digsite

With as much guilt as I’ve already been carrying around for not being the model mother, the last thing I needed today was to get a phone call from my grandmother and listen to her tell me that I abuse my older daughter.

This woman is fucking insane!!Where’d she get that notion, you ask? It doesn’t take much, but it all started two weeks when we were over at her house. My oldest was jumping on her bed and wouldn’t stop despite being told several times by both myself and my husband and her to stop. She was afraid she’d fall off. After about the 4th time we asked her to get down, we took her off the bed physically, stood her on the floor, and told her not to do it again. It looked like she got the message at first but 30 seconds later she was right back up there doing it again. We took her off the bed again and then sat her down on my aunt’s couch for a 3 minute time-out.

We always do a three minute time-out to discipline her. She doesn’t like it, that’s what matters. There was no yelling, just stern talking. There was no spanking or beating, just a sit down on the couch. There was no kicking and screaming, just a brief protest from her which soon turned into a slide game she likes to do on my aunt’s couch. If anything, I felt we were too lenient with her that day.

A while after that, when noone was around, my grandmother scolded me and told me not to ever do that again because it was “abuso infantil” (aka child abuse). HUH?! I didn’t say anything to her at the time. My mind was too far in a fog of disbelief to function properly. I couldn’t beleive that I had just heard those two words in the same sentence as my name. My grandmother just doesn’t cease to shock me. It was tough to keep my mouth shut but I did.

I let it go.

Now two weeks after that event she calls to see how we’re doing. Fine. But she didn’t just call for the usual how-are-the-girls banter. Just 2 minutes into our conversation she starts in on me uttering crazy talk like “yeah.. you had great fun making that baby. Now you have to be good to her and raise her right. and “… if you’re not going to take good care of her then give her to me.”

She went on to say that we beat her and are not affectionate and don’t show her any love and that we let her cry all day long.

By the end of the call I was so filled with anger I didn’t know what to do with myself. I had to called abusive parent #2 (my husband) to vent but he couldn’t talk long so I called father of abusive parent #1 (my father) and let him know what a crazy woman his mother has turned into. He gave me to usual “she’s old, don’t let it bother you” shpeel. It helped to talk to him and to my stepmother (..who, btw, said that my sil suffered the same fate during her week stay down here..)

I’m glad I’m not the only abusive parent in the family. You know us criminals don’t like to hog the spotlight.

I was on the verge of tears when I told my grandmother that she hasn’t had a single good thing to say to me since our oldest was born. Sure my daughter is cute and all but I can’t manage to do anything right for her. Let’s see.. to date I have starved her, made her into a sad child, let her cry so much once she couldn’t breath, styled her hair the wrong way, and now this. I told her she might as well call the police on me so she can get some sleep at night again..

Apparently thoughts of my defensless battered child keep her up at night.