The Toll of the Grandparent's Rights Suit on a Parent.

 So, we talk a lot about how people who aren’t your kids’ parents trying to take a parenting roll takes tolls on your family. We talk about the stresses that come with a GPR suit or even the threat of one: the financial burdens, the worries of your children’s well being, the strain on your marriage, your relationships, and even your own ability to parent your children.  

 

But we haven’t talked about the toll it takes on US. The parents. The moms, the dads, the ones who are on the front line, who have to be “on” 24/7, who suddenly have their parenting and parenting decisions, their cleanliness, their homes, even down to their social interactions and the way they present themselves in the grocery store, on display for certain scrutiny.  

 

You have people who will tell you “you have nothing to prove”, but in the back of your head you know that’s not true. You do have to prove that the crazy is incorrect, or people will always wonder which side is truthful.  You go from being at peace with what your life is, to second guessing EVERYTHING about what you do.  

 

From what you feed your kids, to the schools you choose, to the clothes you buy both for yourself and your kids, to what you post online... Everything is up for scrutiny. You might think you live in the land of the free, but that goes out the window when it comes to family court. There, you’re guilty until proven innocent, and nobody ever blinks an eye on why you’re having to prove yourself innocent to someone who isn’t even your kid’s parent.  

 

If you wander in for a moment to a grandparent’s rights group, you will see call after call for a grandparent who simply doesn’t agree with the way you decide to parent, to call CPS. Call a lawyer. Try and get visitation. Try and get custody. Eventually, after enough time in the toxic cycles, you get so used to the instinctive brace to anticipate the inevitable knock on the door for the never-ending parade of welfare checks, CPS social workers, and even a well-meaning religious leader or so, that you don’t realize you never stop bracing. You just become used to being flung into the public eye so often, you prepare yourself for the fall. Even if the fall out you’re waiting for never comes, bracing tires you. It wears you down. Preparing for a storm is tiring, especially if that storm moves as a boomerang and you never know when it’ll be back to peg you again.  

 

My own parent is my worst enemy. That parent is the same who has tried to sue for rights to my kids, who has called CPS and accused us of neglecting and abusing our kids, who has reported me missing, who has called numerous welfare checks by law enforcement.  

 

So, I set out to prove her (and her cronies) wrong. I became a one-woman machine. I started cleaning religiously.  I meal planned. I worked out snacks and snack schedules. I put together a perfectly calculated kids’ playground and playroom. I decided to home school and cultivated the perfect home school classroom for three small but eager children. Remembering that person’s claims of neglected kids with dirty faces, bruises, and dripping noses, I’d make sure my children were clean and neat before I took any picture of them. I’d panic if they fell down and got a bruise. Somewhere in the midst of making my life into the picture-perfect glimpse to an outsider, I was diagnosed with a pituitary gland tumor and some optic nerve issues, and began having debilitating migraines.  

 

Yet... No matter how people tell me that the APPEARANCES don’t matter, you can’t convince me they don’t. When you have a complex from a knock on your door and a CPS worker making cracks about your finances and having money to “pay someone to clean, or so she heard,” you know that you better stay on top of every choir possible and be prepared at any moment for an inspection.  

 

 

Does being estranged from a parent or in-law take a toll on you? Or just the kids involved? Personally, with all of the above being said, I’m going to say it reaps havoc on your mental health, as well as your basic survival instincts. It should NOT be basic survival instincts to create a 3-course meal daily and feel panicked if there’s a train toy laying on the area rug. But to a parent who’s involved in a GPR suit, it’s absolutely second nature.  

 

So, for all of those who don’t know much about GPR or GPV, and are immediately ready to jump to the defense of the sweet little grannies, maybe it’s time to consider what these grannies are putting not only the CHILDREN in the situation through to get their way, but the parents of those children. All in the name of “I think I have rights to someone else’s child.”  

 

How has the threat (or action) of GPR suits affected you?