I think my mother said it best in a recent visit. "Your niece doesn't listen to anyone anymore." What she meant was that my niece is getting to be the age where most people start to develop their own likes and beliefs and my mother can't control her like she did me. My niece is a great, bright child who does her homework and her chores with little or no complaining. She understands responsibility but is at the age where she sees that not everything a grownup says or does is right. Most of the adults around her just want to control her, not let her find out things for herself.
The teen complaining about being guilted into seeing grandma seems to have her own views about her own situation. Most people here are condeming her for having those views. We don't know her age or situation. Was she close to grandma to begin with? It's not a competion and the only one she has to really satisfy in the end is herself. I don't mean she needs to be selfish. She IS missing out and will only find that out in the end when she's older and has fewer memories of grandma. Some people need to figure these things out for themselves. Dad should ask her to go for HIM if not for grandma so the teen can see a different point of view and therefore start to realize what empathy truely means.
I spent my whole childhood and alot of my adulthood always doing what others wanted of me. If i didn't I was made to feel so guilty that would go ahead and do it anyway. My parents and grandparents never really encouraged me to do what i wanted, even if they said"do what you want". It has only been recently that I started finding out who I really am and what I want out of life.
I lived down the road from one set of grandparents so you may think I was very close to them. No. All my brother and I were to them were extra hands to do things around the house. I didn't mind helping sometimes because we spent alot of time there and ate meals and such but I found out very quickly that my grandma favored my cousin who lived in Florida MUCH more than either of us. This man was in and out of juvie and jail from about age 14 and is in federal prison now for almost killing a man. All my grandma ever said was "well, it wasn't Pauls fault, he didn't KNOW the car was stolen" or other such nonsense. I wasn't trying to "buy" her love by helping her but I always felt that if I didn't do things I was the "bad child".
My other grandma truely did not like children. She liked us much better when we grew up. I would spend a week every summer at their house. Mostly my grandma sat around and smoked and my grandpa spent the day at the coffee shop with his friends or running errands for grandma. I only had breakfast at the house and every other meal was at a resturant.
Mind you, I was never abused and we were not poor or anything like that. I'm not complaining, just showing where I'm coming from. I always just felt that most of them loved me bacuse they "had to" not because I brought them any joy just by being me. I lost both of my grandfathers within a few months of each other. They were both in the hospital at the time of their death and I did visit them. They were both very with it still and their illnesses just got them. Both of my grandmas were placed in homes after strokes and other illnesses. I have no guilt over not seeing them often. If my mother asked me to go with her, I did, but only because she asked for herself. My feelings for my grandmas never changed but I knew I did what I need for myself and that's really what matters. If I missed out on anything, it is my OWN fault and it it is my own memories that wouldn't be complete.
So I guess what I'm trying to say is that you can't control people and their feelings. You can show your kids and those around you a good path to take but you cannot force them to go down it. You don't HAVE to do things you don't want to do but YOU have to live with the results.
