Have you ever had a moment where someone told you exactly what you needed to hear right when you needed to hear it? Well, that’s basically what Maria, aka MomMom Maria does on TikTok. Maria posts about being a GenX grandma. Specifically, she focuses on the boundaries that exist and rules that have to be followed by grandparents if they expect to have a good relationship with their adult children and grandchildren. Honestly, even as someone who has a good relationship with her parents, I find this sentiment coming from a grandmother to be incredibly cathartic. Take a recent post where she called out “estranged grandparents.”
“If you are a grandparent and you choose not to see your grandchildren — I’m not talking about the ones that live really far away … but if you choose not to see your grandchildren more than a couple times a year, that’s on you. That is completely on you. I don’t even have anything to say to those grandparents,” she begins. Her real message is for the grandparents who do not have access to their grandkids.
“The grandparents who are kept away from their grandchildren from the parents of the child — like the ‘fired moms’ and the ‘estranged grandparents’. You know why,” she says simply. “Stop playing the victim. Stop acting like you have no idea [why], they’re just ‘so unreasonable’ and you have no idea why they would keep you from your grandchildren: you know why.”
Honestly, just play this on loop to soothe me to sleep every night.
“Whatever the reason is you already know it, and you didn’t care to fix the issue, you probably still don’t care to fix the issue,” she continues. “It’s way more important to be a victim in this, to the rest of the family and your friends and on Facebook, and I’m over it. I have gotten so many comments on my other grandparent videos from these grandparents that just act like they have no idea why they’re not able to be a part of their grandchildren’s lives. And you do know. You do.”
The message resonated in the comments section. Multiple commenters jokingly, ruefully, asked Maria to send this message to their parents. Many others shared their own stories of parents and in-laws who haven’t made a real effort to be involved in their grandchildren’s lives.
“My [mother-in-law] will cry to everyone she doesn’t get to see my kids. Yet she hasn’t invited us over or for holidays in years, doesn’t ask to come to our house or ask to see them in any way,” replied one.
“My mom moved three hours away from us ‘to be closer’ and gets mad because we (a family of five) don’t come see her often enough. She’s retired and literally has nothing but time but won’t come see us,” said another. “It’s been a year.”
The most replied to comment was one defending estranged grandparents from TikTok user @Suzy.Q.Gross.
“Maybe you need to know what the parents said to their parent,” the comment reads. “You shouldn’t judge some grandparents.”
Maria was having none of it. “My topic is the grandparents that won’t take accountability,” she replied. “Make your own TikTok if you think the focus should be somewhere else.” Others were quick to point out that while Suzy highlights that she was “always good to my grandchildren,” in a follow-up comment, one omission speaks volumes.
“How about your children or their spouses?” one commenter asks. “Were you as good to them? Did you respect their rules or did you decide that you would do what you wanted because you were the grandparent?”
And, ultimately, that’s what it comes down to: a grandparent/grandchild relationship first and foremost hinges on the relationship between parent and child (or in-law and child’s partner). MomMom is right to highlight (again and again) that everyone needs to start here before moving on to the next generation.
