Dear Care and Feeding: Should I tell my daughter the whole truth about her grandfather?
Growing up, my sister and I were regularly verbally abused by my father. We are talking fits of rage, unimaginably nasty swearing, and a general sense of walking on eggshells whenever he was around. At times I stopped speaking to him for weeks or months in the aftermath of a verbal attack, and finally, after a shower of abuse in front of my friends when I was 17, I told him that the next time he raised his voice to me would be the last time he ever spoke to me at all.
He knew I meant it, so he hasn’t since, and in recent years additional boundaries have forced him to play nice with me, even as therapy has helped me find the strength to tell him to his face some of the things that had haunted me for years. His reactions to these revelations have been a mix of gaslighting and faux remorse.
One thing I had always been clear on was that I would not allow my future children near him unsupervised and would limit interactions between them to the absolutely essential. Earlier this year, I became a mother for the first time. I quickly learned that many of the parenting decisions one makes before and during pregnancy go out the window the moment the baby arrives. But “no alone time with Grandpa” is one policy I am never going to revise.
1) For a variety of reasons, my sister has resigned herself to reacting only when things get particularly acrimonious and otherwise prioritizing “free” babysitting over her son’s safety. All I can do for him is defend him when anything even remotely out of line takes place, and make sure he knows I am on his side. Social services only get involved in cases of extreme physical/sexual abuse and then, it seems to me, only to make things worse.
2) When the inevitable questions come, what do I tell my child about why she can’t go for a walk with Grandpa or join him and her cousin on a day trip? I don’t want to lie, but I also don’t want her to be afraid to visit the rest of the family, and the only way to see them is to visit my hometown.
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