This generation of grandparents - vent with me please

[icelollybrolly]

Not sure why I’m surprised considering most of my childhood memories are of my own grandma looking after us more than my parents but, still. I have 2 small children and can’t believe how much my parents just don’t care to actually make an effort to support me/see them/spend meaningful time with them. If they look after them it’s because I just about had to beg them for childcare once every few months, and all they do is sit in the house with them or take them for a happy meal. They never ask to have them or even pop over to see them, but funnily enough my mum will spam her facebook with pictures I’ve sent them of the kids as if she’s taken them, and her friends all gush about how lovely it must be being a grandma etc and she goes on as if they’re her world. Or if they see them and toddler says/does something clever they’ll take credit and say oh we showed her how to do that (not me who’s shown her 100 times no?) It’s a load of shit. How hard is it to spend proper time with your grandkids? They work but have every weekend free, my own grandma was much older when we were kids and she used to take us to farms, cinemas, swimming, all sorts. Just feel let down and sad for my children that their grandparents don’t seem very invested in them.

@96waystobehappy I'm a strict Gangan but dgs loves coming here regardless in fact he needs persuading that it's time for home pretty regularly so he obviously doesn't mind that I expect that he behaves himself whilst he is with me. He is delightful though dd and I are very lucky.

It's not a shame - why should she when they're difficult individuals?!

It's STILL going on

So much of this about beatings etc isn't familiar to me at all. My parents and PIL are definite boomers (born 1945-1952) and DH and are both 44. Neither of us ever hit, don't remember any of my friends ever mentioning it.

I have 2 school mum friends with difficult parental relationships but I can't think of any other examples in my friends (nearly all 40s raised by boomers) where this is the case. Lots and lots of hands on grandparents in there though.

FIL was treated appallingly by his father but that's going back another generation.

It's not a boomer thing! And it wasn't universal among parents.

I did get smacked, a lot, but no belts and my parents didn't smoke. My parents would be 80+ now. And they more than made up for it.

Mine are not particularly involved. PILs much the same. I have never relied on them. My parents health isn't great anyway so it was never going to be anything more than occasionally helping out. You just accept it 🤷🏻

Just to add that it was the opposite for me as a child growing up - I spent most of my summer holidays growing up at my maternal grandparents house, loved it so much. Very special memories I treasure. I feel sad my children won't get that experience too but it is what it is.

Not in most decent homes, it's not.

I spent pretty much every weekend with my grandparents on both sides growing up, but they were quite young and my mam was a single parent so she was glad for the time.

Maybe I was lucky but my mam loved spending time with her grandkids. If anything when they got a bit older she would complain they lost interest in her. My partner's family live in another country but when we saw them her mam loved to see DS too. Unfortunately we've lost both grandmas in the past few years, my mam at 61 and DP mam at 73. I felt bad for all the grandkids probably more than anyone else.

No, my parents never bit me!!? Wtf? I was the most unpleasant and obnoxious wee girl you could meet and still my parents never "beat' me. And I was from a council flat (euch, I know, social housing) in a Scottish estate.

Back of legs once. Never anything else. Biting and hitting are not anything I think of as a normal part of my (80s, to parents born '48 and '52) childhood.

I don't recognise any of what you've said as standard at all.

It’s sad that your parents aren’t enjoying spending time with your children and that your children aren’t having the same experience that you had with your grandmother. I get that you aren’t asking for child care. YABU though to generalise about this generation of grandparents.

Council estate in northern Ireland here, no euch about it, I wish council housing was still available in the volume it was back then,I've just never met anyone of similar age and background who didn't get their bum beat if they misbehaved or whose parents generation wouldn't advise them to bite back a child who bites.

Also my mum was lovely and loving and a tiny little woman with 5 kids and actually in lots of ways a very forward thinking parent, but still smacked legs and my dad was a brute which was more unusual in fairness.

Then we owe each other nothing.

Neither my generation, nor my parents' generation and afaik my grandparents' generation, ever advocated biting a small child.

Not sure it's a generation thing as much as an individual thing, looking at my mum and a friend of hers.

Mine always said she'd never look after grandchildren, that she had done her bit and was done. Yet when I was young my nan travelled 1 hour each way across London twice a week to help my mum around the house and this went on into her 80s. OK, so not directly looking after me but lots of help to my mother nonetheless. My mum didn't become a granny until she was 80s, so no opportunity to help out anyway (especially as I live hundreds of miles away) but I have no doubt she would have stood back anyway, though basked in the glory of being a grandmother.

She really could not understand her friend who, when she became a grandmother in her late 60s, would regularly travel 5 hours on the train to babysit, and generally help out her daughter. My mother thought this was atrocious. I thought it was lovely, and is how I aim to be as a grandmother if the time comes.

@icelollybrolly We have our dgs for 2 days and nights every week to help with childcare. Shock/horror - we are boomers!!!
Our dd is lovely. We do it for her.

I don't want to provide childcare for my kids either. I will help out if they want to go out, and on an ad hoc basis, but I will not be committing to minding children while my kids work. That's not what I will be retiring for.

I was born in the 60s, parents born '36 and '42 never had a finger laid on me (or my siblings) ever. My eldest born '87 and I never laid a finger on him or his siblings either.

Honestly you cannot be serious? Every post on any parenting thing where someone says 'my 3 yr old won't stop biting what should I do?... A woman in her 60s pops up to say 'bite her back that'll soon stop her, it's the only way...'

You would be very surprised at what goes on in decent homes.
Drug use in parents both lawyers Ss let it slide as they took drugs at different times so that was all OK.

If my DH was still alive, we probably would do scheduled regular childcare. But on my own, though I do plenty of ad hoc childcare (three full days and nights last week) I find it exhausting on my own. I consider myself fairly fit for my age (late 60s) but who am I kidding? I'm absolutely knackered after a full day of childcare.

It's easier now that DGD is four. But 12 months to 3 was exhausting, and I'd be desperate for her to have a nap.
I've not started having both girls yet (she has a 13 month old sister). That's going to be a challenge without a partner to tag team with me.

Then they are not decent homes.

More ageist bloody crap.

I am totally serious. I am 60 and it's not something I ever have, or ever would have, advocated. My parents would be 80/98 and my grandmother 110, and not one of them ever suggested such a thing!

But on the outside it all looks decent nice house professional jobs druggie parents.