Maybe you can show them pics of when you were a kid? "See, this is me when I was overweight from the junk you fed me." "See, these are my positive test results for diabetes from all the junk you fed me."

Even further twist: My daughter just came out and gave me a letter and asked me to give to her grandma. Keep in mind, it's written by a 7 not quite 8 year old, so it's a bit off, but it's readable:

I love you grandma, do you love me, if oyu do come over to my house because mommy and daddy is serious about not seeing you anymore not in less(unless) you'll feed me right and I'm crying. Help me grandma i miss you help me so will you? I promise grandma I will not eat a bunch of snacks anymore will you? I love you grandma.

Almost has me crying. This was without prompting on our part. she wrote it herself.

Sounds like she's trying to take some of the blame on herself. This svcks for everyone involved. You gotta stand firm though, your daughters health depends on it.

Aww, that's so adorable! :happy:

There is some serious need for conflict resolution. I say all of you have a meeting together and discuss things as a family, preferably have a doctor present if you have one either in your family, or a trusted family doctor that has no ties with any single person in your family (If the doctor is either in your spouses family, or a friend of just yours, then your parents will have reason to not trust what s/he says). Have the doctor explain what the balanced diet should be for a child your daughters age, and make sure your parents know that and stick to that limit and everything should be fine. If your father really is as logical as you suggest, he would understand. I sincerely hope things work out for you guys.

Hmmmph. Wouldn't surprise me if your dad does actually support you, but got yelled at so much that he finally made that phonecall telling you exactly what your mother commanded him. Of course you can judge that much better than me.

I think you're little girl is doing well though. She could've picked her grandmother's side as well, but from that letter she seems to understand that you're completely right about her eating habits.

If the situation is exactly as you describe and your parents really are unwilling to listen to reason, then I agree that you should have a gathering of yourself, your wife and your daughter with either group's GP and try to go through it logically once again. If that fails then, painful and drastic as it may seem, you need to continue with your current course of action and only allow your parents to see your daughter when she's supervised.

I also agree with the person above that you should see how willing your mother is to pay for Kiara's dental bills.

that had me a little teary... does that mean your daughter understand your reason is to protect her health?

Partially, and partially not. A later conversation with her revealed she thinks it's our fault entirely, and that grandma doesn't know or understand why we are keeping her from her. In other words, she thinks we just arbitrarily told her she couldn't go to grandmas anymore without talking to grandma first. So we had to explain in very plain terms that we DID talk to grandma beforehand and that grandma refused to listen to what I had to say. so, now she understands I believe. Regardless though, she does realize that we are concerned about her health with all the super sugary snacks.

:huh: The "Its what we did with you, and you turned out alright" thing really doesn't work when you didn't turn out alright.

How many decades has diabetes been linked with obesity? (I don't know, but I'd expect at least one or two) And its been known for the better part of a century that eating loads of empty carbs and fat leads to an increase in body fat (unless you're a very active person who needs that much energy). So its hardly knew or dubious that what they've been doing could plausibly lead to very bad things.

Might they be in denial about their contribution to your health problems?

Probably. And it's no doubt that the eating habits I learned growing up are what caused my problems later in life(I was always overweight. From age 8 and up). When I got older, my eating habits remained the same because they were so ingrained inside my head, and that eventually led me to being diagnosed with diabetes in 2007. I was off and on getting it under control, struggling trying to change my eating habits, often going back to the same thing, all up until 2 months ago when I was hospitalized with pneumonia and a blood sugar of 435. Not the highest they ever saw they told me, but still dangerously high, and it led to me being stuck in the ICU with an insulin drip in my hand for two freaking days. Most miserable experience of my life, and 2nd scariest. I haven't strayed since I got out, and I have no plans on doing so, I'll never go back to eating the way again, I never want to be in the ICU again and see the fear on my daughters faces as I'm laying in the bed, and the look in my wifes eyes that told me she cried the night I was taken to the hospital. It was quite a wake-up call. Granted, not one I needed to know better for my children. That's always been a do as I say, not as I do, and has been for years, because I knew the way I ate wasn't healthy, and I didn't want that for them. Now that I've been in the ICU...well, yeah, I don't want it for me either. I want to live to see my daughters walk down the aisle, have children, live great lives. I want to live to see that, and I want them to live to do those things.

This has been said a lot, but keep doing what your doing. Your life with your family (wife, kids) is more important than anything or anyone, including your life with your parents. Your children should be your utmost priority over anything else. Personally, I would rather never see my mother again if it meant keeping my child safe and healthy. Hopefully it never comes to this. Maybe some sessions with a therapist who specializes in family cases like this would be beneficial to your mother.

Anyways, good luck, and I hope this turns out for the better.

I think you've made an excellent decision. Very responsible. I'm saying stick to it, what you've done is the right thing to do - In fact I'd go as far as to say that doing otherwise would be wrong.

i don't know, it sounded like she blamed herself only. and yes it does svck for everyone involved. it will, however, be more so for the child though, if she is blaming herself for this in any way.

and Starwulf: PMed.

In regards to your previous comments about respecting his mother, I agree that as his mother, some respect should be upheld. But there's only so much respect she deserves in this situation. His mother is telling him essentially "No, I will not stop poisoning your child in the same manner that made you obese for life and eventually gave you a horrible disease, and I refuse to compromise." He is respecting her status as his mother by not yelling obscenities at her and barring her from seeing her grandchild until she's old enough to refuse to eat what her grandmother is giving her. He is respecting her by staying in touch with her and waiting patiently for her to give in, instead of adding her number to the blocked list on his phone and taking out a restraining order on the woman refusing not to make his daughter unhealthy and ill. He is respecting her just as much as she deserves to be respected until she is willing to compromise. He's doing exactly what he should be doing in this situation, and it's what's best for his daughter as long as he is able to make it clear to her why he's doing it. Yes she's going to be sad about it, because she loves her grandmother and doesn't fully understand the repercussions of her grandmother's actions. And as soon as he gives in, the tears will dry from her cheeks and be replaced by the crumbs and icing of toaster strudels and poptarts.

those are true and great, but they are not his merit, they are due regardless if she deserves it or not because she is his mother. that is respect. even if she is not showing hers or it does not look like she it. this may be her own way of saying "i know i messed up with you, but this is how i'll see if you can do better than me, not make the same mistakes i made". or whatever the case is why she does this. this is why i said they need to have a h2h where both will act on assumption that the air can be cleared without fear of persecution. and then, when all is said, both will then live up to their faults, etc and put this conflict behind them.

And as I said, he's respecting her as much as she deserves. Being his mother entitles her to a lot of respect, but being his mother who refuses to give his daughter proper nutrition means she is entitled to significantly less. Not respecting her less would be blind respect and devotion and that isn't right. No mere human is deserving of a constant level of respect that does not change when they do you wrong.



How do you figure that? She's doing exactly the same thing she did to him, to his daughter. If she wanted to prove that she's learned from her mistakes, then she would have given in when confronted about it, instead of what she actually did, which is refuse to stop making his daughter unhealthy against his wishes. She clearly doesn't realize the mistakes she's made, let alone want to fix them, despite being flat out told what they were.



That's not how humans work. That's how fiction works. Expecting a "heart-to-heart" conversation to make everything better is laughable. Starwulf and his mom have very different viewpoints. Starwulf has the rational viewpoint, and his mother has the irrational one. "I want my daughter to be healthy" vs. "I want your daughter to be obese and happy as a kid, self conscious when she hits puberty and diabetic when she reaches advlthood." She is the one that needs to compromise. Having a straight-out-of-a-movie heart to heart conversation with her will require not only him stating he's willing to compromise, which he can't do because he is right in this situation, but also require his mom being willing to compromise even a little, which she clearly isn't. This just isn't a problem that can magically be fixed with both parties being completely satisfied.

I don't understand why she won't back down here. Your the parent, and you've told her all the very very good reasons why she should not be given an absurd amount of sweets. Some sweets are always nice, but I mean, 2 Toaster Strudels and 4 Poptarts for breakfast alone? I am a teenager who consumes a vast amount of junkfood, but damn, that even strikes me as a just stupid amount of sugar!

I think that you should stick to your ground and hold your guns until she breaks. It may help her gain some respect for you if she see's you challenge her like this and not cave into her demands and ridiculous behavior.

deserved is not respect but simply returning favors based on what someone did or did not do for you. respect is respect only when it is unconditional. even though it is a virtue almost dead in mainstream society(es).

a guess? i don't know. yours may be better than mine, for all i know you can know more about human inner workings than i do. but my main point was that there are sometimes things that we do not know about the person, and those need to be considered and taken into account. especially when still trying to resolve conflicts. but besides conflict resolution, this is about son to mother relationship, and mother to son relationship. and relationships are pretty much contingent on mutual understanding, acceptance, and so on.

this is not fiction, that's how things work when both sides are committed to conflict resolution and restoration of relationships. that's what i meant. by itself, a h2h is not a magic pill, i agree, but it a base to go off, a good one at that, very good one. assuming that after h2h both sides are still committed to maintaining relationships and resolving the conflict, then solutions will be built keeping in mind what was found out and learned in the h2h. nothing gets done, except grudgingly i guess, without h2h to clear the air. without full disclosure in the interest of mutual understanding and acceptance, nothing will happen, only temporary "solutions"-band aid or forced cooperation, grudgingly cooperating, etc.

besides that, i have to admit, i made a nasty and deliberate mistake when i jumped into conclusions myself about this whole situation and how he is just being a bad son without knowing more. but then things came up and i had to reconsider some things. for the wrong thing i had to apologize. so don't be so quick to conclude what she wants and does not want or you'll make the same mistake i did. i am not omniscient, nor are you nor anyone here, so none have a right to make assumptions as to what she wants. if that is your guess as to what she want, then say it is a guess, don't fool yourself into thinking you know that this is what. things are not always what they seem, even if they seem right right now... some new piece(s) of information can render your explanation empty, i should know. and technically i am being judgmental of you for so quickly jumping into conclusions, so i do have to admit and say i am wrong in doing that and say i am sorry for that and that i was trying to make myself feel better about my own faults by accusing you of the same thing i did when i saw what i interpreted as you doing the same thing i did. sigh, i am still to quick to jump people, i guess, so i think i need to stay away from public places like this.

i think you just answered your own question there. and gave Starwolf something to ponder. and answered the question that you, xXAntibodyXx, posed to me "How do you figure that?" though i don't know if i can say that is what i meant when i said this may be her own way of saying "i know i messed up with you, but this is how i'll see if you can do better than me, not make the same mistakes i made", still i think it would make sense in this situation, maybe: she wants to see how he stand up to assault by anyone-who better to test his muscles against then his own mom, no?-who comes with too much sugar. she may not have done right with him, and i think she knows she messed up even if not admit it, maybe not just yet, but she want to know he can do right with his daughter. "I know i messed up with you, but this is how i'll see if you can do better than me, not make the same mistakes i made."

It's simple Starwulf, and a situation that can really only be handled in one way.

You are the parent of your child. No one else -except your wife :hehe: has the authority to say what happens with your kid,

EVEAH!

This also Includes your mother. Tell her, and if it gets slightly less respectful towardss her -because she won't listen, then so be it.

She is a grandmother, and should act accordingly, which is to follow your directive concerning your child. End-of-[censored]-story-period. If she doesn't respect your decisions and your status as a parent, then there is no respect in return.

This is the crux: your child is the future, and your mom is history, and she needs to know that you're the executive branch in these matters from now on.

Also tell her not to worry, that in twenty-five years your daughter will tell you the same thing



I had a serious knuckle-bruising, knock down, drag-em away fight(*) with my mom about these things concerning my son.
In the end, she agreed with me. It wasn't pretty, but it was needed.


(*)the verbal kind

Right now, "All these things I hate" by Three Days Grace feels like a perfect song to describe my emotions

Update time: So, it's been a week and a half since this occurred, and things have, if you can believe it, gotten worse. I've tried to keep an open line of communication with my Mom and Dad since this fight first occurred in an effort to give them plenty of chance to say "Ok, you're right, we are willing to negotiate on this". Instead, my Dad brung over candy bars yesterday, and when I just went over, my mom tried to force an entire container of Store-made Chocolate Chip Cookies on me(the Big kind, like 3x the size you'd normally get in a regular pack of cookies, and there was like, 20 of them). I naturally refused them, saying that they didn't need it, even stating that they had just had a sweet dessert a few days ago(Mothers Day, we made Strawberry Shortcake with Sugar free Whip Cream(the strawberries were macerated with Splenda even). My mom whipped the box of cookies on the table, knocking off some of her stuff, and stormed out into her living room. I followed her, and we basically resumed our argument, almost right where we left off. I pointed out how un-healthy it was, how our family has a history of Diabetes and Heart disease and Obesity and everything, and I constantly emphasized that I wasn't trying to force her and dad to not give Kiara any sweets at all, I just wanted to negotiate with them to only give her 1 sugary snack while she's over there.

An all-out yelling match ensued, with my mom telling me over and over again that I was a terrible person, and how would I feel if she died tomorrow, and how I would have to be the one to explain to Kiara why she hasn't gotten to see her Grandma and could never see her again(basically, a major guilt trip). I read(non-verbatim, as I didn't have it with me) Kiara's note that I posted earlier in this thread, she countered with "You prodded her to write that, those are your words, not hers", I swore up and down on my life that she did it entirely herself, and how it was even Kiara who told US what she had the last time she was over there and how SHE thought that's why she had gotten sick. My mom of course outright refused to believe that Kiara would say that, and called me a liar right to my face.

I am done with it. I am officially cutting off all contact with my mom and dad until they are ready to see reason. I'm done keeping an open line of communication. I'm through trying to keep the peace. I can NOT deal with this crap any more. It's causing me loads of stress(after the argument, I came home and bawled because I was upset, which Is extremely out of character for me), It's making it extremely hard for me to give up smoking(I struggle with it, with months and months going by without me smoking, and then large amounts of stress trigger a "I need a smoke reaction" which happened tonight. I am just so absolutely done with this crap. I am literally at my breaking point. I'm worried that at this point, the stress of it is going to cause me to start getting snippy with my family(it hasn't yet, but this kind of stress, it's bound to happen sooner or later), or that I'm going to have a freaking Heart-attack or something.

how would your mother feel if she put her grandchild into a diabetic coma? :sadvaultboy:

Well, at least you have this thread to vent in, which is better than keeping all the stress to yourself.

I don't understand how your parents can be so ignorant about health, to the point where it feels as if they think sugar is some sort of miracle drug and you're crazy for not eating it constantly. If they really can't be reasoned with then I think you made the right choice cutting off communication until they give in. I know that it's a dangerous thing to do and there's the real possibility that instead of compromising they'll just get angrier with time, but they seem to be so irrationally in love with sugar that it's all you can do to protect your daughter's health until they compromise.

If you haven't already, you should consider sitting down with your daughter and showing her pictures from throughout your life as your obesity got worse and worse, and show her the stuff you use for your diabetes as a way of showing her not what could happen, but what happened to you. Saying it could happen would probably scare her into thinking it definitely will happen. But you should show her what the diet your parents gave you, and what they're trying to give her, wound up doing to you.

My daughter has seen multiple pictures of me when I was just 7lbs shy of 300(which, sadly by the way, when I reminded my mom of this, she looked me right in the eye, and with all seriousness, told me that that was not a heavy weight. I was astounded. I was like "That's the kind of weight that people die from mom, or gets them on the Biggest Loser or some other Weight Loss show. I was honestly flabbergasted by that response), not to mention the fact that she was 4 when I WAS that size. She also gets to see me being stuck for my insulin every day, including a few times where, for whatever reason, the needle refuses to pierce my skin and my wife has forcefully push it in, resulting in a good shout of pain from me. That on top of the 4 finger sticks I have to have done every-day. Thankfully, my daughter seems to be fairly understanding of all of this, though I know it's taking it's toll on her as well, especially considering she has, up to this point, spent the majority of her weekends with her Grandma, unless we have a family outting planned(which is more in the summertime, in the winter, it's almost always grandmas for the weekend). On a further note, my mom keeps insisting that I'm only doing this to hurt her, despite how many times I've stressed that I'm only concerned about my daughters health, given her family background. I've repeatedly said that I don't ever want to have to visit my daughter in the hospital, or worse, in the morgue, because of eating habits that she obtained here in her childhood.

It's actually starting to cause me physical pain. For about the last week or so, I've had a terrible tightness in my chest, to the point where it has gotten very hard for me to draw breath(I do have asthma, but it's to a minor degree, and only a handful of times has it ever resulted in feelings like this, and never consecutive days. Not to mention I'm getting a significant less amount of sleep, which is bad as I normally only get 4-5 hours, and lately, it's a surprise if I'm even getting 2.

Honestly, I'm a bit surprised that I haven't had a complete breakdown yet and gone crazy. If it wasn't for the full support of my wife, the extra love that my 3 year old has been given me(I guess she can sense how upset I've been lately), and, really, all of you here on the forums who have read, and provided me with words of advice and encouragement. Without these things, I'm not really sure what would have happened by now.

HOLY [censored]! After writing this, and right before I was about to hit post, FINALLY...it happened. My dad called me, and said that he and my mom had sat down and drew up a list of snacks that they think is acceptable for her, and wants me to come over and look at it. I told them yes, but not tonight, as I'm still
rather upset, but that I'll be over tomorrow to look it over. He read me off some of the things, and while a few still seemed out of place(Fruit snacks, which just aren't that good), a lot of it sounded fine. So, hopefully, as long as things go well tomorrow, this whole [censored] [censored] situation will be resolved, and my stress level will have receded to normal. Thank god.

So am I, your mother sounds completely crazy to me.


That is great to hear. I don't know anything about the relationship between your parents, but it sounds to me like they have probably been fighting about this ever since you decided to keep your daughter away from them, and now your father has finally managed to make his wife back off. I doubt it was her initiative with all the horrible things she's been saying.

Whatever the case, I'm just glad that there's some positive news for a change, I hope this all works out well

I would say as a father you have the right to raise your children as you please, and if your Mother's stubbornness about this could possibly mean ruining your children's lives I would agree with you. Maybe if you show your backbone and REALLY not let your daughter go over, your Mom will give in and see things your way. I'm sure if she's a logical thinking human being she won't stand to not see her grandchildren forever,




Edit: Glad to see things are starting to work out. :thumbsup: