Family Disowned 2YO Over Mold

I will try to keep this as need-to-know as possible. Usually I am much more grammatically correct, but to save time I’m going to cut some corners. Bear with me….I have a 2-year-old son, and yesterday my family essentially disowned us for trying to protect him against mold. The trailer that my grandparents and mother live in sits overtop a wet, cement cellar. This cellar has openings at either end (used to be windows, but were broken out 10+ years ago and not fixed), so when it rains the water, dirt, etc just floods in – it is never dry. If you open the doors you can immediately see large chunks of green/blue/black stuff growing, as well as the overbearing smell of mold and mildew. It is unmistakable. There is also an open grate (think storm drain) that looks down into the cellar from the kitchen. I have no idea what the function of this is, but their solution is to just cover it with a porous rug. To add to this, in the summer they sometimes put a fan over the uncovered grate and pull the “cold basement air” into the house to cool it down.My grandparents are both elderly and ill, so my mother stays there and takes care of them, while working 50+ hours a week. Needless to say, needed repairs go unattended do to lack of time, but mostly funds. The ceiling is bowing in multiple places due to the roof leaking for many years. There are spots in the house where you can see mold/mildew growing, but they say its ”just dirt”. It is a problem that everyone is aware of, but at the end of the day they don’t have the money to fix it, so they deny its existence.(A little backstory – you can skip this if you want) *Let me mention that the older people in my family will try to guilt you into doing what they want, no matter what terrible things they have to say to you. Some of my first memories (5-6yo) were of my grandmother and mother fighting, and my grandmother would call and ask to speak to me, then she would tell me things like “You know, if you cant talk your mommy into bringing you to see me, I’m going to die and then you’ll never see me again”. I would tell my mom about this, and her response (even to this day) is “that’s just how she is”. I sought help at school about, but when the school called to talk to her she denied it. She pulled me aside and told me “People don’t like liars. No one will love you if you are a liar” - Because there was no physical abuse, just the guilt and shame, no one ever helped me. Now she has made my mom into her clone – saying hateful things and bullying to get what she wants. Don’t get me wrong; I LOVE my family, so much in fact that I have allowed this to happen for almost 30 years. They are good people, just extremely misguided with skewed priorities. Unfortunately this has lead to a lifetime of issues for me as an adult, most of which I still struggle with but have sought the help I needed. My family continues to call me “crazy” for seeking help (A therapist – I am not on any medications, not that it would matter if I was). After the last abusive voicemail I received two weeks ago, I broke down and told my mother it had to stop, referencing years of treatment. Her ONLY response to her crying child was “wow….I didn’t know that”….she most certainly did since she was also treated that way. *About two months ago, one of them was hospitalized. I brought up the fact that I was extremely concerned that mold could be causing these issues. I had done some research (because I was getting headaches, itchy and nauseous every time I visited) and all 6 people that reside in the house were presenting drastic symptoms, including unidentifiable skin lesions, hallucinations, constant respiratory issues and aggressive changes in behavior. The 10 yo that lives there misses school (on average) once a week for flu-like symptoms that never completely go away. Even the hospital staff I spoke with agreed with me, yet my family denied it, so tests were refused. My husband and I talked to (what I thought was) a trusted, levelheaded family member who said “If they tested that place for mold that place would be condemned, its too far gone”…and there it was, the words I can never un-hear. No one had ever said it out loud, but that made it real, and that moment we knew our son could not go back in that house. I feel like a terrible parent that I was allowing my son around it for 2 years, but I knew it had to end.We were visiting there at least once a week, but have not been back since this was said. We were asked why we don’t come around, and I gingerly tried to explain. My concerns were met with anger and yelling. They of course denied it, told me I was just trying to start trouble, and accused me of using my child as a pawn. I don’t want any of this to be happening, I have nothing to gain, so I feel completely blind sided. I just want to be able to visit them without putting my child at risk. A few days went by with no communication – then out of no where they called and asked us to come visit….as if the last conversation never happened. I would again explain why we couldn’t go there, and the attacks would happen all over. A few days later, we would get an invite again, acting like everything was fine, so I would have to explain again – this continued for about a month. My mom even had the idea of painting pumpkins in the yard, which I fully agreed to thinking “Yes! They understand and are making an effort”….nope. After a week of telling my son he was finally going to visit, she called an hour before hand and said it was too windy, so if we wanted to do it, we had to do it inside. A friend of ours went and bought our son a pumpkin b/c he wouldn’t stop crying once he found out he wasn’t going. My grandma would call and ask to speak to my son, which I happily allowed, but the last time I overheard her say “your mommy is being mean and won’t let you see us”……no, just….no. I would invite them to my house (I live 5.6 miles away), they would decline. Eventually they started saying that my grandpa was too sick to go anywhere, cornering me even more. She would call and say things like “You know, he wouldn’t be this sick if he could just see that boy (my son) once in a while”….they are now gearing up to blame his death on me.YESTERDAY ----- After weeks of guilt and harassment, I finally broke. I called my grandmother and said “Fine, we will come down and play outside so you guys can all see him. We will be there from 4pm-5pm today”. It was sunny and 80 degrees where I live. She agreed and seemed happy. Well I get there and stuck my head in to say “Hey we are here”….my mother wouldn’t even look up from her computer or acknowledge me at all, then both of my grandparents started bombarding me asking why he couldn’t come inside. They just kept saying “there’s no mold here” and calling me a liar. Then my dying grandfather, the man who raised me, possibly the only person I trusted before meeting my husband, says “After all I’ve done for you, this is how you treat me”…..I lost it. How could they think that I am DOING this to THEM?! I’m TRYING to SAVE them and my child who can’t take care of himself. I started to the car when my mother, suddenly deciding to acknowledge me, started screaming at me. Most of what she was saying didn’t even make sense, but she called me a Btch, a liar, a psycho, crazy, and said fck you multiple times. At one point she came at me saying she was going to hit me, to which I replied I would call the cops. She then stood, in front of my child, and screamed “F******CK YOOOOOOOOU B****TCH” to which I said (Note: I have NEVER spoken to ANY member of my family even remotely like this before) “Fck me? No, FCK YOU! You are SHT for doing this to your grandson”. She completely froze and dropped her jaw and said “I can’t believe you just said that to me”…..it was as if she had blacked-out for all the things she was spewing at me. We left. I have multiple voicemails from them, forcing me to turn off my phone. People keep putting things on Facebook about how children shouldn’t treat their parents so poorly….clearly only one side is being told, not the barrage of insults that led me to that point.I do genuinely feel bad, but at the same time, what can I do? My child comes first. No one ever did that for me, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to be bullied into not protecting my child. I guess I just want an outsider’s opinion – Am I doing the right thing? What else can I do?Seems a pointless question now that I’ve been told to never contact them again. via /r/Parenting http://ift.tt/2e3ZkIJ