way to sort out what's really going on between you and your son.

https://www.arcamax.com/healthandspirit/lifeadvice/dearannie/s-2480543

Threaded | Flat

There is a reason LW is not allowed to give gifts to the grandkids. That reason is probably not "Son is looking for attention".

But let's imagine that this does, in fact, sum up the problem. The follow-up question here is "Why is he looking for attention? Did LW ignore him as a child?"

Sorry, doble post

Edited (Double post) 2021-02-24 06:08 (UTC)

Son has on his favor that he's not writing to an advise column to vent family issues, but jerk sons and daughters do exist, and every generation is not better than the last by default. Sadly. That said, LW doesn't say how old son and grandchildren are, and it is possible that son is running interference so LW gets the hint and keep LW's potentially abusive antics away from the grandchildren. Or he could be just a sarcastic jerk.

your sun doesn't like you. May he's a jerk, maybe you are; either way you'll almost certainly both be better off giving up on trying to have a relationship with someone who doesn't like you. And your grandchildren will cope, lots of children have no grandparents and do fine.

How much money does son have that he’s too proud to accept $7500?

Edited 2021-02-24 11:01 (UTC)

It feels like there's a whole lot of backstory missing here. If nothing else, the relationship between grandma and her son looks like a toxic mess.

I'm looking for the missing context.

*checks for page 2 of the letter*

The passive voice in this letter is a screaming claxon of dysfunction and, in fact, why the son may "feel" ignored, perhaps because he is. When your mother verbally erases your agency in decisions you are making in a letter to an advice columnist about how she doesn't like the decisions you are making, yeah, maybe there is some actual ignoring going on even when your mother thinks what she is doing is "paying attention" to you.

Seriously, the entire grammatical structure of this letter either erases the son entirely ("it was tossed in the dumpster," "it was broken", "there is a sarcastic comment") or reduces him to, literally, the object of his mother's behavior ("no reason for me to upset my son") except for the part where "...he feels ignored in my company," [emphasis mine] and the rest of the paragraph goes on to explain why he's wrong to feel that way. Well, gosh, maybe he "feels ignored in [your] company" because you are literally using the English language in such a way as to ignore him and his own agency as a human being in a letter to an advice columnist in which you are apparently trying to ask how to improve your relationship with, if not him, his children.

Edited (Ugh, contagious sentence structure problems are UGH) 2021-02-25 09:40 (UTC)