Dr. Lindsay Gibson

that you can see the damage.

And that's a very painful thing to really admit to yourself and work on in therapy, which it sounds like this person is doing.

The problem with emotional immaturity, and let's be honest, the problem with being human is that we are so impatient

with the growth and recovery process.

That's good because we wanna be motivated, we wanna be forward moving, we want people to keep trying.

But really, when it's psychological and relational rebuilding, that takes a long time.

And it's not enough for you to have the awareness of what you did and the intent to make it better and to make yourself more mature and more able to cope.

That's not enough to turn the relationship around.

That's going to take time.

And the only thing that really helps there is consistency, non-reactivity, patience,

and kind of a gentle, respectful, reaching out, showing concern and consideration for your children.

It's just like any relationship that has had a breach.

It takes a long time to rebuild that relationship.

You have to build relationship trust back bit by consistent bit.

And I have full sympathy and full understanding, though, that once you have that insight about why you were that way, of course you want to use that as a way of repairing the relationship.

Unfortunately, that doesn't do it for the other person.

What does it for the other person is that you show over time a willingness to respond differently.

The question that goes through my mind is, why would you want to expose your child to this person?

Yes, but at what cost?

I mean, you can't tell from a single question like this how serious the behavior is of this grandparent.