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?

Plus nobody is a SAHM to an NT 10 and 15 year old who are in school all day. They’re unemployed.

I’m not naive enough to think that this won’t turn into massive amounts of childcare once DD starts the course. If she’s got no childcare now and her only option is OP, how is she going to work training shifts without OP stepping into the breach.

Don’t have kids, I’m infertile, but cheers for that.

Then OP can help but make it clear she can’t do any more than 1 day a month and school hols 🤷🏼‍♀️ Then if it doesn’t work out it doesn’t, but I suspect OP is using that as an excuse because she can’t be bothered and doesn’t want her grandson interrupting her lovely life with her other kids and husband.

She wasn’t to know about your infertility.

Indeed, which is why you don’t make personal comments about other people’s circumstances.

Excellent, and when DD starts the course thinking she’s all sorted, and then realises she’s uk shit creek without a paddle and will lose the money she’s spent…? It’s a lose lose scenario - either the money is lost or DD will really turn up the pressure. “You’re already doing X, I just need a bit more help…”

Maybe OP doesn’t want her life disrupted. That’s actually up to her. She’s not obliged to be the other parent to her DD’s children.

Yes, the way to avoid this particular problem is to not tell someone you feel sorry for their kids in the first place.

The fact remains 1 day a month is fuck all 🤷🏼‍♀️

And also not what OP has been asked for, what with school holidays existing.

Interesting that you're not discussing your remark with the infertile person who you put your foot in it with, incidentally.

Fair point. Or a "housewife".

This whole MN thing about how grandparents who don't step up will be abandoned in their old age, bewilders me. Quite apart from the spitefulness of it, I'd say that the majority of old people DON'T want their children to have to care for them

Agree. I'm an older poster too, with a disabled dd. And a NT dd. Last thing I want is for my NT dd to feel that I expect her to care for me in my dotage. She knows I don't. It's been loosely discussed. Most parents do not want to be a burden on their children and will go to great lengths to avoid it.

I agree that the whole tone of these posts are spitting spite.

That’s not her place though is it… that’s the point!!

Of course it is! She's the one who's going to be asked to do the extra care!
There is no other care!

1 weekend day a month to help your daughter into a respectful career? I wouldn't even consider turning it down

A ‘massive amount of childcare’… 1 day a month and on holidays

And so the lack of understanding and foresight goes on.
I so wish, as they say, that I knew as much now, as I did at 25.

1 weekend day a month to help your daughter into a respectful career? I wouldn't even consider turning it down

Posted too soon. That was not my comment

@rookiemere you are just presuming though, aren't you. Sorry, I can't quote your post as you quoted me in it.

I'd rather the OP explained why.

Can you not even bother to read the whole OP before replying? There’s one day a month plus a number of days during school holidays, all 14 weeks of them.

And that is so the DD can work as a part time HCA. In order to qualify as a nurse, the DD will need far more childcare than that. She really hasn’t thought it through how she will do that without OP providing a whole lot more childcare.

SirMingeALot

I admire your comments and obvious understanding of the situation.
I am in the daughter's position, yet realised quite early what my
limitations were going to be.

I know a lot of my peers (people who have disabled children) just
took a longer time to face reality.

It's quite shit really. But OP cannot be blamed in any way that her daughter's
life has been affected by having a disabled child. Or recognising that there is no way her daughter can hold down a full time nursing career with a disabled child and all that entails. It's sad, of course. But it happens to the best of us.

I think I would have tried to help if this was my daughter OP.

I do feel very sorry for your daughter and the situation she has found herself in. Perhaps working as a HCA would have shown her the reality of how hard juggling the placements can be. Perhaps she might have got an apprenticeship. Who knows.

But if you won’t / can’t help she will have to look elsewhere.

Yup. Good thing those 13-15 weeks of school holiday will just take care of themselves.

I do wonder how many posters (other than @PhilomenaPringle who has posted very compassionately from her own) have personal experience with looking after a child deemed to need 2-1 care by professionals? Plus a soon-to-be toddler?

I do wonder how many posters (other than @PhilomenaPringle who has posted very compassionately from her own) have personal experience with looking after a child deemed to need 2-1 care by professionals? Plus a soon-to-be toddler?

Pretty much zero, I imagine. Judging by the ridiculous and uninformed comments from the people who have been lucky enough to have NT children.
I've got one of each, which causes even more problems. Can't find an activity to suit the both of them when they're little. The youngest is wanting to go roller skating, ride a bike, go swimming, the oldest can't even walk yet. Summer hols and weekends a nightmare of what to do to suit them both. Alone and unassisted. I somehow managed.

Nobody really wants to help, although they say they do, they don't deliver.

Been there. Done it all and come out the other end.
You have to play with the cards you are dealt.
I have no regrets. I adore both my daughters equally.

Obviously wish my firstborn had been NT. But she isn't.

SirMingeALot
I admire your comments and obvious understanding of the situation.

Thank you. I do have an ND child myself which probably helps with the seeing reality part, though my situation is nowhere near DDs as my child is in mainstream with adjustments, I have always worked, have a supportive partner and have family locally. But even with all those ducks in a row, neither DH nor I could manage now something as logistically complex as nursing training.

She not going to get much HCA experience working one shift a month or retain any skills.

It’s not the initial request from the daughter that would worry me, it’s where it would lead?