AIBU not to help DD out with childcare?

[reesep]

DD has a son with special needs age 5, and a daughter age 1.

She has requested I look after them one day at a weekend, every month. She has also requested I do some daytime childcare during the school holidays

This is so she can get into nursing. She's desperate to be a nurse and has been accepted into a Healthcare Assistant role on bank, meaning she can pick shifts

AIBU not to provide such rigid help? It's too much of an expectation and I can't handle it

I do feel bad but it's just too much. She also lives 1.5 hours away so it would mean bringing the DC here

AIBU?

I don't think this sounds practical or fair in you
Whilst we'd all love to help out sometimes you just can't.

As a lone parent of 3 who is a nurse, I agree it isn't a realistic goal for her. I have close family support, neurotypical dc and a very flexible job and I still struggle immensely.

1 day a month isn't a lot to ask though and I would agree. She will soon figure out she is going to struggle massively with it.

OP isn't obliged to provide childcare to help her daughter. I still find her position on this quite odd.

OP does seem to be in a position to help. She doesn't work, she has a husband. She had 2 children at home but they are older. I just can't get my head around why she wouldn't. Although PPs have assumed all sorts of reasons why, the OP herself said it was due to "rigidity and stress".

Do people genuinely think it's acceptable for a 10 and 15 year old to have significant involvement in the care of their 5 year old nephew- who lest we forget has 2 adults looking after as 1 is deemed not enough- or a 1 year old baby?

I'm going to be charitable and assume most of them didn't read past the first post. The posts about the other DC learning compassion through the medium of providing childcare and people not understanding why she might find it stressful are just too ridiculous otherwise.

Perhaps a clue is in the fact that DGS has 2-1 care when he is in a school setting. OP presumably doesn't want to labour the fact that she may find looking after a ND 5 year old stressful and exhausting, and that's without adding the 1 year old into the mix. Or her iwn DCs which despite apparently being almost grown up, possibly do require some weekend ferrying to sports matches etc. and maybe some parenting.

I disagree with voters saying OP has the right to question her daughter's choices because she is being asked to help. She just should say yes or no, it is not up to her to decide what is right for her daughter, who is a grown up and can make her own choices.

Do you feel one should be entitled to judge the lifestyles of people they are helping just because they are helping? When you give a pound to a homeless person, does that suddenly entitle you to patronise them about whatever led them being homeless?

OP saying 1. no I will not help [cos I don't want to bother myself], versus 2. no I will not help [because I don't believe in your choices] are two completely different discussions.

Reading her posts OP seems to be doing [1] and then changing her tune to using [2] as an excuse. Both are substandard mothering imo.

Substandard mothering - really?
what about their actual DM who has decided that in the aftermath of what may well have been an upsetting divorce for the DS, that it's a perfect time to pursue her career dreams which will involve them being driven 3 hrs a day when DGM cares for them - nobody quite knows how the other days will work out - and quite a lot of disruption to their lives.
But no clearly a younger mother is entitled to pursue her nursing dream and the older woman's role is to nod and facilitate, regardless of the personal cost.

what's the personal cost of one day a month or so @rookiemere ? you seem to be making some assumptions there.

OP hasn’t been back and I’m not surprised. All I can say is make it clear what you can offer, in terms of childcare. And don’t deviate from that. Once a month plus a few extra days during school holidays is too broad. There is no way your DD will only expect one day a month and a few extra days during school holidays.

No job allows someone to work one day a month. Does your DD have other childcare lined up, apart from yourself? Even if she does it won’t be long before she’s telling you her other carer has let her down so could you possibly have them 2 days this month? And that will become 3 days, then 4…… Then she’ll be expecting you to drive an hour and a half to pick them (because they are running late) and drop them off (because she’s had a hard day). Once a month will quickly turn into several times a week.

Very often I’ll pick my GC up (because DD will be late if she has to drop them to me) but they live 30 mins away. I wouldn’t be prepared to travel an hour and a half, several times a week to pick up and drop off. It simply isn’t viable.

Do not succumb to the vitriol from parents of young children here OP. They don’t have a clue. You obviously do. Just do what’s best for you. You seem to think DD’s plans are pie in the sky. I agree.

Most mothers wait until their children are in school and fairly independent before they “Follow their Dreams”. That way they are not putting on anyone else, except for school holidays. Your DD is expecting too much from you and you know it. Stand firm. You have an obligation to best care for your younger children. Your DD and the childrens father have an obligation to care for their children. The father not being around doesn’t mean you have to step into his role. Where are he and his parents in all this?

Do you feel one should be entitled to judge the lifestyles of people they are helping just because they are helping? When you give a pound to a homeless person, does that suddenly entitle you to patronise them about whatever led them being homeless?

This is a silly comparison.

The homeless person isn't asking for an ongoing, significant, open ended commitment that even in the unlikely event it never goes beyond the initial agreement, is still based on the completely unrealistic premise that DD is going to do a 6 hour drive on top of a full HCA shift.

I disagree with voters saying OP has the right to question her daughter's choices because she is being asked to help. She just should say yes or no, it is not up to her to decide what is right for her daughter, who is a grown up and can make her own choices

In any other arena this may well be fair enough, but on here I guarantee OP would have been asked why she didn't care enough to expand on the "no"

To be honest I don’t think it matters, in terms of her input, whether the career ‘succeeds’ or not. The fact is she’ll be giving her daughter a hand to enable her to work and do something she enjoys, and have a little bit of a life outside of her house. If the shifts go well and she gets onto the nursing course, yes that’ll be a bridge to cross. But otherwise it will fill the yawning gap in her CV which will make it very hard for her to re-enter the job market when her kids are bigger. I would see it as something I’m doing to let my daughter have a bit of a life again, rather than an ‘investment’ in a future career.

This has to be wind them up and watch them go post referred to on another site.

😂

So entitlement to judgement depends on the significance of help given ? How do we place the scales? If you were to give the homeless person 10 pounds a month? You can tell them not to drink anymore? How about to charity? 100 a month, then do you get to decide whom they help? No more silly than this mum's entitlement to decide whether her daughter should be a nurse.

Here were talking about a mum helping her daughter train to become a nurse, a profession the UK that has significant shortage. The help that's been asked, without the extra speculations here, involves an hr here and there, a day a month. The daughter has a sen child, and has been through a divorce. Nursing is her dream. I cannot believe the amount of people who are okaying the mum judging this woman's choice to retrain, her career of choice, and justifying the unsupportiveness even at the minuscule scale of ask. Everyone has different family closeness and support standards I guess.

@Logsandcogs how an earth can the help OP provides be "an hour here and there" when the DD lives 1.5 hrs away ?

Entitlement to an opinion is greater when the person concerned is being expected to facilitate something happening, yes. This is not actually a controversial point.

If we're going to insist on continuing with idiotic homeless analogies, the point at which it will become comparable is when the homeless person asks someone to provide open ended childcare for their baby and 5 year old who needs a 2 on 1 ratio. Which obviously is a thing that could definitely happen.

Her DD offered to drive them herself, a journey she already does weekly.

I guarantee it will not be one day a month, and the OP knows it.

Why doesn’t she just agree to one day a month but say she can’t do more than that?

People can judge whatever the hell they want to, tbh. Whether you approve of them doing so or not is irrelevant.

If OP doesn’t want to take on a commitment that isn’t likely to lead to anything for the DD, or may lead to OP being asked to take on more and more, then that’s fair enough.

DD is not going to do a 3hr round trip for the OP to do a couple of hours of childcare, in fact it would be six hours of driving for the DD if she dropped them off then picked them up after her shift.

That's going to get old very quickly.

Waiting for your next thread:
My dd has gone n/c and I want to see my gc.

Yes, and then she will expect her mother to do the driving as well as the childcare.

It’s one day a month and an unspecified amount of days in school holidays of which there are 14 weeks a year! And this is only for the DD to take the part time healthcare assistant role. She would need far more than this to take the more than full nursing course!

But otherwise it will fill the yawning gap in her CV which will make it very hard for her to re-enter the job market when her kids are bigger

I have a child with substantial LD who doesn't even need 2 to 1 supervision.
The 'bigger' she's got, the less possible it is to get any sort of outside support.
She's 30 now, and I do get a fair amount of help to get her out and about in the community. Someone to support her to go swimming. Someone to take her to the cinema. To take her for a walk in the park on a nice day, perhaps. I have done all these things with her myself, obviously, but after 30 years it wears a bit thin and I'm getting older while she gets bigger.

There was never, and will never be, the amount of support it would take for me to hold down a full time job - so I've not been able to do that. It's shit, and the amount of times I've despaired of the unfairness of it all are incalculable.
OP's daughter is at the stage of not facing the reality of her position.
All the people who are saying they would do anything and everything to help their daughter under these circumstances are completely ignorant of the input that would be involved. They have no idea of the intensity of looking after a child with special needs and a one year old baby on top. It's cloud cuckoo land. It's a fairytale.

They are looking at the situation so superficially. One day a month and a few school holidays will not support a full time career. OP can see this. And things will not just work themselves out as they go along. Not under these circumstances. It's crap, it feels unfair, and sometimes intolerable. But you have to play with the cards you are dealt, which the dd will eventually come to terms with. It's early days for her. It's not feasible for her to pass this responsibility on to someone else - her mother, who has two school age children herself. I apologise for sounding like a miserable old scroat, but as I have considerable experience of the situation I felt I had to support OP who has taken a lot of undeserved criticism. And for myself, looking back, of course I wish I'd been able to have more of a rewarding career for myself, but caring for my disabled dd has not been entirely unrewarding. And I feel quite the very opposite of a failure.
I think I've done a bloody good job, and so does everyone else we know.