can we all admit we like it when Carolyn Hax reads someone the riot act?

[laurajv]

basically if you don't want to get read the riot act don't act like a fool and then write to carolyn hax about it


Dear Carolyn: My son married his high school sweetheart six years ago. The couple tried to get pregnant by various means for three years and finally are expecting our first grandchild. We are all deliriously happy.

We’ve been through some ups and downs with this couple. We’ve taken them on trips and hosted them and their friends all through high school and the years after. When they got married, they lived with us for nine months with their large dog so they could save for a house.
This Thanksgiving they announced the gender of the new little one. We had a great afternoon and we drove home.
I was so excited to share with my friends, who know how long we’ve waited. I posted a couple of pics on Facebook (of myself) announcing how thankful I was to become a grandma.

Within minutes, I received a text from my daughter-in-law to remove the post. I did so, but was very upset. I texted my son asking why I could not post and heard nothing until the next morning. I got the snottiest, most hateful text from my daughter-in-law stating the reason was that it was not my place to post, and why would I do this without asking, etc. I was so upset I took two Ambien to shut out the noise and get some sleep.

My husband now acts as if I’m crazy and seems scared to offend anyone besides me.

I am no longer happy and excited. I see a future of walking on eggshells and staying in a lane that was assigned to me by a woman that I’ve loved and supported since she was 16.

--Missing the Joy

Missing the Joy: You’re not “missing the joy,” you’re grievously missing the point.

To make a public social media announcement of any pregnancy that isn’t yours and without the expectant parents’ permission is just a massive, black-barred Don’t.

To announce a pregnancy in such a way when it occurred after years of struggle and intervention? I do feel your dashed enthusiasm, but I really, really feel the couple’s horror. They are happy, yes, but they are also fragile right now. I can say this without even knowing them because that’s how people are when they feel their pregnancy is fragile — like they don’t have control — and people tend to feel that when it takes them years and “various means” for the pregnancy to take. Those three years packed in a lot of hard news for them — whether the news was the dispiriting “not pregnant” or the devastating “no longer pregnant.” Their joy is cautious and you threw caution out of a moving car.


So, damn. I understand that not everyone understands the unwritten rules of fertility struggles or social media blasts. But after you made the mistake of posting news that wasn’t yours to blast, you took your correction as an invitation to focus on how badly you were injured by your daughter-in-law, not on how badly you may have rattled her.

So, have a seat for a moment. Let your fury at my unsympathetic answer give off the worst of its heat. Then think, really think, about the position you put the couple in with your announcement. Consider how worried they will probably be, rationally or otherwise, about the viability of this pregnancy because of their struggle to conceive — possibly right up to the moment your daughter-in-law gives birth. Consider the extra weight of knowing they’ll have to update and feel the eyes of dozens of people now if something does go wrong.

Consider you may have been seduced into such thoughtlessness by wanting so badly to hold your own piece of their joy.

Then, when you're at least able to make out the general shape of their valid frustration with you, apologize to them. First for overstepping with your post, and next for pushing back, intemperately at that, when they asked you to take it down.

And next, if it’s a really productive introspection session, apologize for letting their unwieldy mix of joy, relief and apprehension become all about you and your feelings. (And, ugh, about a retroactive indignant bean-count of all you’ve done for these two. You were generous, so you own a piece of them?)

But that’s optional. As long as you make the initial overstepping apology, you can do the rest of the accountability work privately in your own mind, without an elaborately detailed remorse statement; they’ll enjoy the benefit regardless in their future dealings with you.

The good news in all this? The joy is right there for the feeling, right where you left it when you got carried away. “It’s about them, not me” — not to the point of absurdity, but to the point of occasional discomfort, yes; just flash that pass at the door and you’re in. Joy City. Just don’t post a whisper about any kid, ever, without the parents’ okay.

Comments

[laurajv]

things I wish Carolyn would have addressed (but way behind the stuff she did address!) is 1) the way the LW ascribes all this to the daughter-in-law and 2) gets mad about having a lane to stay in.

You SHOULD stay in the lane assigned to you by the parents of a child, LW! They are the people who get to decide what lane you are in! This goes for your grandchild and also for any other children in your life: if you are not their parent and/or legal guardian, you have a lane and should stay in it.

[jadelennox]

In the not-the-point-but-still column, in the LW's paragraph of "I'm not tryna say they owe me but they owe me," she says,

We’ve taken them on trips and hosted them and their friends all through high school and the years after.

Through high school. You "hosted" your son and his girlfriend. You claim you hosted your adolescent son in high school. What is your damage?

[ambyr]

THANK YOU! That line blared out at me in flashing neon, and yet not one person that I saw in the comments on the WaPo article called LW on it (and the WaPo comments on Carolyn Hax are usually pretty good).

[movingfinger]

I saw comments calling the LW out on that! There are SO MANY COMMENTS, and so much wrong with LW, that it's easy to miss something.

[melannen]

...when I read the letter I somehow managed to wrongly decide that LW was parent-to-be's grandparent, because otherwise, that line??? bwuh?????

[cereta]

I do SO love when Carolyn Hax slaps down some idiot, yes.

[laurajv]

it's perhaps a little more entertaining than it should be! but I think it's because there are so many really awful advice columnists. Not that CH is 100% correct every time, but she's thoughtful and clear and sensible much more often than not. and I admit, I often wonder why someone would write CH when who they clearly want is The Bad Advisor

[ashbet]

I really did love this answer. A+ from Carolyn!!

[librarygeek]

Dang. I miss my mom z"l all over again.

"Our first grandchild" in a situation that's rather similar to mine with 3 miscarriages needing abortion care first: my mom didn't want to tell me she had stomach cancer because she was afraid of the stress affecting my health six months pregnant. I'm the oldest, sibs convinced her that if I wasn't told THAT would be a bigger stressor if she suddenly died.

[jadelennox]

May her memory be for a blessing. (And thank goodness for your sibs, and your mom for being convinceable.)

[librarygeek]

I've got really good siblings after the usual childhood fighting. 🤣 Year of Teen's B'nai Mitzvah, I needed open heart surgery 2 months before the date. I had everything I could arrange beforehand done, and responsibilities delegated and completed successfully after the surgery.

After the B'nai Mitzvah, my father who hadn't come fell in NC with his second wife, and we 3 sibs took a road trip down to check on him. They didn't have me drive at all, because I was still in recovery mode they knew. I hadn't had my cardiac physical therapy yet either. My father passed away April 2022 and I'm deliberately not adding of blessed memory to him.

[librarygeek]

My parents had moved out to TX, but my mom was staying with my brother here in PA when I was about due. I texted brother at 2 AM I was heading to the hospital, he was asking Mom if they needed to leave immediately, Mom's "go back to bed, it's her first", and they waited in the family waiting room until I asked for them. It was a difficult birth, I needed an oxygen mask and therefore no glasses, baby wasn't breathing at first needed a spanking, and so brother took a cell phone photo of Baby in oxygen tent in NICU so I could see my baby as more than purple lump. Baby is now over 18 and remote dual enrollment college and high school for senior year and also my only live birth.

Mom arranged shower with Dad's accounting practice office staff (basically family), and religious baby ceremony was held at paternal grandmother's nursing home chapel.

Over the less than 2 years Mom had with her only grandchild, Mom: when staying with us changed dirty diapers, accepted that baby sign language was communication and learned the meanings, and generally was perfect grandparent. She'd hold then-baby on the left side where the chemotherapy port was and flinch, but she insisted that the baby likes this side better.

Mom loved me, and my child unconditionally. Too bad LW here thinks that her daughter-in-law's pregnancy is about the potential grandparents!

[minoanmiss]

Your mother's love shines out of this description. Thank you for sharing her with us.

[frenzy]

>I got the snottiest, most hateful text from my daughter-in-law stating the reason was that it was not my place to post, and why would I do this without asking, etc.

Honey, if this is the most hateful text you've ever gotten... well... that must be very nice. /eyeroll