Should i let my parents in my childrens life

[tonk]

 I have been thinking about this for quite some time, since last december to be precise. Which is going on 10 months

I'll give a bit of back story which once written down seems and quite frankly is horrific.

my parents were married 3 times, to each other. yes that means they have been divorced fully with all litigation and nastiness from each other twice.

My father had a severe gambling addiction which rendered us homeless as i recall, we lived in a nice house and suddenly had to move over the road into a council house

we could see our old house from the grotty council house (a council house is social housing for my foreign friends) my first memory of my mum is of her hoisting me in the air by my leg and beating me with a slipper for wetting the bed, she used to tie the doors upstairs together so me and my sister couldnt get out and go down and see which man she had in the house. i would often go to sleep really needing the toilet and some times would even pee in the corner. i ended up with severe sleep walking until i was around 19. Which abruptly ended when i was punched awake by some poor guy in the next bunk who i decided in my sleep to pee upon (this was in the army). anyway i digress my dad when he was around was very violent to us and my mum. he put her in hospital several times and i remember my sister having to call the police and ambulance when she was 8, which made me 7. my dad was pretty horrendous with me smacks and belts etc until i turned around 12. he was only small 5 foot 3 and at 12 i was probably the same size. from 12 to 16 nothing much happened of import, i drifted into severe drug use and my parents ignored me coming in drunk and drugged up. at 16 realization hit me and i signed up for the army.

 The army really sorted my sad little life out, and brought out the best in me. i only had 2 sleep walking incidents in my 5 years service. one my platoon commander found me and put me to bed, the other i mentioned earlier. but it was laughed off the next day as army lads do and i got a bit of banter for about a month. not really a big issue. the only problem i had at this time is i left my english bank card at home and had 80% of my wage paid into to save. my first posting was cyprus so i had a cypriot account where 20% would go in and i would live on that. the problem is once i signed off and went home to get my money and go traveling my account was empty. i think i must have sent £60k to that account over the 5 years and my parents had spent every last penny. i never gave them permission to spend it all. my mum once phoned my regiment and asked after me, and my RSM (regimental sergeant major) had given me an ear bashing about keeping in touch so i called her which was probably a year into joining and 3 months into joining my regiment she asked for some money, i gave her my pin number and that is how they spent my money.

 I didnt call the police, i didnt have some huge argument. i got my bank card checked my bank it was empty. i went home i packed my bag and disappeared luckily i hadn't spent much out of my cypriot account and had a few thousand pounds left over i went traveling living cheap and moving fast. i ended up in denmark with no money so i found a job got a house, got a girlfriend and settled in for a year.

 I made my way back to the uk after about 18 months away. i did check in with my parents. they were now on dodgy disability based on my dads fake arthritis, well it wasnt fake but it was debilitating to the point he said it was. he had a disability car, got disability money, yet also worked as an electrical engineer surveyor which paid really well i think, as they seemed to be doing ok. 

 after a few months in the UK i had a job and bought a house. i met a lady who was 7 years my senior she had 3 children. my parents were livid they exclaimed she was using me and all the rest. I was married to this lady after a year, my parents refused the invitation to our wedding. we had a child together. her other children were 11 6 and 5 when i met her. I worked hard to provide for us all i had 3 jobs at one point i would get up at 5am go pack veg till 9am, then go drystone walling till 12, then go run a pub till around 3 then eat and do a few hours more walling, then go back to the pub and do a few hours on the night. It was a long hard few years but we got past it. My parents never visited they saw my first child twice, my dad started visiting my house a few years later when we moved to a better house in a better area. we had a few more kids. my wife now has 6! what a trooper. the origional kids dad was a complete loser, never paid a penny. just wanted to cause trouble for my wife. my dad mellowed a bit and started to invite us to go fishing. i never liked fishing but my wife loves sports and one day took him up on the offer. it turned into a regular monthly thing. after 6 months or so, my mum decided to accuse them of having an affair this was through my sister because she hadn't been in contact with me for years at this point. my dad immediately withdrew from all contact with us unless he was asking to borrow money. of course they weren't having an affair. my dad was a 50 year old pot bellied toothless hunched over fool and wife was a 30 something goddess. (maybe a little rose tinted but i stand by it!) anyway my mum ended that little escapade of normalcy.

 i saw my dad maybe 3 times after that all when he wanted something and had no one else to turn to. my sister was a lifetime benefit huckster at this point and my brother had studied some inane shit in university and was living with them 10 years later

 

 So my mum has never seen any of my children other than the oldest 3 times when she was a baby, my dad has seen more of the kids but not the youngest who is now 8. since then both his parents died i didnt attend the funerals, im pretty pragmatic about these things and see no point in allowing other to vent their grief all over me. I did like my grandma and grandad and did visit them but funerals with a whole fake family seemed quite pointless. the dead don't care either way.

 my mums parents also died during this time, i did want to go to her dads funeral he was the gem in my childhood. but i didn't attend as i heard through my sister who i rarely speak to that my mum was intending to turn up and make a scene (her own mum had accused my grandad and her of having an incestuous affair hence they never spoke) So

as you can see my family is quite messed up. so last december i dropped my dad a note on facebook asking how he was. Dont know why i bothered think i was feeling pretty maudlin at that time. He waffled some inane crap about his health and we went back over the course of 48 hours, then he asked for some money to help him move to some disability house. I didn't reply for 2 days i looked through his and my mums facebook and found they were still holidaying a few times a year, still had a 35 year old son living with them and they were asking me for money.

 I replied yes i can help have the removal company call me and i will pay your bill. He didn't respond to that at all. i really think he was just after cash. a few days later he asked if they could see the children. i replied no i dont think that would be a good idea as they dont even know you exist right now perhaps we could start with a card.

 then followed 2 days of abusive messages from my sister and mother through facebook. i ended up just deleting the account. i never had anyone but my wife on it anyway so it wasn't any loss i really don't use social media.

 Do you think i was a bit harsh and should i let them in the life of my children?

 

 Just wanted to add a footnote on my wife. she went back to work 3 years ago after rearing our children to school age, she now runs a huge multi million pound store and earns 5 times my salary. she has an immense 162 IQ, and has shot up the corporate ladder, she literally started back at work in mcdonalds wiping tables, got noticed by some sales manager for her personality and is now flying high. 3 years wiping tables to corporate moghul really impressed by her. and i have no regrets about our marriage and do consider it the best choice i ever made. 

 

[tonk]

I suppose i should add some of my own demographics.

 i have a 140+ IQ i was invited to join mensa but im not a joiner really. I don't have friends im very pragmatic in my dealings with people my wife is my best and only friend which is perhaps putting a lot of pressure on her but we get along famously we never fight. We generally agree on most things i suppose i would be considered the compromiser. I score very high on the autistic scale for asperger's but i think that more down to the choices i have made than any disability. I like to keep people at arms length. except for my children whom i shower with affection. i tend to be very focused and obsessive, im currently obsessed with getting a doctorate. im doing a degree in business and management right now just because i had the time and inclination and my wife's salary has enabled it. once i have completed that i will do a psychology degree then get an mba then try and get a doctoral place in marketing. again i have no job in mind or anything i just think the letters after my name will be pretty and i am finding the work load exceedingly easy. im months ahead in my studies so much so that i have started next septembers essays already.

 

 Anyway i guess thats that, I dare not think about what i would know now had i applied myself at school and perhaps done university earlier. im currently 37!

[Pod]

You have to be the final decision maker about this but I know that Stefan did a show regarding this topic.  From what I can recall, the basis for making this decision would be how you felt about how your parents treated you, and if you're willing to risk some kind of repetition of what happened to you with your own kids.  From how you describe them, they don't sound like great people to have in your life.  I can't recall you mentioning a positive.  

If anyone remembers the call-in show please post. 

[tonk]

 They were not and are not very good people. i just worry about my children having no family at all. they dont even have aunts or uncles

[S1988]

7 minutes ago, tonk said:

 They were not and are not very good people. i just worry about my children having no family at all. they dont even have aunts or uncles

What about your wife's parents?

[SnapSlav]

6 hours ago, tonk said:

 They were not and are not very good people. i just worry about my children having no family at all. they dont even have aunts or uncles

Well, they DO have an aunt and an uncle, according to you. It's just that they're not in the children's lives. I can sympathize with your conundrum. I don't have wife or kids yet, but I've resolved that "certain family members" will never ever meet my children, when I do. So obviously my answers will probably lean toward "no keep doing what you're doing" rather than telling you to invite them into your kids' lives. I think the justification for staying the course and removing your parents/siblings from your children's lives is that your children need stable, loving parents infinitely more than they need orbital family. If someone strikes a chord with a cousin and the two grow close and stay close for life, that's nice, but the first step would be that neither are bad influence on one another. It doesn't sound like the rest of your family qualifies as "not a bad influence".

At one point in your story, it almost sounded like your parents mellowed out, until it became clear that they were just being manipulative. But even if they had genuinely mellowed out, I'm a big believer that you don't accept "repentance" from someone when they lose all their power and influence. It only matters if they mend their ways when they still have the power to be abusive, but decide against it. When someone's old and feeble, of knocking on death's door, any apologies they have amount to less than nothing. If your father was abusive when you were younger, and that really only stopped when you were big enough to fight back, and now that he's arthritic, his chumminess is even less convincing.

So, yeah, I'd advocate severing ties. The simple presence of more family is not in and of itself worth it if the family in question is so abusive, hostile, dishonest, manipulative, and unhealthy. That's my 2 cents, anyway.

[Pod]

8 hours ago, tonk said:

 They were not and are not very good people. i just worry about my children having no family at all. they dont even have aunts or uncles

IMO, having one good person in your life is infinity preferable to having a whole network of bad people or sub-par people. 

[wyattstorch]

To the question of letting your kids see your parents: "They were not and are not very good people. i just worry about my children having no family at all. they dont even have aunts or uncles."
 

From personal experience, every time someone in my family has acted on this premise, and allowed such visits, it's never worked out well, creating more trouble than that supposed downside of not having that family member present.

And if they are not, and were not, good people, why would you want to introduce them to your children? It's almost like saying "my children have little to eat, so I will give them some spoiled food..."

Your say it's because you worry about your children having no family at all. But is that really the case? They have you. They have their mother, your wife. They have each other. Start from there. "Quality, not quantity." "Selection; not accumulation."

 

[S1988]

You're also teaching your kids that it's okay to have hurtful people in their lives. I know that's not your intention, but it's the end result that matters in this situation, not the intent. Exposing them to your parents may have them end up in abusive relationships (romantic or platonic) in their adult lives. Or, it could drive them to estrange from you one day. 

 

 

[Jsbrads]

I don't see a benefit to introducing your children to badly behaving people.

I hope you and your wife have many nice adult friends and your children have many healthy peers.

Forget your blood relatives. You would be better off finding the genetic descendants to whatever Duke your ancestors served and indenturing yourself to them than connecting your children to your parents.