to wonder if some grandparents were ever actually parents?

[IvaNighSpare]

having just read my umpteenth thread complaining mainly about mothers and MILs, and drawing on personal experience, I can't help but wonder what mental transition some grandparents go through when their grandchildren arrive.
I'm talking about the stupid/thoughtless/frankly dangerous things they do with their grandchildren such as failing to watch them etc.
I'm not even talking about methods that may have moved with the times, just common sense stuff.
I've lost count of the times I've had to ask my own mother "would you have really allowed me to (play with the cutlery/draw on the furniture/poke the dog with a stick/ wander off in a crowded shopping centre...) at that age?"
What happens to them, and am I cursed to become an irresponsible old biddy when my children have children of their own?
Thoughts, please?

I've no problem with GPs giving kids sweets and letting them stay up late, but I have had to stop my MIl from pushing the buggy in the middle of the road and ask her not to let my son play with pin cushions! That is why I don't ever let my MIl look after my DCs. This has resulted in my relationship with her being difficult. Sometimes GPs don't ever want to say 'no' to a child and that is not a good thing. I know they want to have good relationships with their DGC, but giving a child all its own way is not in the best interests of the child and can undermine the parents, who are trying to bring up their children in the way they think is right. I'm not sure if she did any of this with my DH.

I would never let someone look after my child who had lost their own 18 month old baby for 3 hours because they were reading a book on the beach.

karma - are you my SIL?????

Did see your post and wondered if we had same MIL, but DH is only child (so far as I know!)

I don't really get this thing of walking in the road with buggies, but have seen quite a few GPs do it

Maybe a long lost twin then?

I know about the buggy in road thing, I was gobsmacked and had to race down th stairs and move the pram myself!

I once worked with a grandmother(50ish), she had 2 GC, boy, girl, boy was first and everyshift i was on with her i seriously walked away gobsmacked at the stories of him being found at a bus stop aged 4 nearly 2 miles from her house!
Or whilst she was having a bath, hearing her GS start the gas oven, click, click etc.
Or the time she was cleaning her kitchen floor and turned round to find him trying to drink the flash because she hadn't put it away!
she wasn't all there, i don't think, but still, quite scary tbh.

but I have similar stories from minding my own siblings when they were toddlers, and would NEVER under any circumstances do the same with my DC. Part of that is a healthy respect for the approximate age that DCs learn to operate door locks , and part of that is that I am in the thick of being ever-vigilant and looking at myself back then I was not, and my MILs now are not. My mum was actually more aware of dangers to LOs the first time I stayed with them than I was - perhaps because my brother had toddlers slightly older than mine and they lived nearby so she was on the lookout, and perhaps because I had lived in that house and wasn't used to looking for dangers.

I don't understand objecting to giving grandkids chocolate or too many toys - that's a grandparent's job, but it's also pretty easy to think well, I've raised x number of kids just fine, I can watch a LO for a few hours and forget that when those kids were LOs their lives (and houses) were quite different. I've had not just MILs, but friends and family whose DCs were teens say the same. Parental worries move on to different things and after a few years it's easy to forget that if you set the starch down and look away it will end up being licked - I mean, what teen/grown DC does that?

I have the opposite experience to the op. My kids' gps are far far more cautious with their grandchildren than they ever were with me or dh.

My DD is nearly 6; I already wouldn't trust myself with a baby . And I did take excellent care of her!

I'm dreading the opposite with my Dad and our soon to be PFB - he's always been massively over-cautious and obsessed with health food and he hasn't changed! In my Dad's head, paedophiles lurk on every corner and practically every food can lead to a heart attack by the time you're 30...

And it's already started! I went on holiday to my Grandad's farm with him and he tried to stop me going for a walk over the farm (which I ran around in practically every year from age 2 - 17) in case I 'fell in a hole' and hurt the baby

Diamond and pointy - I remember my gran being like that - she was so cautious and anxious that she would not let us do lots of things that my mum was quite happy with - to the extent of not letting me, age 10, go on the seesaw and swings in the park because "if anything happens to you your mother would never forgive me".

It was a bit frustrating for us, but we just accepted that gran was a bit of a fusspot but loved her anyway!

I think I would rather have that than worrying about GPs putting kids in real danger.

My parents are very careful. I have to tell my mum to chill out!

Mum: "DS#2 keeps climbing that tree - I cab't bear to watch."
Me: "Well, don't!"