About paying my parents for childcare?

[OhMyArsingGodInABox]

This might be long, sorry.

I'm feeling a bit hurt and sad and a bit railroaded, so I wanted to canvass opinions.

My sister is my (excellent) CM, I pay her the going rate (which is more than I was paying my old cm, incidentally). The backdrop to this is that she used to look after our other sisters dc but due to persistent lateness and some behavioural issues with the girls she gave her notice and asked me if she could mind my toddler instead.

My parents have always helped us out with occasional childcare, for which we are very very grateful. They stepped in to look after my nieces but as it was now a full time arrangement they asked for remuneration, not the full going rate but close.

Anyway (still with me, I hope?) my cm sister is away for a week next month and my mum offered straight away to have ds2 for the week. I didn't think any more about it really, was just grateful it was all sorted.

Mum has just phoned me to tell me they are charging £100 for the four days and how did I want to pay her?

I just stuttered a bit and said, oh ok, um, didn't realise we were paying you but that's fine.

My mother said that she has to charge us because she charges my sister. I think the two situations are completely different, and it just hadn't occurred to me.

Now I just feel shitty, and had a bit of a cry. I sort of want to ask th ILs to have him instead, as they won't charge us, but that would cause huge ructions.

How out of order am I on a scale of one to ten? Or you could tell me I'm not unreasonable at all, that would be nice.

In a way, even if you asked your in laws it would be polite to offer to pay them the same as you paid your parents

Looking after children costs money. There will be extra food to buy, extra heating and lighting, treats when going out and so forth. Pensioners aren't wealthy.

I'm really impressed you have been doing the right thing and paying and think £100 for 4 days very reasonable and a good compromise all round

It is important to remember your parents won't have the same levels of energy and are not the same people as when you were children. I would never employ a grandparent full time (paid or unpaid). It isn't fair on them or the children. Also there needs to be contingencies for when grandparents have hospital appointments and so forth. Because most grandparents do step in and dont say no, i think they are easily taken advantage of. Not that this is what you are doing at all, OP, you have clearly been very fair minded in the past. Just that I have been thinking about this general issue for a while.