Relationships with your parents can get tricky when you have your own kids. Whatever boundaries that were crossed during your own childhood become major red flags for moving forward. And old hurts and bruises seem to rise to the surface all over again. That is why one mom is concerned and looking for help, after her mother — who is an alcoholic — refuses to keep herself sober while visiting her grandkids. Torn between wanting her kids to know the woman who raised her and protecting them for her mother's worst instincts, this mom is deeply torn on what she should do.
The mom explained that she's already tried to set down boundaries with her mom -- but "she has broken every one of them."
In a letter sent to the Care and Feeding advice column, the anonymous woman shared that she knows her mother has a drinking problem, but no matter how much she tried to make rules for when she's with her grandkids, her mom doesn't follow them.
"After my daughter was born, I wanted my mom to have a year of sobriety under her belt in order to be trusted with babysitting responsibilities," the mom wrote. "That had seemed to go well until she confessed that she had secretly been drinking while staying with us in our apartment. She swears it was never while our infant daughter was under her care, but I do not believe her. We have never allowed her to be unsupervised with our kids again."
That is why the mom tried again to set limits for the birth of her second child, but her mother made the whole thing a "nightmare."
Without asking, her mother had booked a hotel room for 15 days around her due date, instead of just the three her daughter had kindly suggested. Grandma then showed up drunk at the hospital to see the baby and most likely was drunk when she came for another visit a fews days later.
"When I confronted her, she said she wasn’t going to ask for visits anymore because obviously they are too stressful for the both of us. I completely lost it," the new mom wrote.
"It’s been three months, and I don’t know what to do," she continued. "She’s effectively our kids’ only grandparent, but she has always ignored my boundaries even when she wasn’t drunk."
The mom added that she wants her kids to have the experience of having a grandparent, "and she can also be sweet and wonderful when not drunk, but I don’t want them to have to suffer as I have in a relationship with an alcoholic."
"Also, I know my mother is getting older, and I don’t want to keep her grandchildren away from her in her last years, but I want to do right by my children," she continued. "The whole thing seems like a puzzle I can’t solve."
In the end, the mom shared that it was starting to get too overwhelming for her to figure out alone. "I’m having an extra hard time right now because I’m in the thick of caring for a newborn and a toddler and having some postpartum health issues as well, so I’m at a loss," she wrote. "Can you help? What would you do?"
The advice columnist responded with sympathy, because dealing with a loved one who has a drinking problem can be incredibly difficult.
"Trying to make sense out of an alcoholic can be its own kind of addiction — a behavior that is both nonsensical and compulsive," the columnist wrote. "This is especially true for people who have been raised by alcoholics. It’s jokingly said that your family knows how to push your buttons because they’re the ones who installed them. There’s truth to this. You cannot underestimate how much of your way of being, your fears, anxieties, insecurities, obsessions, and attachments have been shaped by growing up under an alcoholic."
He added that most likely throughout her entire life the mom has put up boundaries that her mother has knocked down. "You have probably learned to move, adjust, and reconfigure your boundaries in order to get the relationship with her that you’ve always hoped for," he continued. But this has given her a way of coping with her mom that has lead to other "messy" behaviors that are most likely making her miserable. "The thing about alcoholics is that you cannot keep yourself safe and make them happy at the same time," he wrote.
That's why the columnist advised mom to keep her distance.
He argued that it is the mom's responsibility to keep her kids safe and unfortunately that wont happen if grandma is around. "She is unsafe, so you don’t put her in your children’s lives until she’s safe again," he wrote. "She needs help, and you are not the one who can save her."
"My advice is this: Do not invite her into your children’s lives unless she is sober, and if you are so inclined, attend meetings for the family of alcoholics, of which there are many," he continued. "You are right that this is a puzzle you cannot put together. So let it go. And as painful as it is, begin your work on letting her go too. Good luck, and my heart is with you."
Other people thought that *maybe* they could make the relationship work.
"If Drunk Grandma is nice when she’s sober, you can figure out ways to work out a relationship," one person wrote in the comments. "Visit in the mornings, keep it short, and don’t ever invite her to your house. Meet up for breakfast or invite her to the park and just leave if she starts being inappropriate or drunk. Demanding that an alcoholic be sober for a year before seeing the grand-babies is a good way to get her to lie."
And someone else agreed. "As long as Mom is supervised and is a happy/fun drunk, I’d say let it ride. Stop wanting mom to be who she isn’t, and accept her for who she is." But as many of us know, the line between being happy/fun and out-of-control can be paper-thin if someone has a drinking problem.
Many more people agreed there seemed to be little benefit to keeping grandma around.
One person was furious with the mom for even considering keeping her mother in the picture. "Your first job now is to be a mother, not a daughter. Your number one duty is to your children, not your mother," the person wrote. "How dare you put your children in harm's way, and want to continue to do so, when your mother doesn't even give enough of a (expletive) to follow simple rules?!"
And another person agreed. "Ditch your Mom and don't look back," the person commented. "If she changes and sobers up, consider letting her back in. But don't believe her when she says she is sober."
