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Parenting advice: How do you deal with grandparents?
My parents are great. That being said, every time my 2.5 year-old comes home it is bananas. They are so over stimulated, who knows what they have eaten. Usually screaming and in just in a state of complete deregulation. I can’t tell if I just need to deal with it as part of grandparent time. We don’t correct my parents, we do offer suggestions and give them food and snacks etc but inevitably what is eaten is some sugary cereal and junk.
Do any of you deal with this? Do I need to chill out? I am writing this as my child falls asleep after screaming for 2 hrs. So I am a still a little frustrated.
You absolutely need to talk to them. I’ve had to talk to my in-laws about a few things over the years, usually involving undermining my parenting. One of my biggest pet peeves was that my daughter would come home from her grandparents house and refuse to feed herself, because grandma feeds her. I would spend weeks getting her to use a spoon to feed herself, all of that to undone in one meal with the grandparents, all because grandma doesn’t want any mess in the house.
This is your child that we are talking about, and children need consistency. Ask questions for the sake of understanding, and don’t come in with accusations. You just need to talk to them, find out why the kid is coming home like that, and figure out how to remedy the situation.
Chances are also pretty good the grandparents just don't know that this is what's happening. Having a discussion with them will hopefully enlighten them to the consequences of the decisions that they're not seeing.
My parents enjoy being able to allow rambunctious behavior and let me deal with the consequences. But when we establish rules and boundaries, they still respect them.
This is good advice
My strong belief is that child care is never free. You either pay someone with the expectation they follow your rules, or you get free care from family and “pay” with the understanding that sometimes your rules aren’t followed.
That doesn’t mean you can’t set the expectations and give rules, but you might also need to pick your battles. Try and identify what is causing the biggest issue (is it nap time not being adhered to and the child is overtired? Is it meal times being chaotic? Is it too much tv?) and address this as the priority. It also depends how often it happens, if it’s weekly care while you work vs the odd day then I’d approach differently. As an example, we found that our children would come home from a weekend with their grandparents being a bit rude and demanding, so I spoke to the in laws about being firmer and saying no sometimes but I let go that they feed them more junk than I’d like since it was occasional and didn’t cause poor behaviour once home with us.
I've seen this a lot, where people want to have this extremely fine control over the parenting skills used on their children based on more modern parenting techniques (that are good), but also believe (also correctly) that communal child rearing involving extended family is healthy. But the thing is, these are opposing concepts on a spectrum. The more communal control you give, the less individual control you have.
Certainly there are boundaries to set and fights you should be willing to have, but parents have to be able to compromise with grandparents too.
It's hard. Our daughter watches more TV that I'm comfortable with when she's with grandparents. But also they're old, she's having fun, they love her, and it's free babysitting. So I have to decide if that's a trade I'm willing to make.
Truth. Good point. I don’t want the nuclear family. Give and take.
And sorry, sounded more preachy up there that I meant to be. I totally understand where you're coming from. I struggle with the same things, and I'm not 100% where the line is at any given time.
Parents today are uniquely aware of what makes for good parenting practices which is in some ways great but also can carry a huge amount of anxiety about things being done “wrong”. There’s almost no nuance in the discussion - too much tv is bad! Too much sugar is bad! You’re ruining your kids futures!! When really, it’s these things happening daily, long term, which have potential (not a guarantee, mind you, just potential) to be harmful. A day of too much tv, or junk food, or whatever every now and again is probably not going to harm the kids. And there’s a lot to be said for grandparents having that special bond which comes from spoiling the kids, for them it’s like the reward after the hard times of everyday parenting, and for the kids it’s that knowledge and security of being utterly adored.
I resonate a lot with your last paragraph too. Knowing which battles to fight and which to let go of is key. For me, I want the grandparents to look forward to having my kids, I don’t want it to be a chore for them, so I’m willing to let go of a lot!
As someone who has plenty of pedagogue in my family, I would argue that point. You just likely are surrounded with better parents, simply because you are in a more elite circle of friends.
There are and endless number of “he won’t eat unless the ipad is on the table and he watches it constantly” kids out there, and that’s far from the worse I heard.
What I mean by uniquely aware is that parents as a group have a lot more information than any other generation of parents before us. We have a whole internets-worth of information and opinion available now. Our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents etc only had each other, and so parenting practices were more similar from one generation to the next, and very similar to those around you locally. If everyone in the area spanked their kids then you probably did too, how would you know not to?
Of course this doesn’t translate to every single parent being perfect or caring about/seeking out these things. I think it’s true, though, that our generation (again, in general and not as a homogenous group) is intentionally parenting in a way not commonly seen before.
Yeah, I get it, though I can’t help but think that it was around the 2000s that we had the optimum in terms of useful information on the internet. Ever since that the noise-to-info ratio (not even just noise, sometimes straight up lies/malice) has increased — but that is not specific to parenting of course.
I think that only adds to the anxiety which leads parents to want total control and fear the grandparents doing things “the wrong way”.
This for sure applies to a lot of things now. Weight loss comes immediately to mind. Optimal diets for health. The best exercise for longevity. Etc etc etc. Too much info along with it being hard to figure out if there’s any truth in it causes huge anxiety for people. There’s no nuance, now, no “try a few things and see what works for you”, it’s just “I’m correct, read my blog (and see the ads) or buy my book. Pay me for reassurance that you can SUCCEED”. Anyway totally going off track here but yes I agree completely!
Truth. Child care is never free.
I’m just frustrated at them. I want to be like, do better! But also she is safe, she is fed, she is loved.
It is just infuriating to deal with.
Listen I might sound very philosophical now but my oldest is 6. It took me a few years to get past that frustration! Some grandparents aren’t interested in babysitting; I realised I had to count myself lucky that they want to help, and accept that they aren’t trying to do the wrong thing. There are a lot of rules to remember when it’s not your own child, and if they have multiple grandkids there might be different rules for each family, and it’s been a long time since they were parents of young children. In our case, the grandparents were doing their best and I couldn’t really fault that! Of course that isn’t always the case and if you think the grandparents are being willfully ignorant of your wishes then it’s still worth a discussion with them. But yes, like so much of parenting, it’s absolutely infuriating. Good luck!
The sooner the bounderies are set, the better. Same issues with my parents. I had to set them straight ASAP about what my daughter should eat/drink, etc.
Truth, also do I care if she has some junk, no, it is just infuriating how unregulated my parents are.
What I do: live thousands of kilometers away from them. Unfortunately, my solution comes with its own drawbacks and is not easily duplicatable
I’m half a mile lol. The support is great. I wouldn’t trade it. I just want to say, do better!
Why don't you correct your parents?
If you aren't correcting your parents and are only offering suggestions that are ignored then you're simply conveying to your parents that you yourself don't believe you're in charge of what should happen with your own children.
When it comes to your own children, you're the boss. Act like it.
Are they ruining her, no. I have set expectations, it’s just walking that fine line. Idk weird world.
As someone in a similar situation with one set of grandparents, my wife and I get very different results.
She indicates a preference. She's an excellent communicator, so that preference is always very clear, but she's nonconfrontational and only indicates it as a preference [until... but that's very rare].
When I'm involved, I communicate what's going to happen — usually directly to the children, but within earshot of the grandparents — and it ends up being carried out without 90% of the frustration and with much, much better communication back to me by the grandparents.
I don't think it's intentional or malicious, but the difference between a parent assuming one is in charge vs assuming one is not in charge is dramatic.
I am not a parent but I work with children in after school care and daycare/childcare so maybe my perspective can still help.
My main question would be: Is it possible to talk about this with your parents? Not that I think you should 'correct' them, or address the issue when you're still frustrated but you should explain to them how difficult this can be (assuming you haven't had this conversation yet.) as they might not realize (after all they are no longer present afterwards to witness the meltdown).
Hopefully they understand, they are after all parents themselves, so they might have had similar experiences in the past. But generally I'd say communication is the most important thing in these situations.
At this age it can also be very difficult to pinpoint the exact issue. We eat lunch and sometimes dinner with the kids at my workplace, and recently one had a similar situation where he was an absolute angel with us, but a little demon once he got home. We worked with the parents to change the food and snacks we gave him, and later also the activities we had him participate in etc. but after quite a while of this to no avail the parents had sought help from a medical professional and it is now suspected that the kid is on the spectrum, and crucially we only had him once a week, so to him it was a huge change of scenery, people around him etc. which basically drained him completely before he went home. We changed things based on our experience and in consultation with the parents and medical professionals and now it is fine. Now I'm not saying your kid is on the spectrum as well, but my point is that it could be a lot of different things outside of sugary junk that might cause such behaviour in a young child, and at this age it can be very difficult for the child to express themselves or otherwise help in this proces of identifying the issue. So the best thing you can do is communicate with your parents, so that you know what they have eaten, what they did together etc. and together with your parents you can begin to build an understanding of what might cause this and how you could try and solve this. You don't need to correct them to do this, but involve them and talk to them about these challenges if at all possible.
It could be that this is something that will stay part of grandparent time, but it is definitely worth trying to find an alternative explanation and solution, as hours of screaming does not sound like a great time for your child either, and it also seems unlikely to be the preferred and intended grandparent time outcome of your parents.
Maybe I completely misread the situation, or you've already tried this to no avail but based on your post and my experience this is what I would try to do.
Thanks for the thought out reply. I think my parents are unregulated. Raising a kid is hard. It exposes flaws that already existed. Is she fine, yes, is it annoying yes. Did they break her no.
Not breaking someone doesn't exactly seem like the highest bar. They might be unregulated but maybe they can change that at least slightly? Raising a kid is very hard, they probably know this too, so I'd hope they are understanding of you not exactly being thrilled by the current outcome.
I really don't think what you would ask of them (changing what is eaten and some basic communication) is some crazy impossible task. You really can (and maybe should) ask them to do better in this regard.
You can appreciate everything they do for you, their support and everything else that makes them great whilst also asking them to change this specific thing about their approach. These are not mutually exclusive and asking them to help you in this is not being ungrateful or even particularly harsh/difficult towards them.
First off, I'm guessing that grandma/grandpa time is kind of a special occasion (as in it's not a routine thing). This is how my situation is. Despite my parents being great (and very considerate of the impact of their actions), our daughter is always a challenge after seeing them. I think it's just the natural part of the "let down" after a mentally rewarding social action. Kind of like a hang-over for toddlers.
There's just no way to avoid it because toddler brains are so easily stimulated. When you remove that stimulation, their brain craves continued stimulation.