Daughter won’t talk to me after row over kids
Dear Coleen
A COUPLE of years ago, my daughter, her husband and their two children moved in with my husband and me while their new house was being extended and renovated. I was happy to have them living with us and loved having my grandchildren staying with us.
However, they moved out and into their new home in November 2019 and I’ve barely exchanged a civil word with my daughter since. There was a lot of bad feeling when they left.
I had to have a gentle word with my daughter about keeping the place tidy and clean and not allowing my grandsons to run riot and she took great offence.
It was almost as if she’d regressed to being a child and expected me and her dad to run around after her and tidy up after them all.
We had a row and she accused me of never liking her husband and being too strict with her sons when they were just “being normal kids”.
I believe I was in the right and that she reacted in an unreasonable way – she’s always been hot-headed.
Since then, there hasn’t been much contact at all – not helped by lockdown – and I miss talking to my grandsons and I miss my daughter, too. I want to repair the relationship but every time I reach out she either sends back a snappy reply or I get no reply at all.
Can you help?
Coleen says
YOU’VE obviously made an effort to get in touch with your daughter but perhaps the problem is that neither of you has really acknowledged how the other feels and talked about it calmly.
So, I think in order to move on, you need a proper conversation and you have to be willing to listen to each other.
Perhaps one way forward would be to reach out to her husband – talk it over with him first and let your daughter know via him that you love her, you miss them all and you want to work things out.
It would be sad if you couldn’t find a way back from this – and over what? Because you were getting under each other’s feet and it blew up into a row where hurtful things were said.
It sounds like your daughter is sensitive around your attitude towards her husband, so perhaps ask yourself if she has a point. It’s worth thinking about. Sometimes things are said that are hard to forget but you can reach mutual ground if you both want to repair your relationship.
“There was bad feeling when they moved home