Parents with young children, how much are grandparents involved?

[GoldenGlitterGirl]

There will probably be more responses from those who don't have any support from grandparents for various reasons, as that does seem to be a common thing on mumsnet.

But I'm interested to hear what support others do get?

My parents are nearby, offer their help and support us when things get tough, which they do in our circumstances. My other half's parents aren't particularly interested most of the time. We see them when they choose a few times a year.

I know there are so many factors around grandparent involvement- age, health, location, relationship - what is yours like?

@SpinningFloppa I hear this all the time. Doesn't make sense to me.

Are you me?! This is exactly our situation with a 1 and 3 year old, DH works 6-7 days a week so it's pretty much all on me.

Speaking as a Granny here - we have our grandson twice a week - drive over and pick him up by 8 'clock and drop him back at 4 p.m. We also see him other times and he has his own room here for sleepovers. We actually had him this week for a night due to a family emergency that cropped up for my son-in-law.

When he starts school we plan to take him out for tea once a week or so if he would like that and will be involved some of the time in the holidays too. We have a great relationship with him and it's really fun on the whole. I wouldn't have missed it for the world.

The downside is that the travelling actually is becoming demanding - particularly in the winter - when we're up at six o'clock. Although in theory we are only 15 miles away, it involves a drive through a city and the roadworks are horrendous at the moment.

The other two sets of grandparents also see plenty of him too - mainly at weekends for family occasions. One set also pick up the childcare if we are poorly or unable to do a particular day for some reason.

We all live in a radius of about an hour's drive from them.

Nothing. My mum lives 10 minutes away but doesn’t help with my children as “you chose to have them”

she sounds nice!

@SpinningFloppa i fimd this so sad...

We have no help and all sets of grandparents live within 40 mins drive.

Dead
Dead
Dead
Mad

So not much help really.