ASK THE EXPERT: Sharing a home with my young daughter and her son is stressing us all
MY DAUGHTER, who is aged 21, has a three-year-old baby. Even though it was a huge shock to all of us when she became pregnant we were supportive of her. In fairness, her boyfriend, who is 20, has stuck by her and comes down to us most evenings to spend time with her and the baby.
However, neither of them are working and they can’t really support themselves never mind the baby. So my daughter and her son are living with me and my husband and her 15-year-old brother.
Things haven’t gone well between me and her since her baby was born. She completely relies on me for the practical help in rearing the child and she assumes that her dad and I will babysit him whenever it suits her. Of course we love him because he is our grandchild but it does feel as if she takes advantage of us sometimes.
If I try to give her advice about anything, she always thinks that I am trying to undermine her and I have even overheard her telling her son to ignore me and to do only what she says because she is his mother.
Because he is only three he is really confused and his behaviour is terrible. He won’t listen to me if I tell him to do anything, but he doesn’t listen to her either.
I am thinking of asking her to leave but I don’t want to make things worse and add to her stress by making her try to cope on her own. Have you any advice?
I would imagine that you are not alone in your struggle of having to negotiate the roles of mother and grandmother at the same time. I think it is hard when your grandchildren live with you not to act as their parent because, with all of your own experience, it probably comes very naturally to you to take charge of babies and small children.
At the same time I can see how your daughter could feel undermined. In a situation where she is a comparative novice and you, on the face of it, have comparative expertise, she may feel that her own intuition is not valued.
She may also be keen to establish the roles clearly for her son and so would like him to know explicitly that she is the “mum in charge”.
Indeed, her anxiety about being undermined is most likely to be the reason why she undermines your authority by telling your grandson not to listen to you.
It seems as if this is leading to conflict between you. Your grandson, on the other hand, is taking advantage of the divided opinions to do what he wants.
In many ways, your daughter living on her own with her son would seem to be a good solution. She would clearly be in charge of him on a daily basis and she could set up the rules, limits, rewards and “behaviour management” that she wants.
However, she may find this is too hard a transition if it involves losing some of the practical support you offer and if she and her boyfriend are anxious about money.
For the time being, then, it seems as if you and she have to find a way to get along, so that you both get what you need from the situation.
Perhaps you and your daughter might like to sit down for a “state of the nation” type meeting in which you both can acknowledge the difficulties that are there and can both openly say what you would like to see changed and also what you might feel works well currently and can be built upon.
This could help you discuss how you can work together to give your grandson a unified message. This will reduce his confusion and the consistency that will be there will hopefully sort out his misbehaviour.
By talking about how you each react to him, you and your daughter could agree (in advance) the behaviour management strategies that you will jointly use. The more you and your daughter talk about things, the less conflict there will be and the less opportunity there will be for your grandson to divide and conquer.
What are your priorities as a grandmother? My guess is that you would love to help your daughter to be the best mum she can be and to give your grandson the love and attention that he needs from a warm family environment.
Maybe your daughter needs to hear that you don’t want to be a threat to her authority but rather a support to it.
Once you both recognise that you have your grandson’s best interests at heart, I think you will find that the other layers of the conflict will fall away.
David Coleman is a clinical psychologist and broadcaster with RTÉ television. Contact info@firebrand.ie if you would like to take part in the next series of Teens in the Wild with David
Readers’ queries are welcome and will be answered through the column, but David regrets he cannot enter into individual correspondence. E-mail questions to healthsupplement@irishtimes.com