My parents won't have dcs at theirs for the night as "too much" but will come to stay at ours with my sister to look after them AND stay over WTF!!!

[minxofmancunia]

My parents love seeing our dcs AS LONG AS WE'RE THERE. they pester me like hell to go and stay in their rural backwater cheshire hamlet so we can see them. They've never offered NOT ONCE to have dcs without us there. When we're there they don't offer to get up with them for an hour do the bath, nothing. They babysit ocassionally in the evening once the dcs are in bed.

My sister is looking after both of them this weekend at ours from Saturday 1pm to sunday 3pm, she has no dcs but is great with them. My best friend was supposed to be helping out (it's mine and dhs 5 year wedding anniversary) but she's had to go away with work. I've arranged for some other friends to go round to help. However my sister has managed to get my parents not only to come and help with bed time but to stay over to help her, in our house.

I just feel like saying "why the f*k won't you just have them at yours, just once in 4 f*king years to give us a break??, but when she (sister) asks you'll STAY????"

My Mum has never stayed in any of my houses, even after dd was born and i had severe PND. She had flute lessons to go to etc. Choirs to sing in. When me and Dh nearly split and I begged for just one night off she refused, "we're too busy darling". When i was 19 and ended up on anti depressants at university age 19 she didn't want to come and see me. I just stayed in bed, failed my year and cried for months. My dad came eventually and packed me up and brought me home.

I know I sound spoilt and undeserving esp as they're helping look after my dcs for the night. But I'm f**king aghast!!

everytime friends of ours have a bit of time out (and some have a lot) it hurts a bit, but it's really begun to get to me recently. she said Dh shouldn't have asked my sister as it was "too much" for her but we're desperate, i'll admit it, and sister seemed happy to do the night. We just wanted the night off.

BTW when I was pg with dd both sides of Gps offered the world. 4 years down the line the reverse is true.

Yeah, you're coming down hard on her.

As evinced by the other grandmother's post, some people seem to think it's a given the grandparents are there for the purpose of babysitting.

I can't imagine that, tbh.

I love my folks. I Skype and email them all the time just to talk, to share a joke or a good recipe or a funny story.

We're not wealthy and though they are not, they fly us out there to visit them. And last time, 10 days just wasn't long enough.

I didn't have time to do stuff like cook my mom a good curry, I know how much she loves them, or bake my dad muffins in the morning because I know he enjoys them, or play chess with him, or go to Mass with my mom and then a coffee.

I just like spending time with them.

And though we get NO breaks at all, none whatsoever, we didn't spend a single night away when we were there, although they'd have taken them overnight if we'd asked.

That's not the point. The point was we were there, as a family, to visit. It was a break enough to grab the car keys and go to the supermarket on my own to get ingredients for a meal to cook for us all and pitstop for the iced lattes from the cafe I know my mother loves.

We'll be going for five weeks next time. I'll be nearly all those with the three kids and my husband has to come back to Scotland to work. I cannot abide the heat there. I really can't. I stopped living there in 1989 in large part because of the climate and it's ugly and full of a lot of bad things. But well, they're there and I'm here and this is it. Papa's too old to travel here anymore. I want him to see the children and know them. He wants that more than anything in the whole world. So suck it up.

I don't expect a single 'night off' and I don't need one, though I'm on my own with them much of the time, in an isolated area, with very little money.

It's enough just to have my folks and family around and seeing the children before one of them leaves this world for the next.

Ditto my ILs. They are too infirm to look after our children.

But we haul through to Edinburgh every other month and stay on my SIL's living room floor with 12 of us in a 3 bed, 3rd floor flat and just have the time of our lives, just to see them all. Oh, we have some times! It's not often we get to laugh so much.

The only 'break' we get is when one of us crosses the street from SILs to the 24-hour ASDA for a browse round the aisles, but we're having so much fun together!

Family works both ways.

expat - your relationship with your parents is good.

minx's situation is very different. her mum is extremely unsupportive.

minx i really feel for you. i hope you do at least get to go away for the evening and enjoy yourself. long deserved.

Then she is, warthog. No sense in getting worked up about not getting blood out of a stone.

They don't do overnights.

So then don't expect them.

Lots don't. C'est la vie.

Make the most of the breaks you do get and be positive.

I feel sad for all of you doing it on your own.

My mum had help from her parents as did they from their parents and so on.

Now my mum helps us with the DC and she loves doing so, as we will love to help her as she gets older. We all muck in to look after each other.

This is how it works in our family and we are very close. I accept the old and disabled are unable to chip in with caring, but it's depressing how people are becoming so insular.

It was our doing, space. I live 5000 miles away from my family. Yet, but for Scotland, it's likely I'd never had had children at all, much less with a man who didn't already have them himself, which I didn't want.

So it's a double-edged sword.

DH's parents are insulin-diabetic with heart disease and hypertenion and rheumatoid arthritis.

It's how it is.

It's not forever, that they are so young and require so much effort.

I was not brought up to do so, but came of it of my own accord, to bless and value all the time you have with those you love when you can.

I got told just this week that she doesn't come to me with her problems so we as adult children shouldn't bring her ours, fine but i'll remember that, i have a long memory.

I think it's important to separate emotional support from babysitting overnight/entire weekends for purposes of just getting away, tbh, and perhaps adjust one's idea of break.

i do think it's tough when all your friends are swanning off for a week's holiday in the bahamas while your family can't be arsed to help at all.

but this is worse: i think minx is also lamenting the inability of her mother to be a mother. and this is just the latest example.

i think the best thing to do is actually distance yourself, because the emotional hurt is too much.

It makes me really sad to hear your story minx, what is a mother if not somebody who embraces and supports her child unconditionally, spontaneously or on demand - no matter their age.

We always need our mum's love, I'm sure you are a far better, far more loving mother to your own.

Take care of yourself

(hug)

I have no friends who swan off on holidays without their kids, unless like me they are divorced and kids with their dad (although I tend to save my work holiday time for when they are with me)or the women have separate holidays from their husbands and husband looks after the kids.
If I go on holiday I love to take my kids.
Perhaps it's different if you work and aren't with them all the time, or if you get divorced and are forced to have time without them.
I didn't have overnights without my kids until it was forced on me by divorce.

I'm surprised so many people were dumped on their grannies whilst their parents swanned off as children.
We had babysitters if they went out for the evening, but that was it. I loved my grandparents but never saw them as babysitters. Trips to the grandparents involved all the adults chatting endlessly whilst we kids, plus and cousins around played games and entertained ourselves.

i'm the same, 2rebecca. we always go away with our kids. but part of me would love to go away for the weekend and just have a break.

Yeah, well, that's a pipe dream of about 90% of parents you ask, though. Including my own back when, I'm sure. My dad had to work abroad in pretty dangerous areas for a lot of the 70s and 80s.

Being a mother now, I don't know how my own mother coped.

Sure, she had help. But not 'go off for the weekend' sort of help.

I think it's best to re-adjust what you consider a 'break'.

Back in July, we went to see the family in Edinburgh. And SIL and MIL took our three. For an entire day. Like 11AM-6PM.

OH MAN! What it was, to just walk for miles and miles on my own (DH went to a car show with mates). To nip in and out of shops that couldn't accommodate a buggy and just browse.

Have a coffee in silence and just gaze on it all.

It was bliss.

I have to take things where I can find them.

It's not good hoping things will be different. They are how they are.

That is all we have.

I understand the OP is not just on about babysitting per se, there are a lot of other issues at play here.

But, having had AND and PND for the past 7 years and now chronic depression, well, you learn to take the good with the bad, really.

I can't waste headspace getting angry about stuff it is absolutely beyond my power to change.

Maybe that's what is then, Gordon Ramsay telling his tales of a week alone a year being the key to a good marriage and now we all want a slice of the action.

As for holidays the worse holiday we ever had was one we took the paid nanny on, I spent half my time walking around the hotel looking for my children so I could spend some time with them, it was miserable :(

I think I OWE my mother for caring for me as a child. It was hard for her,we had no money, and for lots of other reasons. I am now a grown up and I can now stop being a child in our relationship and be grateful to her. As it happens she worships my children, takes them out for the day and will babysit if asked and she isn't busy or working, but she doesn't take them overnight or for holidays, and I would never expect it. I am grateful for what she does do, and yes, I regard it as a favour to me when she babysits, and as totally her choice, not something she owes me. I hope to bring my children up to be grateful for things that people do for them, and not expect them by divine right.

I am really shocked by the poster who said she didn't bother visiting her parents at all because they don't take over the children when she goes, so there was 'no point' to the visit!

And lol at my not wanting to babysit my grandchildren - I've got a bloody long wait for that!

When i was 19 and ended up on anti depressants at university age 19 she didn't want to come and see me

babysitting or not, you would still expect your mum to visit when so unwell and possibly in danger. That's pretty unforgivable.

CCF, your DM was clearly a generous and warm hearted mother who has given a lot to you and helps you with GCs.

Perhaps you would not feel you owe her so much if she was a bit more like some of the mean spirited GPs being described here?

Mine are horrific too and it culminated in shitflyinghideousness a exchange of views back in March.

My brothers stepped in and told mum that I had ishoos with her! Thanks bruvvers. She rang me and when we went to stay she insisted on having it out.

So I told her.

How fed up DH and I were that she and Dad did F-all with the boys who are now 8 and 6 and lovely! she doesnt bake with them or take them to the park or library or shopping or read to them or play with them. She sticks them infront of the TV and wants to spend time with just me!! This has tipped me over the edge though and our relationship is very very strained.

Dad got involved the next day and threatened to banish me from the family if I didnt sort things out with Mum. Twas really really shit so unless you are prepared for the fall out you just have to get on with it.

OP I do feel for you as those who have fab grandparents usually take it for granted. DH's mum is awful too and we dont know where his Dad is!!

Why on Earth is she obligated to do stuff like that with them?

I can hardly stand to do stuff like that with my own right now, tbh. It's tedious in the extreme.

People can support each other in other ways than unpaid babysitting, can't they?

I think it's wrong to expect someone else to take over your kids whenever you feel like a 'break' just because they're related to you.

Fine if they offer, but the expectation is rather spoilt, IMO.

anyone read TOXIC PARENTS? worth a look...

Agree with expat. My grandparents never baked or did crafty things with us. My grandmother wouldn't let anyone else in the kitchen.
They plied us with crisps, fizzy drinks and chocolate biscuits but generally kids were expected to entertain themselves.
Adults permanently entertaining kids is a new thing.
I baked etc with my kids but only remember my mum baking for us, not with us.
My sibs and I were usually expected to play together, and if we went to the swings we just went out by ourselves to them unless going to another town.
Kids weren't protected as much in the past so alot of this may be a generational approach to child rearing and the rise of helicopter parenting.

'They plied us with crisps, fizzy drinks and chocolate biscuits but generally kids were expected to entertain themselves.
Adults permanently entertaining kids is a new thing.'

Yep. It was, 'Kitchen's full of junk to help yourself to' as we bolted outside to the back garden to go play.

You did crafty stuff in Brownies or Girl Scouts.

It's obvious from references that the OP's parents are not supportive in any way, but it's sad if it's felt that grandparents not taking over for long periods whenever the adult children fancy a break, or not babysitting on the adult childrens' terms (what? no baking, crafts, parks, etc.) makes one a toxic parent.

Adults permanently entertaining kids is a new thing.'

Hmm no it's not, if you listen to Shirely Hughes, My naughty little sister, a favorite in this house the mothers did a lot with the child/ren, yes they got up to mischief but there was plenty of interaction and baking and generally doing the housework with the child getting under your feet helping.
My grandmother would bake with us or sew or read to us, if your own parents didn't you'd think they'd be keen to make up for it with their grandchildren but apparently not.

I don't see where that makes a parent toxic if they don't have the same idea of parenting as you do.

The ILs have very different ideas from me, but they love the children so I don't find them toxic at all.