CALLING HOME with Whitney Goodman, LMFT - Q&A: My Estranged Parent Keeps Buying My Kids Gifts. What Do I Do?

Episode Date: December 12, 2024

In this conversation, Whitney Goodman speaks to two callers and answers their questions. Question 1 addresses the complexities of navigating difficult family relationships, sharing how we feel with our family, and accepting parents. Question 2 is about gifts from estranged grandparents and the nuances of handling gifts. Join The Family Cyclebreakers Club, here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When you're with Amex Platinum, you get access to exclusive dining experiences and an annual travel credit. So the best tapas in town might be in a new town altogether. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at Amex.ca. Hey, everyone, happy Thursday, and welcome back to the calling home podcast. This is our Q&A episode where I answer real caller questions and tell them what I think about the issue that they are having with their family. As a reminder, if you have any questions for me, you can

always leave me a voicemail at 866-225-466. All right, let's hear you. All right, let's hear from our first caller. Hey, Whitney. I just had a question for you. Something that has been on my mind that I kind of wanted some clarity on. Something that I struggle with as I have difficult relationships

with both my mom and my dad is the initial reaching out to share how you feel about something just feels so daunting. Like, you know, the relationship is not what you want. You know, it's been distant over many years. hasn't been reciprocal effort. A lot of hurtful behavior, but they may not be aware of it

or like I'm assuming that it's not intentional. It's just their own stuff that's going on and whatever right, which is the case for the most part. But regardless of that, it's part of me just feels like it's so exhausting. It's so, it's such a big step to just like send a message saying how I'm feeling and just like, you know, bring up everything from over the years that's been hurtful and no longer choosing to want to keep a relationship. And, yeah, because it seemed easier with my mom to do it and make her aware of the things that were going on. She acknowledged and apologized for those things.

But then unfortunately, old behaviors returned and she would go over boundaries and whatever. So it's an ongoing battle with my mom, but at least she's aware of these things. And I've also, like, limited contact with her. However, it's very, very difficult sometimes with one parent more than the end. other and relationships are complex, right? Like nothing is the same. So any tips or any helpful advice that you could give me in the situation to be able to just make that move and say how I feel or why people go back and forth in their head so much about it, that would be greatly appreciated. Thank you. Thanks for calling in with this question. I think a lot of people are in this position.

And so I want to make sure that if you're listening to this, you know who I'm speaking to with this question. So this sounds to me like a caller who has explained how she feels to her parents or to a parent in the past and that there was some apologies, some acceptance, some kind of reworking of behavior, but that it didn't really stick and that she feels like there's more that needs to be said and more that needs to be done. And I think that this is a really common pattern in any relationship where you tell someone how you feel about something and you give them an opportunity to fix it and to apologize and to acknowledge it. And sometimes they fall back and they mess up. And this isn't always manipulative or ill intention. Sometimes it's just that these are

bad, like badly entrenched patterns that are hard to break. And so for some of you, I think a certain level of understanding is necessary and being able to say like, you know what, I've only explained this to this person like one time. And I feel like I want to explain it to them again. I feel like they're approaching this in good faith and that they have some level of understanding, but maybe I need to remind them of my boundaries. And I think this is a reality about being in relationships with people is that you're going to have to remind them occasionally about certain things that are upsetting to you or difficult to you. And it doesn't always mean that they're trying to hurt you. When it becomes a pattern, when it seems like all you're

getting our apologies and not changed behavior. That's another red flag, but I'm not going to focus too much on those more intense situations in this caller's Q&A. I want to talk more about the situation that it seems like she's in, where there might just need to be a reminder or restating of boundaries and why some people slip into those patterns. So here are some things that I would recommend that you do if you're in this situation. The first thing you want to do is reflect on how many times have I brought this up? And what did I do to explain myself? Was it clear? Do I feel like it made sense? Was the boundary strong enough? Was the boundary able to be understood and respected? And am I doing what I need to do to uphold the boundary on my end? Sometimes when we see

people slipping when we see someone not really upholding their end of the agreement, it could also be because we are not doing it on our end. We're expecting them to just follow this boundary and not talk about this thing around us or not do this thing around us because we've said it. But are we doing what we need to do to keep ourselves safe? So an example that I'll give is that, you know, let's say you're an adult who has a dad who is always talking about your mom to you and speaking about her negatively involving you in their fights, involving you in their business, and you say to him, hey, dad, I really don't want to be involved in your marriage with mom. I really don't feel like I can be like a good, objective person for you to vet to.

Can we please stop talking about this? And your dad agrees, but after a couple of months, he starts to kind of slip, and he starts talking about this stuff around you, and you don't say anything. You engage in the conversation. You try to support him. You're there for him. You answer whenever he's calling and you continue these conversations. This would be a perfect example where, like, you're not upholding your end of the boundary,

and you're letting that boundary slip on your end, too. And you're not saying, hey, dad, remember, we're not going to talk about this and changing the subject. you're saying, I've got to go. I can't talk about this with you. So there are situations where the boundary slips because both people kind of slip back in to these old patterns and these old ways of being, not because they're being mean or malicious or anything like that, but just because it's easy to fall back into those patterns. So if that's something that's happening, I would want you to sit back and say, okay, what am I doing that is causing this boundary to not be effective or causing this issue to come up again. And maybe you'll find some things and maybe you

won't. Some of you will say, no, I am totally enforcing the boundary. I'm upholding it. Great. So once you've looked at that, then I would go into, okay, do I think that I could give this person a reminder of what I said? Has it been a couple of weeks or months? Did they seem to have no problem doing it up into a certain point. And now it feels like we're going back to the old way of doing things is a reminder, something I want to give them. And it might not have to be that intense. It could just be like the example I just gave them just very quickly when something happened saying like, hey, I know we've kind of fallen back into this pattern, but I want to remind you that I don't really want to talk about these things. And so the next time you bring it up,

I'm probably going to change the subject or say I have to go or talk about something else because this is not something that I can handle. And in that moment, when you give the reminder, you'll get a lot of feedback and data from the other person. And the other person might react really negatively to you. They might become critical or argumentative or say, oh, come on and try to push past your boundary. And that's when you're going to get some good feedback about, like, is this person really trying to respect and abide by my boundary? Do I feel like they can? Are they just, were they just trying to maybe like appease me for a little bit and now they're falling back into it?

You'll be able to get some of that information and kind of assess what's going on here. You also might have a situation where the other person is like, oh my gosh, you're right. We started doing that thing again, that we said we weren't going to do or that I said I wasn't going to do it. Okay, I'm going to try to be better about it. Can you please remind me? And you'd be surprised, like how some people might really say, okay, I, I want to fix this. I want to do something about it. And then there's others of you listening to

this shaking your head being like, my family owner would never do that. They would never be like, oh, you're right. I messed up. They would just bulldoze past me. So that's when we would get to the next option, which is when I would say, maybe this boundary is not the right boundary. Maybe it's too weak or porous. Maybe it's not enforceable. And can you go back to what that limit was and who is responsible for enforcing it? And is it putting too much on the other person to uphold and not enough on you, on you being the one to uphold the boundary and the one to kind of keep it in place and it being something that you are going to do when this thing happens, not something you're trying to change about the other person? And some of you might need to change the boundary

and make it a little bit more intense, right? Or something that is more easily enforceable on the other side. And so that's something to think about. Then the next step would be if you've kind of gone through all of these things and said, you know what, I'm upholding the boundary. It's a boundary that only requires me to do something. And I have reminded them multiple times and they keep going past it, then okay, this might be one of those people in my life that cannot abide by boundaries. Maybe they see boundaries as a challenge. They do not want anything to change, whatever it is. If that's the case, then I gave this example in a video that I recorded for social media recently that this person might then need to be moved back in one of your

circles. And so I will reiterate that example. I want you to imagine that your life, your relationships exist kind of within these circles that all fit inside of one another, kind of like those Russian dolls that you open up and there's another one inside. And you have your closest circle that is maybe you and your partner, you and your children, whoever is in your closest circle. When you set boundaries with some people and you move them out a little bit into the next rung of that circle, some of them say, uh-uh, I'm coming back into the middle. And so then you say, okay, I'm going to move you out a little bit further because you keep jumping back into that middle circle and you move them out another rung and they do it again. You move them out

another one and they do it again. And some people, it's not until they get to that fourth or fifth circle that they realize, whoa, I'm getting a lot of limits here. I'm not being allowed to do what I want to do. There's a lot of distance between me and this person. This doesn't feel good. So I'm going to make sure that I get to stay in that circle. And then there are people who, no matter how far you move them out, they do not respect what you're doing. They don't see it. They see it as a challenge. It doesn't matter what every rung of the circle has looked like for them and the things that they've experienced there. They are going to jump back into that circle, right? Into the center. And for those people, sometimes you have to say this relationship is no longer

sustainable for me. I cannot have you in any of my circles because every time I try to put you there, you violate the boundary, you do something that you're not supposed to do, you hurt me, you harm me, et cetera, and that's not working for me. And there are a lot of stages to getting to that point. But I think that if you feel like this, like I want to share how I feel, I want to tell my parent that what I shared last time isn't really being followed. and I'm still feeling like there's this tension or there's issues happening in the relationship, then you can walk through some of those steps that I just gave you. And some of you might end up at that last step.

And some of you might say, no, I've got some points along the way that I can work through here before I would even get close to making that type of decision. But the other thing I want to talk about here on less of like a logistical note and more of like an emotional note is that this caller brought up a really good point about how vulnerable and emotional it is to share with people that you love, particularly your parents, how you feel about something when you have been hurt by them in the past. And this is where I think there has to be so much nuance and I will never be able to say, like, you should bring this up with your parents or you shouldn't because all of you have

such unique situations. And if you go to the Calling Home website under the content page, we have. have two different modules that I think are great for helping you with this. We have the accepting your parents one and parents who won't apologize. And we also have our adult children, emotionally immature parents groups that I think are very helpful for anyone that can relate to this caller. But in those two content blocks that I just discussed, we talk about how for some people telling their parents one more time in a different way and explaining why they want an apology or why they feel the way they feel is the best thing that they could do. And it opens up the

relationship and it helps them and they move forward and they're able to grow. And I have seen this happen with countless clients and group members at calling home both parents and children and siblings alike. And there are some of you that know how your parent responds whenever you bring up anything emotional, triggering, shaming, guilt-inducing. And they have repeated And I'm talking, you know, anytime you've done this, shut you down, shamed you, told you to get over. It said it's not a big deal. Maybe apologized and started doing it again the next day. And so you have this inkling that like, gosh, if I do this again, I'm just going to be giving them more ammo to

hurt me with. I'm just going to be giving them like more information and more triggers and like, do I really want to do that? And so you have to use your discretion and your gut. to listen to the things that I say and say, how does this apply to my situation? Because there is no way for me to ever make the recommendation on this show or in our groups at Calling Home that you should cut off your parents and you should tell them again how you feel. Because there are so many shades of gray in between those two decisions. And I think that you all have

to think about like where do I lie on that spectrum and what might be the most helpful for me. And the last thing I'll say about this is that when you bring this stuff up, I want you to make sure that you're doing it for you. And what I mean by that is that you're doing it because you want to, not to necessarily get a certain outcome or results, but because you know that it would feel most authentic and genuine and correct for you to share how you feel this maybe one more, two more times and to try to put in that effort. Because if and when you decide to walk away, you want to know that you tried all these other things and you're thinking like maybe this is still a little bit me, maybe they just don't understand, maybe we're just starting this

journey. And my parents seem to really want to try to get it. Like you might feel like that's still in the cards for you. There are others of you that have possibly been abused by your parents and victimized by them or by a family member that we're talking about here over the last decades. And you're saying, you know what, I'm done. And for me to do this would only be a disservice to me. And so I think just going back to making sure that like I know that if I say this and if I get any response from them, from good all the way to the worst response I could get, I will feel glad that I did this for me, and I feel like I have the coping skills and the support to manage myself no matter what response I get back from them.

Thank you so much for calling in. Let's go ahead and get to the next caller. Hi, Whitney. I have a question regarding family estrangement and the holidays, and not just the Christmas holidays, but pretty much every holiday, every birthday. It's a part of estrangement I didn't really think about. and that is that I have been estranged from my mother and from every member of my family, my immediate family, it's a really large family, for about a year and a half now.

And this came after years and years and years of emotional abuse at the hands of a narcissist, but also a physical abuse incident that my children witnessed that was like the final straw. And I have never thought about engaging with any of them since then. And on every single birthday, I have three small children, on every single one of their birthdays, on every single holiday, the day goes by and we don't hear a word from my family. Not a single member of my family acknowledges the birthdays, nothing. However, days before the holiday or for the birthday, they will drop off, like, enormous gifts for my children. And there was one incident since this has happened where my family has approached my children knowing that I was not there.

So there was a babysitter. And the first thing that came out of their mouths were, I want to make sure that that gift that you got for Christmas, your parents told you that was actually from grandma and grandpa. So it's definitely a thing. And my children, I want to protect my children and protect their relationship if they ever one day want a relationship with their grandparents. like ideally restoration and reconciliation could happen. Obviously, I don't see my family being on that side really interested in that currently,

but I want to protect my children in case that were to happen one day. And so I don't talk. My kids are aware of the incident. They've been in therapy. They are aware that there's estrangement, but I don't talk poorly about my family members to them. And so what do I do? What do I do about the gifts?

Do I give the kids the gifts as is? Do I open the gifts to make sure that they're appropriate and not a manipulation tactic? Do I tell them that they're from me? Do I tell them they're from their grandparents? It does feel manipulative. It's really hard for me knowing the history of my family to see that there could be reconciliation one day. But I also don't want to completely cut that out. And so is this a manipulation tactic to try and convince the children that they're the good ones and we're the bad ones?

Because these gifts are like over the top. There's a financial difference in what they can give versus what we can give. I don't know what to do. What's the right thing to do? Do I return the gifts? I don't know. Whitney, please help me. I'm so glad you called in with this question. I talked a ton about gifts on the episode that came out on Tuesday. And so I'm going to answer this question specifically here talking about grandparents and gifts. But if you want to know more about my thoughts on gift giving, estrangement, et cetera, hear more suggestions. Definitely go back and listen to Tuesdays. episode. I think it's called like no thanks, Santa, gifts, and boundary setting. Okay. The first thing I want to say is this type of behavior from grandparents really, really, it really gets under my skin. I think because I am a parent of young children, I have some, I have some like personal feelings about this that it bothers me. And so I want to like

throw that out there that I do feel very like personally irritated by these types of stories. And I feel defensive of the parents of these young children and of what the kids are going through with this because I don't think it's right. And I think it is manipulative. If you've had to set boundaries with a family member because there have been physical abuse incidents in front of children, there is a very clear line that has been crossed here. And there's a very clear reason. And I would bet that in most families, there's never just one incident like this. This is just kind of like the straw that broke the camel's back, that you had to set this boundary for a reason. And kids should not be exposed to this type of violence, these types of interactions. There is no

upside. And so when you tell me that we've got some grandparents who know that this happened, there's estrangement, they're not doing anything to repair, take accountability, and make things better for the family, I do not believe that people who are being physically abusive or having physical altercations in front of children have their best interest in mind. I think that they can probably love those kids, say they love them, say they want the best for them. but there is no upside, no benefit, no plus of having your children around people who do things like that, whether that is their parent, their grandparent, their sibling, a friend, there's no data that that would ever be helpful, right? So when we know, I don't want to expose my kids

to physical violence, to abuse, to verbal violence, to verbal attacks, any of this because I know that it's bad for them. And then that person tries to step in and send presence, that doesn't feel good. And I understand why that would feel manipulative because it is. And so I think that anybody who's in this situation, you're justified in feeling that way. It makes sense why you feel that way. And it's actually a sign, I think, that you are a attuned, good parent who has your children's best interest at heart. I can also hear in this question, I think, I'm making the assumption that I can hear, that you are trying very hard to allow your children to make their own decisions and have their own perspective about their grandparents outside of what you feel. And I don't

know the ages of the children here. So I'm just going to speak to this generally. But I think that that's something that is difficult. When your kids are really little, it's easy to say, I am just going to protect you from this person. You're not going to be around them. And then there comes an age, and a lot of our members in our groups at Calling Home have brought this up that, like, my kids are teenagers now. And they want to interact with their grandparents and they want to know what they're like. And you're kind of walking this fine line of like, how can I let my child explore this and make decisions on their own while also being protective of them and making sure that they're not in a bad situation. I think that that's so nuanced depending on what's going on with these people

and what the real threat is and also the type of child you have in their developmental age and what they can understand, you know? So what do you do about the gifts? Let's talk about this logistically. The gifts arrive at your house. You as a parent, whether you're estranged or not, have a right to filter the gifts that come into your house from outside people. So just because someone gave your child a gift doesn't mean that they get to have it. So, like, for example, I don't like my child to play with, like, toys that are like guns. It's just not something I think he needs at his age. I don't think it's appropriate.

So if someone were to buy my kid like a fake gun, I would be like, no, you're not going to play with that and I would get rid of it. even if that was a gift from someone that I loved and I liked. It just wouldn't be a gift that they would have. So give yourself permission to be the filter of what your child gets to have. I think that that feels harder because it's loaded here and it feels like, oh, I'm not letting them have a relationship with this person and I'm not letting them have this gift. And so it feels like you're doing a lot, but you're allowed to do that. And I do that as a parent.

you know, if there was something I didn't want my child to have, they're not, they can't have it, you know, at this age. When they get a little bit older, you know, maybe things can be more of a conversation, but when they're young, certainly you have that authority and you should have that authority. Because you don't know this person and they don't really know your children and they might not know your preferences and your boundaries and your limits, I think it's totally appropriate and within the realm of like good parenting to open these gifts and see what they are before your children open them. Because then you don't want to get into a battle with your kids about like, oh my gosh, I didn't know what was in there. And let's say you don't want your kid to

have an iPhone and your parent gets them an iPhone and they open it. And now you're sitting there having to take the iPhone away from your child. You know, that would be a problem. So definitely can open them in advance. You can decide if you even want your child to have them. Your kid doesn't have to know that these gifts came, right? You can donate them. You can put them away until a later date. If you still need time to think about it, you can put them away. If there are certain things in there that you think would be great for your child to have, you can decide on whether you want to tell them who they are from or not. I think this depends. ends on the age of the child again because you said your kids are aware. They know about the

estrangement. So that also kind of complicates this. I always go back to like, what is the message that I want to send my children with this? And if I am estranged from a person and I believe that they are not a good influence on my child at this stage in their life, what message am I giving them when I say, this person bought you a gift and we should say thank you. And I'm kind of always looking at the bigger picture here about, like, if I have a daughter who gets a gift from someone who has been dangerous around her, who does not take accountability, who does not change their behavior, and I start with this messaging of like, when you receive something from someone, you should still be grateful and you should still say thank you and you should be joyful for the gift and get to play with it. And what does that say maybe about her having future partners? And this goes for a son as well or any child. Like, do I want to make this a lesson in my family that we kind of like let people brush

things under the rug in this way? Do I want to have a conversation with them about this? Do I feel like my child's at an age where I can explain this to them and I can talk about it? You also don't have to make all the decisions right now. So if you have a five-year-old or a four-year-olds and you don't give them the gifts at this juncture because you don't think it's a good idea and you don't think they can handle it, you can have a conversation with your child when they're 13 or 14 about their grandparents.

You can answer questions for them. You can tell them. You know, your grandparents did send you gifts and I felt like it wasn't the right time to give them to you. And I understand if you feel upset about that and if you want to talk about it. it, I'm happy to answer any questions and explain to you what I was thinking. You can have this open and honest dialogue with your teens and preteens and adult children and let them be honest about their feelings of like, you know, it was hard not having grandparents. And I didn't

understand why you didn't let them come around. And the one thing I know about kids that I think parents are always really afraid of, like, oh, they're going to be mad at me because I didn't let them spend time with this person. And I think when the person really is very emotionally immature or abusive or destructive to your family, kids come around to that and they realize it and they will see who these people are and they will understand it. It's very easy to like buy off a three-year-old with a gift that doesn't know what's going on. It's much harder to do that as kids get older and they see what a person is like and they have more of an understanding of what's going on. So, you know, I think give yourself the permission to make decisions as things

progress in your family and to also make different decisions for different children, depending on their age and their developmental status and what they can handle and what kind of messages you're trying to teach them at this point in their life. and also embody your authority as the parent, you are the gateway between the outside world and your children. And the people on the other side of that gate are also your family. And you get to decide what type of influence they have on your child and you get to mitigate some of that influence.

And I think you're already doing that, you know, as a parent, if I'm talking specifically to this caller and you're doing what you need to do and trust some of that in yourself too, that like I know what's right for my kids. I know how to keep them safe. And I'm breaking generational patterns in my family. And I'm making sure that my kids don't witness the same things that I do. And, you know, sometimes that means they might miss out on some presents. And that's okay. You know, presents are not worth it sometimes. Thank you for this call. And I would definitely if you want more information on gifts and all of this, go back and listen to my episode from Tuesday. Just a reminder, this is going to be the last episode of the podcast before

January. I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season. If you are needing more support at the end of the year, we are still meeting for our groups inside the Family Cycle Breakers Club at Calling Home. We still have our holiday focus groups every Wednesday this month. We still have our adult children, emotionally immature parents' groups. So if you need more support and the podcast isn't here to help you, you can go back and listen to previous episodes. The Thanksgiving episode, I think, is super helpful for any holiday. Just kind of sub in the other word for Thanksgiving.

If you want to listen to that on the way to any holiday gatherings, I'll also be putting up a lot of posts on social media about the holidays through the end of the year. And then I just wanted to let you know that in January, our first topic of the new year is going to be emotional immaturity and emotional maturity. So I'm going to be talking about how to be more emotionally mature and also how to deal with emotionally immature people in your family. I think this is going to be a really great topic. Please go to our website, Callinghome.com, and join the Family Cycle Breakers Club to get access to that content when it drops in January. And I will be back the first week of January with a new episode.

happy holidays, happy new year. I hope you all have a wonderful year. And thank you so much for supporting this podcast this year. Thank you so much to everyone that called in this week and asked questions. I love being able to help you with these family situations and hopefully help you find a way to better navigate them with your adult family relationships. You can always call. You can always call. and leave me a voicemail, and I may pick your question for an upcoming Thursday episode of the Calling Home podcast. Just call 866-2-25-5-4-66 and leave me a voicemail. I do these episodes every Thursday, and I love being able to get to help each and every one of you with your family

relationships. If you're ready to work on your adult family relationships outside of this podcast and take what you've learned to the next level, we do have the calling home community. You can join us for weekly groups and watch videos, take courses, get access to worksheets and more. And those groups are run by me so we can actually meet. And you just need to go to www.callinghome.com and join the Family Cycle Breakers Club. Thanks, and I will see you all on Tuesday for another episode. The Calling Home podcast is not engaged in providing therapy services, mental health advice, or other medical advice, or services. It is not a substitute for advice from a qualified health care provider and does not create

any therapist, patient, or other treatment relationship between you and Calling Home or Whitney Goodman. For more information on this, please see Calling Home's terms of service linked in the show notes below.