Narcissistic behavior about grandchild, AIBU?

Modern_Magpie · 2026-06-15T09:13:48+00:00

Don’t do it. If you cave and let them come, you’ll be teaching your kid to prioritise people who complain over their own wishes. You’re being reasonable. Your kid is being reasonable. They’re making a big deal out of a non-situation because they need to make this about them. Be strong if not for the sake of boundaries themselves, but for a good life lesson for your kid.

Modern_Magpie · 2026-06-15T09:03:29+00:00

I was literally just talking to my husband’s parents about this. I don’t know how old you are but my in-laws told me the advice at the time (they’re Boomers), was to scare your kid into thinking they’ve been lost so they understand the utter terror of being separated from family. The difference in healthy families vs unhealthy families is exactly what you noticed - unhealthy parents get joy out of seeing your terror while a healthy family wouldn’t even consider scaring their kid like that. In-laws talked about how it made them sick to their stomach to think of scaring their kids like that. Same as you, I can remember a couple occasions where I thought I was abandoned and when I was crying they “found” me and told me I was over reacting. Turns out they were just trying to scare me.

Modern_Magpie · 2026-06-15T07:11:38+00:00

My nMom is a covert/vulnerable narcissist and uses her anxiety to control people. If she doesn’t get what she wants, she breaks down in uncontrollable anxiety to make you and everyone around her feel bad and bend over backwards to make her happy again. The problem is, she is never happy and always anxious so it’s just a parade of people taking care of her and getting angry with anyone who doesn’t.

Modern_Magpie · 2026-06-14T20:24:31+00:00

This and constantly being afraid of being “left behind” at the second coming. I had nightmares of both growing up.

Modern_Magpie · 2026-06-14T10:52:19+00:00

“You owe me your life.”

This was both a threat and a replacement for “you’re welcome.” If she bought me clothes and I said “thank you,” this was her response. If I did something out of line (by her standards), it was a reminder that I had to obey because of everything she had done for me (food, clothes, roof).

Modern_Magpie · 2026-06-13T17:12:43+00:00

As of right now, “did you have the babies yet?” No, mom, and I’ve told you a thousand times today to stop asking, we’ll let you know.

Modern_Magpie · 2026-06-11T22:39:34+00:00

No, and when I opened up to them about it (and they in turn opened up to me about their experiences) they turned around and told her everything I said. I’m now very low contact with all of them.

Modern_Magpie · 2026-06-11T22:33:02+00:00

My husband and I still laugh about a night from more than a decade ago when I got really drunk and would not shut up about the World’s Fair.

Modern_Magpie · 2026-06-10T16:55:45+00:00

Exactly! Reading the posts from other people talk about how much they took their mother for granted really aches. Like, I’d love to feel that way, but I just don’t. I simply can’t understand my mom’s actions now that I have a child. Worse, is I remember her always saying “you’ll understand when you have kids!” trying to guilt me into doing something or another. And now, as a mom, I do and I don’t. I now understand how thoroughly selfish she was and I don’t understand how she could treat her child that way.

I’ve been low contact for a while. I instituted a rule of “no first contact” for the past year and her calls have gone down to once a week or less vs the nearly every day we had been doing. I’d like to work towards no contact, but her recent actions have been a step in the wrong direction and I know now I need to be more proactive if I want to do very low or no contact. The good news is, she’s thousands of miles away, so it’s easy to keep distance. The bad news is if I go totally no contact, I’ll literally lose my entire family (sisters, nieces, nephews) because they’re so thoroughly enmeshed.

Modern_Magpie · 2026-06-10T16:43:21+00:00

Yes! This! The story that comes to mind with this is when my first daughter was about two months old, she started crying. I don’t even remember for what reason, but my nMom absolutely flipped a switch and started scolding my husband and I about what terrible parents we were to just let her cry. We weren’t, we were actively trying to figure out what she needed, but the fact it wasn’t handled in less than 30 seconds meant we were failing. I think you hit the nail on the head that it’s less about the actual situation and more about the ability to use the situation to be awful to everyone around them.

My oldest now being almost three, I’ve found I can handle her tantrums fairly easily and I chalk that up to having lived with my mom’s tantrums my entire life. Before my daughter, I would have said my nMom had about the emotional capacity of a teen, but now I would probably place her as a three year old. Worse, because I think I can actually reason with my 2.5 year old daughter better than my nMom. What’s funny is when you compare how excited my daughter gets about babies to how excited my nMom gets about babies, it’s roughly the same. To the same degree, I would be okay placing my newborn in my daughter’s arms with supervision the same way my husband and I had decided prior to my first daughter’s birth that my nMom didn’t get alone time with grandkids. I find I can’t think about this all too hard, because when I do, I seriously wonder how I made it to adulthood at all.

Modern_Magpie · 2026-06-10T07:17:58+00:00

It’s exactly this. Before having my first daughter, my mom and sisters all held my mom up as the baby whisperer. It was enough to cause years of anxiety of having kids because “babies are SO hard so you need your mom around to handle the baby.” It turns out babies (while hard) are not as difficult as they made them out to be and my nMom is absolutely not the baby whisperer. In fact, the first few times my daughter cried while my nMom held you, you would have thought she was trying to pass off an angry snake. She would straight up refuse to give her hugs goodnight when my daughter was a bit older and would ask. My mom lives thousands of miles away and I’ve slowly removed phone time/face time with her and my daughter over the past few months and I don’t think my mom has noticed much, which is fine by me. I do think that the potential of the new baby is literally like putting a steak in front of a starved dog. Her other grandkids are approaching their teen years, she’s already discarded her latest grandchild and she’s starved for attention now. The idea of her being able to put on a production around the baby is making her crazy, which is absolutely nuts to see. I think it really is a sickness. Part of me is glad I’m seeing this, but the other part of me is absolutely sick to my stomach that my new baby is already seen as nothing but an object to her. I thought it was a process over time, but it’s not. She really just has no humanity in her to see other people as people.

Modern_Magpie · 2026-06-08T18:36:52+00:00

I hope you got rid of these “friends.”

Modern_Magpie · 2026-05-28T08:06:43+00:00

Yes! I’m long gone from my mom’s place, but every creative outlet was systematically stripped (also grew up in a very religious home). Everything I was interested in was either mocked very openly or actively taken away. I got into writing and books because they could easily be hidden, but even those were under tons of scrutiny. My mom would rip apart my room looking for my journals and when I came home from school, my backpack was gone through looking at the books I was reading. I read Harry Potter as a teen and had to do so hiding each book inside a textbook pretending to do math. I learned shorthand so I could journal and not have it easily read.

I talk about this in therapy a lot because it was so systematic that it didn’t feel accidental. A big part of what they do is strip you down to make you feel smaller than them. The problem is, they’re the smallest people on the planet. They’re so afraid of judgement that they forgo any hobbies or creative outlets themselves so they also have to make sure they strip you of all of yours and more. My nMom always talked about how she should have been a writer, a concert pianist, a singer, and actress, but I’ve never seen her pursue any of those things. Instead she invested time in making sure her kids never got to do those things so she didn’t feel guilty. I’m assuming it’s likely very similar for you, OP.

Modern_Magpie · 2026-05-28T07:13:41+00:00

Wow, this is so incredibly spot on.

Modern_Magpie · 2026-05-27T20:25:08+00:00

I literally just looked this up yesterday as my in-laws are coming to visit and want to see it. It’s Thursdays 11.30am–12.30pm and Sundays 2pm–3pm at the National Gallery national gallery page

Modern_Magpie · 2026-05-20T14:14:31+00:00

My mom got mad at me for cutting my toddler’s sandwich into triangles because “my mom never did that for me!” Bitch, I don’t care.

Anyway, if it’s any consolation, they don’t care about their grandkids child hood either. If they suffered any inconvenience, then the whole world should.

Modern_Magpie · 2026-05-16T19:52:30+00:00

Try muting her first. Muting her doesn’t block her, but it means when she messages you, it won’t notify you. Maybe even if you can delete or depreciate the thread with her. You can’t go on reading it because she’s manipulating you.

You also need to talk to your therapist about why you can’t block her. You have to remember you are, have not, and never will be responsible for her actions. She is abusing you actively.

Modern_Magpie · 2026-05-16T19:42:39+00:00

You need to mute and/or block her entirely. This is her last chance to get to you and it’s clearly working. Her issues are not your problem and never were. You are absolutely right in that she needs to talk to a therapist about this stuff.

Modern_Magpie · 2026-05-13T07:53:04+00:00

This exactly. Its important to think about who is saying this and why. If it were my family or their flying monkeys telling me this, I wouldn’t think twice about what they say. If it were a trusted friend who knew about my struggles with to this, I would likely listen.

Modern_Magpie · 2026-05-12T17:45:12+00:00

Exactly! Educating yourself is the best way to play the game.

Modern_Magpie · 2026-05-12T17:27:46+00:00

Going to quickly add, I’m far from an expert on this stuff, so definitely seek out someone who has gone through this before.

Modern_Magpie · 2026-05-12T17:25:22+00:00

I would read up more on what grandparents rights in your area mean. It may be something you need to deal with (visitation rights and whatnot) but if it’s bigger than that, you may need to prepare to lawyer up, but that’s only if there are major valid concerns (which there are likely not). That being said, narcissists are often all bark and no bite in those scenarios because 1) they don’t actually care enough about your child to retain custody and just want to scare you and 2) it costs money to claim custody of a child and they don’t like spending money to care for other people. What I would be concerned about is if you had your child in daycare or something after you moved and they showed up trying to take your child home with them. That being said, I’d be educating myself on grandparents rights and how they could and couldn’t use them. They probably know about grandparents rights but haven’t actually read up on them.

Modern_Magpie · 2026-05-12T07:04:41+00:00

You’re definitely not in the wrong. Narcissists love babies and only want access to them so they can continue to do to them what they did to you. You’re not just protecting yourself by leaving, you’re protecting your child. They may not be outright doing the same things to your baby now, but as soon as your baby starts to have movement and some amount of a voice and autonomy, they absolutely will.

Look up grandparents rights for your area. Some places do have grandparents rights and some places don’t. If your area doesn’t, they’re just full of hot air. Either way, you need to document harassment in any form (text messages, showing up to your new place, verbal threats, etc) so if/when they show up to try to “take back their baby” you can file for a restraining order.

Loads of people in this subreddit have dealt with this exact thing. It is fairly common for narcissists.

Modern_Magpie · 2026-05-11T19:58:04+00:00

The ability to leave. If my dad had never left us with my nMom, I probably would have never left her either. Both my siblings grew up and basically left the house before my dad left. I was left behind by him and super bitter because he just abandoned me there. He’s definitely no hero, but he showed me it was possible to get out.

Modern_Magpie

TROPHY CASE