To be dissapointed with my parents

[dontbesillyhenry]

And their lack of grandparenting?
Yes I know they've bought up their own kids yadda yadda but they are so uninvolved recently it really smarts. And if you try and discuss this they get defensive so there's no point.
I see all these doting grandparents collecting their grandchildren off the playground and I just feel sad my parents don't want to be involved

All the research shows that the more connections people have, and feeling like their lives matter, makes them healthier and happier. could you be more specific with this and link to the research? I'm genuinely interested.

People who can't be bothered to help their adult children as 'they don't like children' are pathetic. I don't like helping my incontinent relative as a fun event, but it's about helping those who are your family but surely helping out someone with presumably no choice and in medical need is different to helping someone who has chosen a specific lifestyle choice? Very few of the GPs mentioned here would refuse care in an emergency, I'm sure.

I've never been fond of small children, even when my own were young. I'm just not that maternal Now I find looking after energetic small DGS hard work but I will still help DD if she needs it, usually for a few days during the holidays when she has work commitments. That's what GPs are for, aren't they, as well as bonding with the GCs who I love dearly just as I do my DDs.

YANBU. My dm is a bit like this. Hands on with my first ds but by the time DS2 came along there was 6 grandchildren and she barely sees DS2. I like to think she loves DS2 but the relationship is completely different. DS2 wont go to her, give her kisses etc and she is pretty much a stranger to him. It is sad when i think about it but mil and fil both dote on ds2 so it really cushions the blow .

I hear you. Dmil has her dgd between 2-6 hours every day and only sees ds once a week and then plays with dgd he while time. And we live next door. It's making me hate her guts to the point of not being able to even speak to her or look her in the eye. Not to mention it breaking dh's heart.

I'm not a parent nor a grandparent but I am very experienced with children, more so than most parents, and I would never choose to "dote" upon babies and young kids because I really don't enjoy it. That doesn't make me a bad person!
I obvipsuky wouldn't ignore them and I'd be fun when I saw them but wouldn't go out of my way as its not something I enjoy.
That's the burden of the parents. One day I will choose to have kids and I'm sure hormones will overcome and I'll dote on them, certainly take good care of them.

Who genuinely enjoys cooing and playing with babies for hours on end?

Also - I'm quite proud of how I somehow spelled "obviously" with a p AND a k!

I hear you.... my parents don't even ask about my DC (or me for that matter). Even worse when they do eventually see them, they seem to have a preference of one of my DC over the other. 😳. Thankfully the kids don't seem have noticed yet....

I'm not a baby person but I fake when it see nieces and nephews kids. Because you know it's polite.

I don't like talking about Pokemon and football. But I do it because my kids love it.

My best friend bangs on about skincare products, about which I know nothing and care less. But I smile and nod because she's my friend.

So when my GC arrive I plan to coo and smile and gush with the best of them. Because I love my kids and i want to go on loving and supporting them.

I thought that was how things worked . Have I been doing this wrong all along ?

I can't go through the whole literature but there's lots showing social support is connected with better mental health:

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5156603/

The research on 'social capital' can be googled, that's about connectedness with friends, networks, acquaintances and feeling part of a wider community- this is again, linked to better health in entire nations and at a more individual.

As you get older, critical or destructive relationships have an adverse effect on your health, social support improves it:

journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.4278/0890-1171-14.6.362

I haven't time to start on the family literature, but there's lots of it (about how parental support makes a difference, although I don't know if there's research on this in adult children specifically)!

My mil has other dgc 2 full days a week (and sees them on other days) whereas she only sees our dc once every few weeks for a few minutes at the most (usually us nipping to hers to pick something up or vice versa). Hardly ever seen our dc of her own accord. Piss poor considering she lives on the next road!

Reasonably...you can certainly tell you dont have kids and im really not sure as to why you are on a site specifically made for parents when you have no children and nothing useful to add to this thread.

Some of these posts make me sad. Personal choice I know but my life has been enriched since my DGS arrived 10 years ago. Seeing GC doesn't have to involve childcare but surely most parents want to make their adult children's lives a bit easier than their's was?

Kr1 - you are definitely not doing it wrong! More people should make an effort like you do - thats what you do when you love someone.

My GM doted on us, we frequently went to stay at her house in school hold, she was lovely.

My GF, however, completely ignored us even when we were staying with them, it was quite weird. When my GM died I barely saw him again. When he died recently I felt nothing at all, not even sadness for an acquaintance as he was not a nice person.

I can understand not wanting to get involved in regular time consuming childcare but ignoring to the extent of your GCs not knowing you and having no feelings for you? That's the sign of a cold, nasty person.

I would imagine I will be the sort of grandparent you are talking about

Me too. I have one ds. I chose not to have any more children. I like my ds, he's fun to be with and growing up to be a lovely young man. But one was enough for me.

But I don't think I'd be very impressed if he decided to have 4 kids and then expected me to look after them. And that was my point above. You can choose to have kids, and barring infertility or multiple births, you choose how many you want to have. But you can't then dictate what your kids do. However, they should not then expect their parents to drop everything because of their lifestyle choices.

My DM really likes spending time with DS and for her she doesn't get enough time with him. But DMIL is nearly 90 and although reasonably fit, is really not interested and never really has been, as she had 5 other grandchildren who are quite a bit older than DS. I really can't see the issue with that. As I said above, I don't think favouring one set of grandkids over another is fair if they are a similar age and live a similar distance away - but our ds is 12 year younger than his nearest cousin, and we live 2 hours away whereas the other cousins were just around the corner when they were kids so she did do a lot more with them.

I'd also go along with the fact that it's not about free childcare, but about building a relationship. My parents live five hours drive away, but they phone, send little postcards, Skype, and come and visit regularly. My kids adore them and I love watching their relationship. I also love knowing that my kids have a bit of extra security knowing there are two more people in the world that love them. My inlaws live abroad. We see them every few years but they are as involved as they can be. Phone calls, Skype (and I disagree with a pp that Skype doesn't foster a close relationship - it has certainly helped a lot with ours). I don't get free childcare. It has nothing to do with that. It's all to do with being in a family and caring about the other members of it.
Turn and turn about. My grandparents were very present in my life growing up - not free childcare so much but came to school plays, spent time with us etc etc. As they got older and less able, as a family we closed in around them which meant they were able to go on living in their own house as people were always popping by to help out. We took them on holiday. And when we lost my granddad we have all rallied round to help my gran when she was finding it hard to cope. I had her to live with me for a bit, and then she returned to her own house. We've all been there, both her kids and her grandkids, to help her carry on living the life she wants to. It's not an obligation, I love her to pieces and love being able to help her after the love she gave me as a child. But she's got that help because she built a family where that support was central.

If you don't want a relationship with your grandchildren then you can't be surprised when they don't want a relationship with you later on.

Milk we saw each other regularly m, several times a week. We'd go on holiday together, have meals out, at our house or theirs. Same when we had our first child. A lot less with our second. Now not at all with our third

I didn't particularly want childcare from the ILs I just wanted them to have a relationship with the DDs.

It really hurt that they just weren't actually bothered - FB full of how much they love their GC but once they went 3 months without even asking to see them/invite us around for a cuppa - I actually cracked and ask DH to take the girls around if it was okay with his parents. We walked past their house on the school run every day...

Still DH says one of his goals in life is to be a more involved/"better" GP than his parents... I think he'll manage it

I know the feeling. My parents love my son but don't go out of their way for him. Having him for a couple hours is a task. If he stays over there and wakes up in the night they'll drop him home (3 in the morning before). But on birthdays and Christmas they'll go above and beyond. They live round the corner and never come to visit him. Think they would rather spoil him with money than time.

Although while I'm at work my partner looks after our son and will take him to his mums every other day (same distance away just opposite direction to my mums) so I don't know if my parents are just retaliating because of that? No help but I know how you feel OP

OP - are there any other family members or older friends or neighbours your children could build a close relationship with. I was just thinking about a friend of mine who has a wonderful older neighbour (her grandchildren live far away) and she is such a good neighbour and friend to my friend and is very kind and caring to her children. She is like a great aunt to them.

I think it would be very hurtful if your own parents, who are meant to love you unconditionally, can't extend a bit of that love to your children, who are more or less an extension of you. I am lucky with both parents and in-laws who dote on our two children and love to spend time with them. My in-laws provide free childcare 3 days a week which is amazing of them, but even when dh or I are off work for half-term or holidays, my father-in-law will nearly always take the kids out for a day because he misses them if he doesn't see them regularly. My parents live a couple of hours away but we visit them every 4 or 5 weeks and my kids feel as close to them as they do to their other grandparents. They look after my nieces and nephews and have done for years and they are all so close.

don't if you've had a good relationship in the past, could you think of some way to get back to that again? It could be that they find all three children at once a bit much/too noisy. Have you tried to talk with the at all about it? Could they come over and take one of the older ones out as a treat, taking it in turns?

Or start a conversation about how much you loved the holidays in the past, and you miss doing that stuff. Perhaps there's something else going on.

I often do parcel mine out one at a time, they love one on one time in the pre/early teen years.

What's very difficult, and not uncommon judging from a lot of pp, is when the grandparent relationship differs between family units. It makes it all so much more obvious and cutting. So in my case my ILs are wonderful gps to my nieces, but are not at all interested in my dc. It's not the childcare angle, it's literally that there is less love demonstrated in every way. And when someone seems to slight your dc with the amount of love they feel they warrant, it brings out the cold hard fury.

I also agree that the conversation in general is not about expecting childcare. I adore my maternal grandparents, even though we grew up hundreds of miles away from them, and they didn't perform a 'childcare service'. I adore them because they radiated love, and as such, they are deeply loved back.

I don't think it's fair to judge your parents on what they don't do. They obviously have their own lives and own objectives.

In an ideal world grandparents would have more involvement, but it's not that simple. For every Mum who wishes their parents were more involved, there's potentially a grandparent wishing they were more involved.

You could discuss it with you parents and they could say, we parented you and your siblings for 30 years, this is our time to enjoy our lives.

Everyone has a different perspective on it.

No, I feel sorry for grandparents. When they want to get involved or do anything, it's made clear that family means nothing and if they don't jump through every hoop that's put in front of them, then it's go NC. So many threads on mumsnet support constantly invoking "mum knows best" no matter what.

Want your parents to visit a newborn but not his - Mum knows best
Want to put random irrational conditions on every single interaction - mum knows best
Want to dictate gifts and generally act ungrateful that people won't bankrupt themselves to help support the children you chose to have - mum knows best - go NC.

I think a lot of modern parents can't decide which parts of modern parenting they like and don't like. They are gungho about rejecting "family obligations" and "tradition" when it comes to where they choose to live or when it requires them to go to christmas at their MILs or alter their wedding plans. (side note: My fave is women who marry men from other cultures which have strong family traditions and then immediately start bitching and moaning about MIL visits from India or wherever. It's completely and utterly predictable yet the OP always acts like the idea that an indian/persian/korean etc man's family would actually be indian/persian/korean etc is some sort of horrifying surprise.) In all of these situation, the DH is called a mummy's boy, an idiot, told he is unreasonable and that he needs to go no/low contact with his bitch of a MIL/family.

But the second these "modern parents" pop a baby out and need childcare, it's then evil nasty relatives who don't understand faaaaaammmmilllly.

I feel like good for all those grandparents! Hurray! Live your life!

Oh and all the "it's not the childcare" posters, the same point still holds. Maybe your parents/inlaws are exhausted from being told that they are everything that's wrong with the world and are wrong about everything (including how they raised you/your DP) and want some peace.