'AITA for telling my Bipolar mother that she can't see her grandkids?' UPDATED
"AITA for telling my Bipolar mother that she can't see her grandkids?"
My mom (57) has bipolar. She has always been an incredibly anxious person but it has gotten so much worse these past few years.
I know that her mental health has been in decline. She is a chronic news watcher who proudly proclaims that she's "obsessed with CNN". She told me that she hasn't been able to sleep since the election even though she has increased her dose of sedatives to the most the doctor would let her.
We had plans for her to come up in January (6 weeks from now) for a visit, and yesterday she messaged me and said "the weather looks frightful, I will not be travelling and you shouldn't either"
So I pushed her on it and said that it's not reasonable to make travel decisions based on weather we don't know yet she said "thank you for understanding"
I asked when she would see the girls again if she doesn't want to travel if there's snow on the ground (it snows til like April here) and she just kept repeating "I will not be travelling in January" over and over. (This was all over text btw)
Then instead of telling me when she would be willing to travel she started saying she was "57 and too disabled to travel" citing a bad back, sore knee and diabetes (type 2) as the source of her disability. No one I know that knows her would ever consider her disabled. She has told me herself that she only walks with a cane to get priority seating on public transit.
Eventually I said that she is going to disappear from the girls lives if she can't make the effort to travel anymore and she said "We shall see each other throughout our lives. Each day takes us back to the time we see each other again"
I feel like an asshole telling her that she can't see the girls anymore, especially since it seems like she's in a mental health crisis, but it doesn't feel like she wants to make the effort to see them anymore.
I don't feel like it's fair for them to have a relationship with their grandma where they only see her for 2 hours at a mall every couple of months (this is how we got together a month ago and she just sat in the food court the whole time while we walked around) AITA here?
Let's see what readers thought:
foragun writes:
if I am understanding this correctly, i think YTA. i don't really understand the logic of "if she won't visit us on our terms, then I will refuse to let her see the grandchildren." it honestly seems punitive.
like....i feel like getting to see grandma for 2 hours at a mall every couple of months is better than no grandma at all. again, you don't HAVE to facilitate occasional mall visits, but if you've been willing to do them in the past, choosing not to do them anymore because she struggles to travel to you (whether you believe her complaints are valid or not), again, just seems punitive.
sgahup writes:
What you said seems more like a warning then a threat, so NTA. It doesn't seem like you are intentionally stopping her from seeing them, so if she doesn't go through the effort of seeing the grandkids, then that's not on you.
OP provides this update:
Just a little background to get ahead of the questions - We live far away and she doesn't have a car so travelling to see us usually means 2-3 hours on a train or bus (which we pay for) followed by a 90 minute car ride (we pick her up from and drive her back to the station)
Going to her isn't super convenient for us because she lives in an expensive city and between hotel, food, gas and finding a house sitter for our animals would cost well over $500 for one night (and the last time we did this she decided that the best way to spend our time together was walking around a grocery store)
We can't go to her place because it's just not safe for small children (she's not a tidy person) and she lives in a small, cluttered apartment.
She used to come up to see us once every 6-8 weeks or so, and would stay for 5-7 days at a time. Lately however, she's been cancelling trips and only staying for 2-3 days when she does come up, or suggesting that we meet at a mall at a city in between our homes.