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orphanofhypnos

Going no contact with parents when I have kids (their grandkids)?

Question

I grew up in a household of constant yelling and screaming. My parents fought loud enough to hear through walls, multiple times a week, for years and years. My sister and I would cower and walk on egg shells. There was never any emotional repair; just the fear of which parent's emotional disregulation would blow up this time, wondering if they would ever get divorced, and wondering if it was something we kids had done to cause todays blow up. Of course it wasn't. My parents were always the main characters. Their relationship drama was always the main character. My dad lied and cheated and emotionally neglected ever playing with us or mentoring us. My mom's mood changed like a wheel of fortune. It was abusive and damaging, but I didnt realize it until I was much much older...

When I moved a 1000 miles away at 30yo, it felt like I could finally breathe. I stopped reaching out to my parents and I didn't care to ever hear from them again. I felt better just pretending I didn't have parents at all.

Then my dad got a ski condo near me and started dangling time at it to lure me and my sister to spend time with him. At first, I went along with it (free skiing!), but over the years I've realized how fucked it is. He's married to one of the affair people and she goes skiing with us too. When my sister flew out from our hometown to ski with us, my dad decided he'd rather ski with his personal instructor on expert terrain than spend time with me and my sister. I'm also an expert skier but would never in a million years think of doing that instead of skiing with my sister who I hadn't seen in ages. If you can extrapolate this one example into many, you'll see that while the childhood abuse has stopped, there's little remorse, and these are still terrible people.

Well, I'm almost 40 now. I have two kids under 3. My parents are divorced and I'm fucking tired of the renewed contact between myself and my parents.

My dad tries to call and/or see me and my kids every few weeks and it's exhausting. For someone 70 years old, who doesnt have to work, he is the hardest person on the planet to coordinate. And then despite all of the phone tag coordination, he'll still show up to our house multiple hours late, right up against the kids' nap time. And then while he's here to see his grandkids, he'll barely show interest in them. Instead he'll start sharing anecdotes about his life, or his trips, or people he knows, like it's a fucking dinner party.

My mom isn't much better. She calls and cries about how bad she feels about not having met her granddaughter yet. She cries about how too busy she is and how too poor she is to fly out and see them. She has no job or other responsibilities and makes multiple six figures in alimony.

I'm just so fucking tired of pretending that we have a normal parent-child relationship. I haven't ever confronted them about everything because I know they'll deny it. I also don't feel like it's my responsibility to discipline them for being shit parents. So I just want them to fuck off.

Last week though, I had a last minute work emergency before my dad was going to visit. My wife then later told me that when it was just my son and my dad, they seemed to have a much more normal grandpa-grandkid interaction. So maybe my presence is the problem? Can I go no contact and still allow my kids to see them?

I really don't want to do anything like that though. Why should I have to leave my own house when they come over? Why should my kids grow up thinking I'm the one who has an issue that needs to be worked around. It's my parents (and likely their parents) that caused the issues.

My parents aren't even good grandparents. They've never changed a diaper. They make dinner-party-style statements like "we could help babysit sometime" but never ever show any initiative to actually do anything nurturing for the grandkids when they're actually in our house with the kids.

Anyways, does anyone have experience with the complication of wanting to be no contact while having kids/grandkids?

Posted Sep 5, 2026, 3:47 PM UTC

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