Does your extended family play a role in your life?
Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles, Siblings, Cousins, etc., etc. how do they fit into your life?
I work with several families and some of them could not be more different in terms of family life. One's family is very involved. With some living in the same area and the others who don't are still a constant presence (in a good way) and the other ones had a good relationship with their extended family members but now does not for one reason or another.
The family who does not interact that much with their family is doing just fine and they have made family out of their friends. Having said that, I do think that having an involved set of family members helps anyone who is raising children and especially when special needs are involved.
Is your extended family a part of your daily life?
-----
Knowledge Safari is for parents and family members who have special needs in their lives to connect. discover and share! Please join us.
.JPG)
Posts
7 comments:
My extended family is thankfully very involved with our children! We are lucky in that respect. My parents live two minutes from us, and my sister and her husband live ten minutes away. They help with our son anytime we are in the hospital with our daughter. They will babysit when asked and take great care of them both.
I wish all families of special needs kids could have a tight extended family!
I wrote a post about our extended family a couple of days ago. We have some who are great, and others who are not involved at all. Some don't even know about Gracie's chromosome disorder yet, a year and a half later.
It is a hard subject for us. We have had good times and some horrible times with extended family. The lesson that we have learned from that is we have to put our family first, and let everything else go. Also, we have to accept our extended family for who they are, not who we want/need them to be.
Interesting...
My family is fairly good. Still very much in denial over it a little, but not as scared as before.
His family---we no longer speak to his mother because she cannot accept Jack.
His sister is here at least once a month---makes a 5 hour drive one way, just to help.
It's weird. I wish we lived closer to everyone so we could have help and support.
PART ONE
My sister takes offense at the slightest provocation, behaves as if she is mortally wounded if someone offers her any guidance or a gentle suggestion (really), is a pathological liar who pretends she's a happy housewife when she's in fact a single mother who entrapped her child's father by lying about her birth control (said she was on it when she wasn't and was shocked when he said "I'll help raise the kid but I will never, ever marry you because I do not love you and never did"), and to make matters even more perverted, she takes elements of my life--from old boyfriends to interests and hobbies, jobs I have held, my level of education, my chosen career, even stupid things like my medical history and hair color--and lies to people, pretending they are hers, and is evidently suffering from a personality disorder of some sort. It's very unnerving to hear from someone that she's doing this, but it happens all the time (she's not too smart about keeping her lies from intersecting with our lives, even while she refuses to see/speak to us).
We tried to guide her towards help but she will have none of it. Instead, she pretends she came from an abusive home. She makes up horrible and vicious lies about my parents and her "terrible" childhood (it was fairly normal, as childhoods go, and the rest of us siblings are living proof of that) and is a monster to them, my brothers, aunts, uncles, and her grandparents. The sad thing is that her kid, who has special needs, is missing out on his grandparents and great grandparents and the rest of our family as well because my sister is mentally ill and unmedicated. She cut off contact suddenly, without warning, too. She came to a family birthday, and next thing you know, out of the blue (but around the time her babydaddy said "NO" to marriage) she wasn't taking any phone calls and threatening us all with 'restraining orders' if we tried to contact her. I think what tripped her trigger was that her child was interacting with all of us in a very loving and positive way. He especially adored his grandparents and great-grandparents, and would grin from ear to ear, kiss them and hug them when he saw them. I do wonder if she was simply jealous of the child's reaction to them. Nothing else makes sense. None of it makes sense, really.
PART TWO
Every so often she used to run off with random barely-known/inappropriate men (for purposes of sexual congress, let's be blunt about it), to the point the "babydaddy" had to demand (and get) full legal custody of the child. So, essentially, she's the "phsycial custody babysitter" (and has been for seven years) who doesn't have to work because the father of the child pays for everything (though she'll never get rich because he keeps her on a VERY short leash while denying the child nothing--example: He bought a good car so the child would have safe transportation, and put the mother on his insurance so she can take him to school -- but if she takes off for parts unknown in the car, he can report it stolen. He gives her precharged, prepaid credit cards and demands to see receipts before she can get another one--sounds mean but she had an unlimited debit card from him and spent thousands on crap, he had to refinance to pay that off). They live in the same house, in separate bedrooms, and the child's father is seeing someone (covertly, we think--so as not to tick her off) who may want to get married to him one day. The gravy train ends when the child turns eighteen.
My sister keeps thinking she'll "make him" (the baby daddy) love her, but every year brings another twenty pounds, and she's twice daddy's size now, almost (he's naturally thin and shorter than baby mommy), nearly. Also, she managed to knock out one of baby daddy's teeth when she got angry with him a while back, so I don't see love blooming in that garden anytime soon.
The babydaddy is no saint, either--he comes from a long line of couch potato, get-trashed two-pack-a-day drunks who never met an alcoholic beverage they didn't love. His family does (secretly, because if Mama knew, she'd probably go off on them in a crazy and violent way) let us know, rarely, how the kid is doing, but we have absolutely no contact with our flesh and blood. It's very sad. Heartbreaking. I do believe my sister enjoys and feeds on the pain she has caused us from this insane, no-good-reason/no-reason-at-all separation, that she does it deliberately, and it produces some sort of perverted, satisfied reaction in her. How she can do that to 90 year old, sweet, gentle, cheerful and kindly great grandparents who only have a few more years is beyond me, but she seems to take genuine delight in her coldness.
So, on the other side of the fence, you see, there's often a sad story to be found--there is an extended, loving family here that is ready, willing and able to shower this needy and lonely child who has a number of serious physical challenges with love, affection, gifts, babysitting, attention, play-therapy, esteem-building interactions...you name it, we'd do it; and "Dysfunctional Mother" refuses the help because of completely imagined slights and a desire to paint a false "poor pitiful me--I came from a broken/dysfunctional (lies, lies, lies) home" version of her life to strangers and "out laws" (the father's family). The latter regard her as scarily unstable (at the least) but walk on eggshells around her because THEY don't want to lose access to the child like we have. They've seen what she's capable of doing, and they're quite naturally wary. What makes it worse is that she's not stupid, she can talk a great game and is initially very "believable"--it's only after a while and repeated "issues" that people start to realize she's not playing with a full deck.
It's just sick, and so is she. But most of all, it is tragic.
My mother-in-law watches my boys almost everyday for us - they've never been in daycare thanks to her! It's such special time that they have with her!
I posted on Sunday about the males in our lives (all extended family) and the role they play. Check it out!
http://brotherlyloveejkp.blogspot.com
You betcha!!! My Mom is a godsend...don't know what I'd do without her!! The rest of our family is helpful too but not as much as her!!
Post a Comment