Estranged from BPD parent, how did you handle it when you had kids?

[Clouds46]

Long-term estranged from BPD mother.  Expecting first child soon.  Torn between guilt about depriving either of the relationship and fear of subjecting myself, my spouse, and my child to the never-ending cycle of intrusive, damaging behavior.  Of course not considering any unsupervised visits.

Any insights from someone who has gone through this would be greatly appreciated.  Did you decide it wasn't worth it and/or wasn't in your child's best interests?  Or, if you did let in your BPD relative, did any boundaries work?  Did the relationship with BPD relative have any benefits for your child?  Thanks in advance.

[Notwendy]

Congratulations on the new addition to your family.

I don't think there's one way to handle a grandmother with BPD. There are pros and cons to either decision- to not have contact or to have contact. I don't think either decision is easy to make. Also since BPD is on a spectrum some grandmothers may be more functional than others. Then there are the people she is connected to, such as your father.

My children are young adults now and I was not aware of the diagnosis of BPD although I knew my mother was difficult to deal with and our family dynamics were dysfunctional. However, she ( and my father) were very invested in protecting this knowlege from anyone outside the family. To others, they present normality, nobody would know there was anything else going on.

By the time my children were born, I had lived away from home for a while. I was not estranged from my mother. I thought perhaps things were better between my parents as they didn't let on anything wasn't OK. So there was no reason to not have them visit and see the kids. However, I didn't forget from my own childhood and did not leave my mother alone with my kids. This wasn't a problem as she always visited with my father. My mother was not a hands on parent and she didn't volunteer to do the hands on baby care.

I did want my kids to have a relationship with my father and they had a good one. He is deceased now and I would have not chosen differently. He was a wonderful grandfather. I would observe him playing with my kids and my mother would be disengaged.

However, being seen as a good mother and grandmother was important to her and most of her friends were grandparents so the role of grandmother was important to her.  It was later when I understood personality disorders that I, and my family, we sources of validation to her. It was less of an issue when the kids were small. She didn't visit for long as she doesn't have the patience with small children. Visits were stressful as there was drama but I wanted to see my father and my kids loved him.

Things got more difficult when my kids entered adolescence. It was too soon to have the "mental illness" discussion with them, but we did that later in their teens when they had an understanding of what that is. By adolescence though, my kids were more independent and useful to her. It was then that she began to enlist them as her emotional caretakers in a similar way she did me at that age. She would have them do things for her not because she needed them done but for her emotional gratification. She also would try to speak to them as her confidants and even triangulate them against me. I was her scapegoat child and she would tell stories about every "bad" thing I did as a kid. ( I wasn't a bad kid, but normal things she perceived as bad).  She also shares TMI about herself. So there was no way I would allow this and I began to place boundaries.

This didn't go well. If she was invested in being a grandmother and there were boundaries there had to be a reason that wasn't her, and so it became how I was "keeping her from her grandchildren".

My kids on the other hand aren't nearly as bothered by my mother's behavior as I am. They are polite to her but they have good boundaries with her.   However, I also haven't shared everything- some things should not be discussed. I have worried that they think it is OK to not have a close relationship with a mother and keep her at a distance but I think they know things were different for me than them. They have seen me struggle with wanting to be respectful to a parent while still having boundaries.

Boundaries don't really work with my mother. She feels like a victim when I have them and she doesn't respect them either. I basically have to be able to tolerate being the "bad one" in the relationship.

A newborn is wonderful and yet also a stressful situation as a family adjusts. You will fall madly in love with the babyand also be  sleep deprived!  You can consider that perhaps it isn't a good idea to add more stress at this time. Maybe let the baby get a bit older, learn to sleep through the night, and then think about it?

[Sunflower45]

For years, I held out hope that my uBPD mother would be able to behave better as a grandmother than she did as a parent. I think I was never able to cut off contact altogether because of this hope. Then I finally became a mother myself... and my mother behaved worse than I had feared. I recently ended all contact with her when I had to admit to myself that it would never get better and that a relationship would be hurtful for my child (now age 3). My mother was only interested in looking like a good grandmother from the outside, and when my daughter didn’t play her part, my mother started punishing her. The last straw was when my toddler didn’t fit into a sweater my mother knitted - my mother announced there would be no more presents for her.

I’m not worried that my daughter will miss out in any way because she has many other loving grandparents and is very close to my father and stepmom, who are awesome. If she asks about my mother, I will tell her - in an age appropriate way - that my mother treated me very badly. I want to be able to have open and honest conversations with my daughter about what to do when someone is treating you badly or bullying you. My husband and I want to instill a strong sense of healthy self esteem and understanding of good boundaries in our child.

Having a child can change your relationship dynamic with a bpd mother and also change your perspective on your own childhood. There have been several recent threads on this that may be helpful to you.