What is your child's relationships like with their grandparents?

[bez91]

I'll keep this as brief as possible.

I was lucky enough to have both sets of grandparents up to being 25, I had a fantastic relationship with all of them. One set lived 2 hours away but all were fun, kind, loving, they'd look after me, siblings, cousins, take us to the park, come and watch school concerts etc etc what I'd consider to be a normal grandchild/grandparent relationship and did so much for me and to help my dad out when my mum died when I was a child.

My DD is 2, she has a fantastic relationship with my dad they really are best friends, he looks after her once a week and she worships the ground he walks on. He's silly and she finds him so much fun.

DHs parents are separated and remarried. The relationship between my DD and MIL is practically non-existent and I just find it strange... she lives about an hour away so we see her once a month. It's clear MIL loves the bones of her the way she talks to DH and me but she just doesn't seem to have forged a relationship with her. To be open, DH and me have had a frosty relationship with her due to previously spates of her telling lies and generally being not a very nice person. This would never affect our DD, nor would she ever be made aware of what has happened in the past. Just to summarise a few things to give a bit of context;

• We take it turns to go to one another's houses, MIL can drive but won't drive on the motorway so has to wait for her husband to be available to drive her. Suggested she get the train - she won't
• she is so standoffish with DD when she sees her, won't play with her, just talks to her like an adult then she gets upset like a child when DD doesn't want to hug her when we leave - it's because she doesn't know her
• won't barely acknowledge DD when we go to her house as she has jealous dogs 🤷‍♀️ she won't put her foot down with them, they must take priority
• she's never offered any sort of help with anything for DD from being born i.e nappy changes, feeding, just having her for 2 minutes so we can eat our dinner
• everytime we see her we just go out for something to eat, she wouldn't dream of suggesting we do something DD might enjoy, what 2 year old wants to spend all their time sat in restaurants? The only places she's spent time with her are at our houses or going out for food - boring for a 2 year old
• she'll then spend over £100 on her every birthday and Christmas and she every time she sees her buys her far too much chocolate etc. It almost seems like she's trying to buy her affection
• she will whine everytime she rings DH that she never sees DD but will not do anything about it

It's just mixed messages, being slightly personal she is pretty dull. But I just find it so so sad that the only female role model my DD has is me, she is the only biological grandmother DD has and I'd have thought she'd have seen that as an opportunity to have a close relationship with her but it seems not.

AIBU to think this is just not normal and a bit weird? How is your child's relationship with their grandparents?

X

Mine are very close to my mum, dad is no longer with us.
They have nothing to do with the ex in laws as they find them very judgemental. I'm the second wife (not the former other woman) and they don't approve of how I do things. They were the same with the first wife, nobody is good enough for their son. They have four children, two dds and a Ds and it's only one Ds who isn't NC with them.

My parents live abroad but DS 6 has a great relationship with them, they video call a couple times a week and he loves them dearly. FIL lives 4 hours away and again has a great relationship (FIL is clearly DS's favourite grandparent!).

MIL and her husband - have no interest at all. They used to live 7 miles away and still made little effort - always initiated by us. We moved about 4 hours away 2 years ago. They don't call, no messages, don't even ask how DS is. Not even birthdays or Christmas. We used to do all the legwork to push a relationship ie. sending pictures and requesting video calls. But we gave up in the end. It's fine, she's the grandmother who sends a token gift at birthdays (like a piece of clothing that will fit him in 3 years time) just to tick a box. She doesn't know him, isn't really interested. That's fine, it's her loss. But she has the audacity to pretend on Facebook and in her Christmas 'newsletters' that he matters. According to her 'newsletters' - Last year she did not see DS because apparently me and DH's works schedules have been 'silly busy' - which is news to us. And they hope to see us 'next week'. Also news to us. The previous year she didn't see DS because we live 'so far away' ...

As she jets off on her third visit in as many years to Australia for 6 weeks to visit her DD and her other two grandchildren with suitcases full of gifts 🤷‍♀️

If I'm honest, he's better off without her if she isn't genuinely interested in him. I'm not going to force a fake relationship. My son has 3 other grandparents and a great grandmother who is 90 who he has great natural connections and relationships with. I focus on those - as they are precious.

My DC have my MIL within 5 mins, FIL & his wife 5 mins away and my mum and her partner 15 mins away.

Kids see their GPs every week, they all make time to see the kids and the kids adore them all. Although i think FILs house is the favourite as they go to huge lengths to have fun and make and do a lot with them.

All GPs are willing to babysit too if required. We are lucky to have such GPs in our DCs lives.

Youngest dd never got to meet any grandparents. Older two only had two grandparents. Unfortunately mil favored dd1 over dd2.

Thanks all for your responses.

As ever the varied response never ceases to amaze me in MN from "cut her out of your life" to seemingly "I am being unreasonable allowing my judgement to spill over" 😂

It is nice to hear it is the normal for some although very sad to hear for the children's sake of other useless/non engaging grandparents too.

She is set in her ways and any suggestions of trips elsewhere are brushed off with shall we go for something to eat instead 🤷‍♀️ who knows... will just persevere and tear our hair out until the end of time 😊

Paternal Grandad died when I was four but I was incredibly close to him and I’m still close to my paternal Grandma, I spent most weekends with her until I was a teen.

Maternal Grandad is a wonderful man. He used to take care of me every so often but he always visited with amazing gifts and took me away with him and his church group on trips sometimes. Maternal Grandma bit more complex, haven’t seen her since I was eight when she basically upped and left my Grandad suddenly after 30+ years of marriage...

My DC are only close with my Mum so their maternal Grandma. My Dad hasn’t really bothered with them since they were all tiny, he lives 200+ miles away and plainly cba visiting. I made the effort of going to visit him a couple of years ago and my DC honestly had no idea who he was, they called him ‘the man’. He sends us all e-cards for our birthdays and that’s literally it, have decided he’s just a bit of a twat which is a shame because we were close when I was a child.

IL’s live abroad and barely visit.

PIL have my ds 19 months once a week whilst I work and are brilliant at covering if needed too. They have also had him overnight a few times.

My mum has ds when she can (works full time) but sees him once a week plus face times. My dad wasn't super sure what to do with ds when he was a baby baby but loves the bones of him now. I probably wouldnt leave ds alone with him just yet as we have very different ideas of risk. Ds has stayed at my parents too.

Ds loves all of his grandparents and has a lovely relationship with them which I'm so happy about, I always wanted him to have bonds with more people than just me and DH. I genuinely dont know how we would manage with support of parents (grateful not goady)

Great relationship with both sides - my DS adores his DGFs.

I only had 1 set but had a lovely, close relationship with them

I don't find it weird at all but that may be because both my parents and my kids dads parents are selfish arseholes that never really cared for us either! However my Nan adores my children and helps a lot she's absolutely lovely and I must admit she buys them a lot of chocolate too!

Very close with my parents, see them almost every day and have slept over a lot this pg even though I only live 10mins away - I had hyperemesis and couldn't get DS to nursery/cook/stay standing up for months! Very grateful.

PILs live 1.5h away and we see them about every month or two, we usually go out for lunch then they come back for tea and then go home in the eve. We take it in turns to visit and usually stay the night to save DH driving twice (PIL get the train)

MIL died long before I ever met DH so unfortunately none there, FIL has a good relationship with them, DM is very close with them and DF see's them once in a blue moon

My DP are both dead. They were both narcs. My kids all have different memories of them and none of them are especially fabulous. My PIL are divorced and both remarried. FIL is the nicest of them, but is a rather soggy, ineffective person. He is rather controlled by his routine and thinks that it is the 1950’s. I really like his wife and don’t know how she puts up with him, tbh. I am sure that without her, we’d never hear from him. Because of her, the kids get birthday cards, etc... MIL is a pill. She likes to divide and conquer. She had a series of shitty, violent boyfriends and needed constant rescuing in the middle of the night, until we told her that we wouldn’t play anymore, and that she needed to Adult Up. We live in Aus, and she moved away to a mining town nearly 7000km away (amen) and realized how many single men were around. Promptly married a newly widowed man, and adopted his racist and homophobic views to fit in with his family ethos. She keeps trying to jam that down my kids necks. Not cool. She is also trying to play mind games to split DH and me. If that works, she can have him. Her divide and conquer games are not limited to me and DH, but also to my kids... the best example was my DT’s 11th bday. DD received a large box with (shitty) jewellery, nail polishes, lipglosses, hair doodads, etc and $50 in a card. DS received a card with $5.00 and a small ziplock bag with FAKE LEGO. Bitch. That kid had never done or said anything to offend her. My dd tried to give him half her money. While I had never said anything to affect their relationship with their Nanna, they asked me if they could speak openly about her that day. (She has recently been to visit) and sooooo much had come out. She will NEVER darken my door again.

My DS’s paternal GM is dead and he doesn’t see his paternal GF, but then he doesn’t see his father either.

My DF is now quite ill with dementia so we don’t see my DPs much, not that we ever did. I live 100 miles away and I don’t drive.My DPs would only come down once in a blue moon when my DF was well and they’d often refuse if I offered to go up for a night or two, it was just too much hassle for DM. They once had DS for a week in the holidays about 5 years ago or so but it just ended in a row as DM had a drink, then texted me saying DS wouldn’t hug her and it was obviously because I denied him affection. I pointed out it was probably because he hardly knows her but then the accusations escalated.

I don’t have a particularly good relationship with my DM. I’ve tried to maintain contact since I left home but she’s not really interested. DF never picked up the phone when he was well either. As a result DS doesn’t really have a relationship with his GPs. Obviously it’s difficult now as DF is ill, but they never bothered before either. He gets some birthday and christmas money, and DM gushes about what a wonderful GS she has but she hardly speaks to him from one year to the next.

I’ve kind of just learned to ignore it now. I used to get upset about my DM never speaking to me, or him, she never texts or returns calls unless she wants something or she has something to boast about, and it used to upset me, but now I just let her get on with it. She knows where I am if she wants me although I won’t be putting myself out for either of them.

A lot of people like to show off that they are grandparents, but dont actually like grandparenting.

My mother likes to show off about lots of things. She was pretty awful to me when I came out as a lesbian. She still makes homophobic comments now, but she loves to show off to other people she knows are gay that she has a lesbian daughter. It’s very creepy.

She also regularly starts sentences With ‘I’m not a racist but.’ She is most definitely racist.

My 1st 2 dc are close to their dads DM. She made a lot of effort to see them esp when they were little. They're older teens now so are often doing their own thing. Their dads father they've only met maybe 5 or 6 times. He didn't like his own kids never mind anyone else's!

My Dad already had the start of altzeimers and dementia by the time they were born so they never really got to know him. He passed away while I was pregnant with my youngest several years later.

My older 2 refused contact with my mother once they got to 14 and 16. Her increasingly nasty racist rants were upsetting and her aggression was getting worse. She was abusive (physically and verbally) to myself and siblings and my older nephew when he was small so I never left my kids with her unsupervised. I stopped my youngest seeing her the same time my older 2 stopped and I went nc with her a few weeks later after she made false allegations about me to the police.

My youngest was very close to my 2nd FIL (different dad to my first 2) bit he sadly passed away when DS was 5. All the kids (and myself) got on very well with him.

My DS has ASD an doesn’t have a great relationship with either set of grandparents as they find his behaviour difficult to accept/deal with. My sister’s girls are very close to my parents and DN is close to DH’s. It is sad but I accept it as part of life. It will be less traumatic for him when they die which is my positive take on it. Not everyone has a perfect family.

I was very close to all of my GPs, and it helped that we lived close by to them.

DM adores my two, and they love her as well. She's good at playing and at basic care needs, but struggles physically with getting down on the floor. As long as they can bring the toy to her, it's no problem. She takes DD(5) for sleepovers just the two of them (DS is only 18mo but hopefully he'll get his turn when he's older), and we go and stay with her during half term and most school holidays. She lives an hour away, and visits once or twice a week to see the DC. We have a lot of days out together as well, which is nice. I couldn't fault her as a DGM, she's great. She's the only person I'd leave either of them with for an extended period of time, apart from DH.

PIL... They live slightly closer than DM, but I'd say we see them once a month, maybe. They're lovely but clearly spend a lot more time with SIL and her kids, which hurts DH sometimes, especially because SIL lives 3+ hours away! They do love my DC and are good with them, but the one time they babysat DD (pre-DS) for an afternoon, they somehow didn't give her any lunch. Strange, because MIL is usually a "feeder", but neither of them remembered. We don't go on trips with them because it's too much - they get upset if it's not perfect and I can't deal with it. They offered to take us to the farm once when DS was tiny, apparently to help me out, and it was more stressful than staying at home on my own with a newborn and a 4yo! It's much better when we just visit or they come to us.

My children don’t have any living GPs. I’m very envious of friends who pop to their mum’s house for coffee or a weekend and use visiting their parents for a few days to help break up the long school holidays.

Both grandmothers adore her and make as much effort as possible to ensure a close relationship. Her one remaining grandfather couldn’t give a toss. At least she has a strong male role model in her dad, so I don’t feel too sorry about it. His loss.

My DD has 3 grandparents (my parents and MiL) and has a really good relationship with all of them. They adore her and make a lot of effort to see her and spend time with her, but they do live nearby. She goes to my MiL if both DH and I are working, perhaps once a week, and has a great time. I'm glad she has a grandfather - both DH and I grew up without them so I think it's nice for DD to have one who is so interested in nurturing a relationship with her. I think we're lucky though to have grandparents that want to spend time with our DD and who don't mind treating her/helping out with childcare when we need it.

I've got to agree with those saying some people aren't good with babies /toddlers. My parents were rubbish until my DC got to about 3/4 but are great now. They live 7 hours away but still see the kids about 4/5 times a year.

MIL is rubbish. Always has been and I think always will (dc are 6 and 8) even when we lived one street away, she never came to see them. Some years, the DC don't even get a birthday card from her. I find it really bizarre. Dc don't even realise that she is their grandparent.

Luckily DHs grandparents (DCs great grandparents) are amazing with the DC and have the best relationship with them. They adore each other. They live 5 minutes away so we see them, at the very least, once a week.