need advice with son and husband.

iVillage Member
Registered: 11-17-2007
need advice with son and husband.
29
Fri, 03-20-2009 - 8:42am

Most of you guys on the board are a lot younger then I am. So I have a question for all of you all.


If you were the only child and you had a parent that could not handle their money in the correct fashine. How would you go about helping them to

Pages

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-04-2007
Fri, 03-20-2009 - 9:00pm

The way I see it is, my parents sacrificed things for me growing up, did whatever they could to help me get ahead, the least I can do was help them out.


My dad was laid off for a time, and I moved back home with them and contributed to half the mortgage and bills til they got back onto their feet, and once he was back to work and settled I moved out again.

Avatar for sohappilyme
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Fri, 03-20-2009 - 9:38pm

I pay all of my mom's bills for her. She gives me her paycheck (keeping a bit for herself, but it's really not much at all and barely covers gas money) and I handle the finances. She does not live with us, but when we build our house we're putting a small guest home on the property for her and selling her house.

I've been taking care of her bills since I was about 20, but mainly b/c I love doing it and she gets really stressed over it and ends up in a horrible mood. So I'm happy to pay them and she's happy to hand it all over, and it works out great.

Photobucket


Photobucket Photobucket Photobucket



Goal #1 $UCCE$$!

Sarah
iVillage Member
Registered: 09-22-1999
Fri, 03-20-2009 - 10:44pm

Here's my opnion...I see a similar situation coming down the road for me at some point, so I have been thinking about it.

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-09-2008
Sat, 03-21-2009 - 9:03am

Well, I'm currently debating and struggling with this topic. My mom broke her hip last summer. I visited her for 1 week and ended up staying with her for 5 weeks to change her diapers, lift her off the floor and get her to bed. I didn't bargain for that. I swore for years that I would never be there for her in her old age. I can't get past the fact that my heart still tugs for her.

When I was 11 and she had left my dad and met a new man. The Miracle Man. She told me that she had given us her young years and that her future lay with this new man and she would give him her future years. He was a wealthy man and showered us with money. I begged her not to let him sleep in her bed. She did. I begged her not to let him come in 'daddy's' house, she did. I begged her to let just me and her live together after her divorce from my dad. But she ran off with this man and took me with her.

We moved in with him and he started to show his true colors. He beat her and drank tons of liquor. He would walk around the house stark naked when he knew I was in the house. I ran into him a few nights at 1 a.m. or so. He made me feel dirty and disgusting. He hit her and they both drank liquor ridiculously. I finally realized after a summer living there, at 11 years old, I couldn't stay in that situation. I left and ran to the pay phone, called my dad collect and cried to my brother (my dad was at work) and begged him to come and get me. He sent my aunt. I moved in with my dad that weekend.

My dad and step mom raised me. But I spent weekends visiting mom. Holding her while she sobbed about how awful a person she was and how she must deserve all the beatings he doled out to her. He use to tell her how a slut she was and how many boyfriends she had once had meant she was a whore.

I had to always reassure her that she was not a bad person. I would hold her while she cried. It began when I was 11 and ended when I refused to visit her house ever again when I was 18. My step dad would put his hands on me in ways that wasn't fatherly. Kiss me with a slip of the tongue.

I begged my mother to leave him and let's move into an apt together and just be the two of us. She was a gifted computer and technical person managing a technical sales company. She could have done this. But he beat the confidence out of her.

I learned at an early age TWO IMPORTANT THINGS

1 ) If I ever was brave enough to have my own children they would be the center of my world and I would never forsake them for ANYONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2) I would watch out for myself and protect myself because I knew no one else would.

We sort of resolved our issues later in life and we rekindled a sort of mother/daughter relationship. Though I never had a place for her husband. He was always a non-person for me.

So after my mom broke her hip I did help her last summer. But on top of this she is a drunk. She has smoked herself into many health complications. She is a selfish woman, she has always been selfish.

I left her after she got on her own to feet for me to return to my husband and children after 5 weeks last summer. But now she is in the hospital again with a fractured pelvis. She needs someone to care for her.

I'm leaving her to my aunts to figure that out. I'll help them decide where to put her. I'll pay bills as they need to be paid over the phone.

But she taught me (through her own selfishness) early on to look out for myself and, by her lack of teaching, to give my children their motherly love that I never did receive.

I have struggled the last few days to make this decision. But my husband works his but off to provide for me and my children and we live 3000 miles from my mom, in another country. I can't give up the life my devoted husband has made for me and my kids. I can not ask him to change his very rewarding career for me to make sacrifices for my mother. I can not give up my future for her.

Our decisions have repercussions for years to come. She should have realized that when she chose to run off with her miracle man. He was going to liberate her from her own boring life in the rural country of SC.

By devoting my life to my children, hopefully they will see my devotion to them when I'm old and frail and need their help. Rather than seeing the fact that I didn't help my own mother. I will explain it to them later. But at the present moment I am allowing them to love their grandparents for who they think they are rather than informing them who they were or really are.

I am plagued by these decisions. But in this economy and this financial turmoil. I can't imagine asking my husband to give up his VERY LUCRATIVE job he's built over the last 12 years with a seemingly perfectly stable company.

I can however fork over a few hundred dollars each month to help pay for my mom's care. And someone else to administer it.

My father and step mom however, will be another issue. When that time comes. I'll move them in with me I guess. Where my mom failed, my dad and his girl friend were saddened and shocked. If it hadn't been for them (although they were young and crazy with parties and friends drinking and passing out in my house when I was a teenager) I would never have known any real responsibility.

They were my rock and my quiet respite in the storm that was my teen years. Even though they were selfish (not wanting a child to hinder their social life) too, they ultimately were the best parents I could have hoped for at that time.

What is very important I know is that every decision we make..... to skip the brownie, to skip the fat ladened ice cream, to be thriftier and more honest and responsible people..... is to be the better parent for my children.

May my fate (karma, god, etc....) forgive me for my decisions in the end. Or maybe they are right decisions. I don't know. But I do know my children love me and I love them. That's more than I knew when I was 11.

momto3webbkids

iVillage Member
Registered: 11-17-2007
Sat, 03-21-2009 - 11:32am

I feel for you and this old hurt you carry around with you.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-17-2003
Sat, 03-21-2009 - 12:16pm

"We all come

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-04-2008
Mon, 03-23-2009 - 11:56am

I put this on the board just to see how young women feel about things and I have been surprised to say the least on the postings I have gotten. I thought it would be total different.


In what way did you think it would be different?


I asked myself what I would want, if it were me with my ONLY child, my daughter.




iVillage Member
Registered: 11-17-2007
Mon, 03-23-2009 - 1:55pm

I talked to Michael Saturday on the phone. As soon as he can depending on what happens with his job in October He is coming home with his girlfriend.. He agrees he needs to be closer for his Dad. So It is all settled in our family.


Sorry you feel the way you do about your mom. And your Grandmother. I am glad Michael never felt that way about his grandmother. They were very close.


And I miss my mom all the time.

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-04-2008
Mon, 03-23-2009 - 2:58pm

I used to talk to my mom daily, but anymore it is about once a week.




Pages