Balancing familial roles with personal boundaries left this mother-daughter relationship in shambles.

Is the daughter being unreasonable with her accusations of her mother, or is this grandmother not trying hard enough for her grandkids?

Let’s find out.

AITA for moving across the country and telling my daughter that they are the reason I am an “absent grandparent”

So I have two grandkids that are 4 and 7. I live about 45 minutes away from them.

In the beginning, I was still working, so it was hard to make time to visit them. I would go up to visit them and it sadly was not fun.

I am not baby crazy and do not want to spend my whole day watching a kid sleep. So I would stay for 2 to 3 hours before going home. My daughter hated that I wouldn’t spend more time and I told her when they are older we will bond more.

Then something happened that made tensions rise even higher.

I got in a car accident, it wasn’t bad and it was my fault. The sun got in my eyes and I bumped into someone’s car. In total it was like 300 dollars of damage since their car had dents in the back. It was very minor accident.

After that my daughter forbade me from driving anywhere with her kids, so now when I go up, I can’t do anything with the kiddos.

They can’t seem to agree on whose responsible for driving down to visit.

There is only so much I can do in the house and I would have loved to take them out to places. I have asked her to drive down since I live in a walkable area, but no. It is too difficult to get them loaded up and down here.

The more I tried, the more she didn’t want to visit me, so I got tired of this.

Not to mention she was always on me about not being more involved. I have told her so many times that you don’t let me do much with them.

The conflict soon reached new heights.

My breaking point was last summer.

I was babysitting them in the summer and I brought up a kids sprinkler. You connect it to the hose and the kids run through it on the splash pad.

The kids had a great time, but my daughter was mad because it ruined the grass. The water made mud and kids running messed up the grass.

She’s made a big life decision.

After that, I just stopped trying. I told her to bring her kids to me and she refused. I am retiring and selling my home.

I wish to move near the blue mountains which is across the country. I told all the kids and everyone was happy for me except my daughter.

We got a huge fight about me being a bad grandparent. I told her she is the reason I am absent grandparent.

She called me a jerk.

AITA?

It sounds like no matter what this grandmother did, it was never enough in her daughter’s eyes.

Or had the daughter heard one too many of her mother’s excuses?

Reddit appears to be divided in who’s at fault here.

As the old adage goes: If they wanted to, they would.

The grandmother may be justified, but this user offers a word of warning based on past experience.

This user dissents, implying maybe the grandmother could be doing more to help her daughter.

This redditor suspects they may be leaving important details out of the story.

This family dynamic is full of deep-seated misunderstandings and unmet expectations.

In a complicated situation like this one, it all depends on whose side of the story you believe.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check this one out about a man who created a points system for his inheritance, and a family friend ends up getting almost all of it.