To think that my parent secretly enjoy this?

[malificent7]

My dad and his misses are having a lovely retirement which they deserve but they seem to enjoy my work struggles / struggle to find a sitter etc...
When i asked them to sit on the day of the week when they do salsa as a one off ...i got the reply that they never went out when i was a child.

OK...Im being unreasonable to ask but i sense it is tit for tat

The OP hasn't clarified what the emergency was (she said "sort of" an emergency). Nor has she said they never watch her daughter. I think it's nice to be nice, but why should they change their plans for something that isn't a true emergency? Is that the obligation, to drop whatever they're doing for whatever reason? Surely that isn't reasonable. In the OP's thread about asking her dad for money she got very different responses.

Yes they don’t “owe you babysitting” as some have put it, but surely parents help out their children? We have help from
Parents in many ways, my husbands family are a little more of the “we struggled so you should too” attitude (this is what I’m understanding you think the tit for tat behaviour is), but then my parents would do anything to help. They also struggled so know
How appreciative of help they would have been & naturally don’t want us having the same struggles if we don’t need to. Example- my mom
Had our children for a sleepover last weekend (age 4 & 1, first sleepover out the house for 1 year old) . We didn’t go out anywhere but we are exhausted after many nights of broken sleep. Mom
Offered to have them so we could recharge a little. I think this is normal behaviour for a grandparent

I’ll add though if any parent had plans we wouldn’t ask them or expect they change their plans for our plans.

Just remember this when they need help later in life.

@SardineReturns I can't believe the callousness of anyone, let alone your mum, not agreeing to watch your baby while you nipped on the couch for half an hour! My mum is an absolute diamond and will do any childcare. I do take the piss probably. And my dad will just randomly come round and cut the grass/wash up without telling me. I can only assume it's because they love me.

I feel for you OP, we don't have kids yet but my parents jump at the chance to have DN , and have told my brother that if they don't want to pay for childcare on the two days both he and SIL overlap with work, they will continue to have DN two days a week, mum arranges her day off to spend time with her and dad is retired and loves having her weekly, they've been doing this for nearly a year already and my brother has offered to put her in nursery as he didn't want to take advantage, he's not adamant about her going to nursery yet as she's only 2. MIL is already talking about retiring early when we decide to have kids so she can be available! I realise we are very fortunate, but in our family it works all ways, DB does our plumbing for free, I help him with paperwork type stuff eg applying to rescind a tree preservation order, tax return. I do a lot of my dad's online banking for him, and help mum get good deals on holidays. Dad has helped with our renovations and has even popped round and cut our grass while we're at work. When we first bought our house mum was round stripping walls and scrubbing skirting. We all give each other lifts to the airport, pet sit etc. I love it, but realised in childhood that not all families are the same eg some people's parents never ever gave them lifts or helped with school trips or events etc. DH and I have vowed to pay it forward when we have kids.

Why is your Dad's partner a 'mistress'? I'm sure she is a woman in her own right?

Opps, it says misses

My dp’s Are like this and they had help, every weekend!

@wurlie
My thoughts exactly. I must be as 'creepy' as you

If my parents basically refused ever to help out---well, that's their choice, but you know what? They might just find that I would not be going out of my way to facilitate extra contact or help them out or invite them for fun events and all that.

I think families should help each other out. When a family member doesn't help me out, that makes me feel less friendly towards them.

When I was a kid, my parents used to drag us all the way up to Scotland to make sure the GPs could spend time with us, and were always up there helping, inviting the GPs for Xmas and other events, bringing cakes and all that. GPs babysat ONCE, when they looked after my older brother for one night when my mum was in hospital having me. They went on and on and on about it, apparently, acting as though they had scattered largess from heaven by doing such a massive favor. Personally, I would have been dragging the family up to Scotland with cakes a lot less often if I had been in my mum's position.

"Once the grandchildren grew up, they stopped coming to visit granny as they had no relationship with her, and her own children moved away. You reap what you sow. I use her as my example of how not to be a MIL."

Yeah, this. Exactly.

“If my parents basically refused ever to help out---well, that's their choice, but you know what? They might just find that I would not be going out of my way to facilitate extra contact or help them out or invite them for fun events and all that”

So our payment to the parents who raised us is to blackmail or threaten them. How sad... God help they have their own lives independent and inconvenience to ours!

Isn't it healthier to assume they don't owe you babysitting, which they don't, and then get nice surprise and be grateful when they do?

I find life much more pleasant when I expect nothing and get lovely acts of kindness and surprises.

Rather than go into generalising about what parents owe children or children don't owe parents, I think I'd like to know something about the individual case. It is clear that the OP's parents sometimes do have the dc since they report that they are as good as gold.

So I would want to know a little about this emergency: was it serious enough to trump parents' salsa night (medical or work emergency) or was it something that the OP could have planned around since her parents were busy (salsa night). Also was the comment about "we never went out" offered spontaneously or was it the result of the OP complaining that they weren't giving up their salsa night?

FGS - single mum here and it's bloody hard not getting to go out at all. I get sulks from my father when I go out for the whole day afterwards, and I don't even go out every time he comes up...last year it was 3 times!

For various reasons, not all of us can splash out on babysitters. I know for a fact my grandparents did a darn slight more for my father! The annoying thing is he would generally much rather spend time with DC, but when it comes to me he will literally ignore me. But heaven forefend I want to go out for a couple of hours while he is down.

Coyocan - I can't speak for OP but if you do their washing, cooking and clean up after them whenever they turn up, while they say it's like "being at a hotel"every time they come up...frankly yes, I do think some give and take is needed. We can't go to his because he "has to spend the week cleaning up" and gets very cross indeed. Sorry, OP, sparked something in me there

Well

Jeffrey, well the other side of the coin is only to do what you are happy to do for them.

And yes, I totally understand and remember what it was like not being able to go out at night, as a single mother. It is hard. Some people posting on here have managed to organise groups of parents doing mutual babysitting, which sounds like a solution. I know when I was a single mother there was no way I could afford to pay a babysitter

When i asked them to sit on the day of the week when they do salsa as a one off ...i got the reply that they never went out when i was a child.

Are you sure it was an emergency? It sounds like from their response that they didn’t consider it an emergency and were annoyed that you had put them in a position of feeling like they had to give up their social commitment

I think they are just making it clear that they are not available as on tap babysitters. My parents made it clear before I started having children that they were not going to be childcarers, that they had done their baby time. They do babysit for us but they wouldn’t drop a plan or social commitment for it unless it really was a genuine emergency and equally I wouldn’t ask them to if it wasn’t an emergency

My parents and my in-laws never help us with our DC. We live abroad but even if we lived next door they wouldn’t help.

My parents had no help with childcare as my maternal grandparents died young and my paternal gps lived 2 hours away. My in-laws had a lot of help but according to my MIL ‘we had no help, we all had to manage on our own’. Which is a total lie in her case. She had a part-time housekeeper who also babysat sat my DH now and again and she freely admits that her sister ‘practically raised’ her eldest son.

Even if she had struggled alone, why be mean? If parents know how hard it is to do it all alone, then why not offer to help rather than sit there gloating at their adult child’s misery.

I don’t get it. I will definitely help my DC with their DC when they’re little if I can. Why not? I would hate to see my DC struggle on their own if they don’t have to.

I am on the fence with this one.

I do agree that parents dont owe their adult children, babysitting. No one does. However, as a family i do think you should try and help eachother out. But there should be np obligation.

In this situation, the OP does early get some help with babysitting. Even if occassionally and she refuses to say what the 'emergency' was. So its difficult to judge, when then op isnt giving the full story.

I wasn't there so I don't have the insight into how they said things and how they act that you do OP. But is it possible that in your sadness over not getting the support you could really use, you are reading more venom into their response than they intend? Could it be that rather than really being gleeful about it, they're mainly thinking "well that's what life's like with children" and then using the flippant remarks about their own experience not going out as more of a throwaway than a real dig at you? Because they just don't think it is a big thing not to be able to go out when you have kids, they think it's normal.

My parents had no family help when I was a child - my Dad's parents died before I was born, and my Mum’s parents were very unhelpful, even during a genuine emergency when my Mum was hospitalised for several weeks when my brother and I were pre-schoolers. (Luckily my Dad's aunt and uncle stepped in on that occasion).

As a result, my parents bend over backwards to help me out, as they remember how tough it was for them.

To me, that’s the normal response, not saying “well it was tough for us so it’s good that it’s tough for you too”.

Having said that, my parents play bridge once a week (equivalent to your parents and their salsa night) so I wouldn’t ask for help on that night.

Sometimes you can’t help but do the maths, even with family.

I was ‘mumma’s little helper’ from early on. Helped a lot with younger siblings, was her best friend and confidant through two bad marriages.

Was always counted on to help with the big things, like arrange funerals for her parent, cos she was so sensitive (apparently).

When I had a child (only grandchild), I made the mistake of thinking that she’d be there for me to lean on a bit. I had a long hard physical recovery from the birth, a child who wouldn’t eat or sleep (until I paid for professional help) and eventually a mental health breakdown. Her help? She walked the baby around the block, once, for 13 minutes. Invited her over ‘for a tea party’ aged 3, and perhaps a handful of other things. She lives 7 mins away from us.

She’s spent most of the rest of my DD’s childhood on the phone to her friends telling them what a fabulous GM she is. She has been FAR TOO BUSY with her dog (she’s retired, the dog is perfectly normal) to help us at all.

I still spend one month a year looking after my grandmother, cos my DM is also FAR TO PUT UPON to do it (GM is 97). At my age, my mother had the help of 4 family members. She’s the only grandparent in the picture to help my DD, and she chooses not to.

I feel for you, OP. I think we were allowed to think that help and care were a two-way street. Some of these Boomers are really extracting the urine, if you ask me.

Malificent
I’ve been on some of your other threads. And read how your father is. This is just a continuation of him and his wife’s attitude toward you. I also think you are a bit down on life, which is a shame. You have a child, who I imagine adores you. Have you ever thought about having counselling?