TELL ME ABOUT IT

Dear Carolyn: My oldest son has informed me he is finished with family gatherings “like a circus” and only wants to visit my husband and me in the future. The “circus” consists of his two brothers, their wives and one granddaughter.

I suspect the real reason for this is my granddaughter and now a coming baby. My oldest son’s wife learned she cannot have children after great medical trials, after which she was devastated.

Her acting out has been fine with me, but to cut my son off from his brothers and their children is too much. – At a Loss

It’s “too much,” meaning … what – you’re not going to stand for it?

This is obviously a painful and regrettable development in an already challenging family history. But one of the least productive ways to act on hard feelings is to make grand pronouncements that can’t reasonably be put to use.

You don’t like her. Maybe she has earned every fine grain of your loathing. But if your opinion of her works its way into every line here, how much of it do you think you’re keeping from her?

So, that’s where you get to work: Patch this up. Go back to all of the negative judgments you’ve made of your daughter-in-law where there was room for doubt, all of them, and think of ways to give her the benefit of that doubt now.

Then, adopt that new view. Be sympathetic. Again – maybe some of this sympathy won’t feel warranted.

But you’re not going to get your big happy circus back by demanding it.