Feeling jealous and generally grumpy when i hear or see how much help other parents get

[LiJo2015]

I need grounding and perspective and i know mn wont fail me!

I am estranged from my family and cannot rely on my husbands family for help with childcare.

Met up with another mama today who explained how she had childcare provided from her and her partners side and i cant deny i felt jealous. This issue of course far exceeds the childcare aspect and i generally just miss having any form of parental support myself.

So aibu? Am i being a whinging minnie or is it understandable?

@ShallWeStartTheMeeting

God this sounds so hard - im so sorry 🌷

@Grapewrath

🌷

@LiJo2015 I am only up to your post at the bottom of page 3 but it’s made me so emotional. I’m so sorry to hear about your dmum.

As you say it isn’t about the babysitting, I can afford one, but just about the emotional connection and my children having adults in their lives to bond with and learn from. In my family the adults had roles - very traditional because it was the 1970s but my grandad had his shed and allotment, my grandma did baking, knitting and played board games with me, I’d enjoy visiting great aunts and uncles and having orange squash which I wasn’t allowed at home. Because they were retired they had more time to hang out with me. I feel that my dc are lacking the interactions with other adults i had. It doesn’t help that one has ASD and so I have to explain how conversations work when she should be surrounded by adults having conversations with her and learning naturally.

Incidentally my exmil offered to look after the older child so I could have a ‘break’. How would the other child feel knowing she isn’t wanted by grandma?

@stealthninjamum

I am so sorry to read this was triggering for you. At the same time - i get it. Its also something i feel isnt discussed enough. The world we have now is so different to what our parents had - or at least it feels this way? Families are so dispersed now and fanily dynamics are so much more varied. Everything you say about the roles that our extended families have and can give our children is absolutely true and something that friends cant do. Its that sense of kinship, identity and investment that blood relatives have. Yes friends can do this but when the chips are down, blood family 'should' come through.

I am estranged from all of my family, i have no comtact with any of mu bio fanily. I am an orphan in a sense. Estrangement i find also comes with a judgement, people just dont get it - that something must be wrong with me? This last point is something i internalze.

I only really get bothered by it when friends, who have round-the-clock family support/babysitters, complain about how hard they have it.

Someone I know often complains that she's tired, fed up with the kids arguing and has just had enough of how RELENTLESS it all is.

Her parents:
Take all three of her children every other weekend.
Have them some weeknights if she and her husband fancy watching a film/going to a party.
If she gets a cold they take them until she's better.
Take the kids for Christmas, Easter and half term trips away.
Sometimes she'll just ask them to babysit so she can get extra sleep in the morning.

I have to really bite my tongue because of course, it's all relative, and it's not up to me to decide whether she's worthy of complaining. But nobody's babysat my kids in 10 years, it's all been us, no date nights, nothing.

It was a fucking miracle we managed to arrange someone to stay with my eldest as I gave birth to my second. I ended up arranging a homebirth for my third so my parents wouldn't have to be 'inconvenienced', bless them.

I think your situation is probably as much the norm as the other though. We don't have any help and nor really do a lot of mums I know. Dh's family lives far away (they would be only minimal help anyway, maybe the occasional evening of babysitting, maybe, but MIL has health issues which mean we can't leave her unsupervised with dc, so another family member has to travel from even further away to babysit MIL if she were to babysit dc). My family lives even further away (overseas) but I am NC with them. When we need help, we have to pay for it.

But I also think there is something about standing on your own two feet and doing everything yourself. I wouldn't want help. I want to rely on myself and dh. My mum, when we were still in contact, used to occasionally give us some money for nursery. I was doing a post grad degree and dh was still early in his career. For Christmases and birthdays, I asked that instead of buying us presents (we don't need presents) if she could contribute to nursery costs that month instead because that is something we'd really appreciate and value. She did, but then would often point out how she needed to help us financially and we weren't independent. She clearly forgets that my grandparents provided full-time 8am-6pm care for me from 3 months until I started school and then did the school runs for her and fed me dinner every weeknight. They also had me full days every school holiday, sick day and sometimes on the weekends too if she wanted a break. Realistically, I spent more time with them than with her (or my dad, who was largely absent). That isn't a criticism of her, it was lovely to be with my grandparents (until they died when I was around 11). But I think she forgets how easy she had it never having to worry about sorting out a single day's worth of childcare until I was in secondary school. They did everything for her. Personally, I wouldn't want that, but I don't begrudge people who do.

I know this is an oldish thread but I understand where a lot of pp come from. I'm so sorry op , it sounds very tough, everything you have been through.
I have lots of family and they never help, no matter what. I would never expect childcare to work but we've moved houses while having toddlers and pregnant, no help offered at all, I've had, thankfully, minor illnesses and again absolutely no help but things like having dry socket and having to look after v small kids, it was hell. They all knew about it but didn't help. I totally helped my siblings with kids pre-kids loads as I sort -of thought that was normal...especially if they were ill or exhausted. My parents are mid 70's now anyway so wouldn't have energy at all but they have never, ever even gone for a walk around the block or to the playground even once with me and my dcs... my eldest is 10!! And I guess it will never happen. I asked my sister once if she would mind them while they were in bed so we could go out for a meal for our 10 year anniversary and there was a huge fuss and back and forth and then ultimately a no. I am surrounded by ppl with endless support and close family ties. My dh family are totally handsoff and also impractical and would never help.
My dh and me are v 50/50 as we have to be so we take weekends away ourselves and give each other time off. I think some ppl take the absolute piss too however, I meet a very elderly lady in the local playground with a 2 year old who she can't control at all and despite talking everyday she couldn't remember who i was this morning.....imagine she's with a highly mobile 2 year old ..he nearly bolted in front of a car, crazy..
Despite this I get lovely messages, requests for photos etc but at the end of the day we are on our own. I know ppl have it so much worse but it can be hard to realise also that we are fckt if things go wrong and it's a v v sharp contrast to what I see around me.