As a daughter of a monster, with complex PTSD from my childhood .. people who have good and normal parents have NO idea how monstrous and toxic some people can be!!

16 is old enough to understand that no contact means no contact, especially for those reasons, and then she pursued with multiple messages. The very person, her mother, who she should have respected then got physically assaulted right in front of her. That's going to take ages to fix between the 2 of them. Mum is re-traumatised. Kid is full of guilt and regret. I hope they can get through this all right.

as someone who is also a teenager, like the daughter i must say she is probably the dumbest f*****g person ever. 16 is old enough to know that bad people are bad and they will pretend to seem good. reading through this made me question if the daughter even cared for her mom.

At 16 and sheltered, she had a volatile mixture of arrogance and ignorance. I had decent parents and had few if any dramas. But my friends were not so lucky. My own cousins were not that lucky. Too many people I know nowadays that were not that lucky and do not have children because of it. I do know how bad the monsters are, even if I don't have the experience.

This is so terribly sad and infuriating at the same time. I would so like to blame the daughter and in a sense I do, but the sad thing is, the daughter, as most of us I'm sure, cannot imagine that there are people who are downright evil. And I mean evil in an almost biblical sense. This girl has opened up Pandora's box, because her father will have to explain to her that her grandparents are evil people and he will have to tell her how evil people operate in order not to appear evil so that they can manipulate others the way they manipulated daughter. This means the daughter, at age 16, will find the world she lives in is also peopled by predators. I think every parent will want to delay that moment as long as possible, but she opened Pandora's Box.

I couldn't care less about reacting to the 16-year-old daughter's actions. I am too busy being heartbroken for the OP's wife who put so much effort into ensuring both she and her family were safe. This happened *in the very home* she built with her loving husband as refuge and safety from the violence of her past, and now every day she will have to look at the wall she was shoved into, see the place where she bled heavily enough to require stitches. This isn't a situation to weigh in on a teenager's actions. It's one to mourn the immense harm done in allowing those people into her life and into the woman's only home and place of safety she had built against that violence. What an unbelievable setback. Beyond tragic.

Obviously the daughter made a really bad choice, but please remember that the kid is only 16. She probably genuinely thought it would be a good idea. It's natural for children to want to get to meet their grandparents. And there are so many movies around about people who are estranged but accidentally walk into each other or someone else inviting both of them over, and then they realize they need to make up and deal with the past so that they can heal their pain and become happy and whole again. So if she's seen some movies that portray it like that, and she hasn't heard any of the many stories of the disaster that happens after trying to reconnect, it's not that strange for a naive teenager to think this will end out wonderfully and that she's giving her mom a great present. The parents both need to put a lot of effort into undoing the potential damage that this situation will have caused the kid too.

This is why I despise reconciliation stories in TV shows and movies. It's always written by people who have no understanding of why people would go NC with their family and the toxicity of it all. And gives "well-meaning" people a belief they can fix other people's relationships. Or worse put pressure on the victim/survivor that they are in the wrong.

There's something else going on here. The daughter just assumes mom is exaggerating about the abuse? Why? She had to send multiple messages to get the grandparents to respond. Why try so hard? Sorry but it seems like the daughter was deliberately trying to upset the mother.

I remember for the longest time there were television and movie tropes that really pushed a "family is family and you should resolve things even if they were abusive as hell to you" theme and the young main character finds a way to bring everyone together and oh how happy they are and everyone clapped at the end! Unfortunately, this is not how real life works and abusers don't deserve a second chance if the abused is done with them. This girl has no idea what abuse is and acted out of horrible naivety but I feel like most teenagers are very deluded about how life is until something like this happens. I get the OP being upset but I don't believe this girl did all of this with any malicious intent. She definitely will need to find ways to heal the trust between her and her mother.

Not letting her off the hook at all but at 16, they all know f*****g everything. Let's hope she'll learn something from this.

... and this is an example of why teenagers are teenagers - and that 'developing' is a real thing.. and that, no, at 16, a person's brain has NOT fully developed yet. This teenager honest-to-god thought/thinks "well, of course what **I** believe is going to be correct and if **I** want it to be this way, it will be" - so she questions the veracity of her own parents (who, from what it seems like, don't have a 'habit' of lying to her or hyperbole)... but FULLY believes these grandparents she barely knows... because .. y'know... 'acting' is not a thing... and... someone she doesn't know 'faking it' couldn't possibly be a thing. Why? Because she doesn't want it that way, so it MUST be that these near-strangers are telling the truth!

I am not so forgiving of the 16 year old who went against her parents wishes and contacted her grandparents. Sorry, but I don't care HOW sheltered you are, if you are told to not contact people because they abused others in the family and then pointedly, SNEAKILY invite the abusers to a family get together is not only defiant, it is MALICIOUS. She didn't need specific details to be aware - she was told of how her mother and aunt feel - she put her wants above their needs.

It sucks with the wife. Big time. I understand why they're pissed! I'd be cautious with the punishments though. Daughter seemed to have learned the lesson, not sure isolating her will make her learn more or make her gain trust again from the mum.

I’m the adult daughter of a rageaholic, monstrously abusive mother, so I totally get where the OP‘s wife is coming from, PTSD and all. When I was 35 and the mother of three, I decided enough was enough, and I finally got the strength to terminate our relationship. We were estranged for over 26 years and I’m terribly sorry I didn’t do it years sooner. She met my children once at their first birthday party, and as usual, she found a way to make it all about her. I’m just grateful my children have no memory of her whatsoever. I hope that in the future, the 16-year-old in this story starts to trust that what her parents tell her is the truth and not some wild exaggeration; she has a lot to learn about life.

My 5 year old daughter is wiser than this girl. But then she is very protective of me.

Part of the "parents are idiots, kids know everything" mindset. I'm sure she enjoyed the drama she created.

That daughter is a straight up bratty a$$hole! She deserves all the punishment and then some. There are some things that are forgivable when you're a teen - like getting in a car accident or being caught drinking. What this girl did was spiteful and stupid. WTF is wrong with her??

Honestly, half and half. The father is the ah for not explaining the severity sooner and so she eventually just got tired of it and went against them, she probably thought it was a lie because of all the vague responses she got. But the teen is also the ah because of how she stood up for her grandparents even after seeing her mother's fear. Although I will admit: her parents are total a$$holes for doing that much punishing to that poor girl, she didn't understand. And the father is just making her social life completely gone and now destroying her life. So mostly hate the father.