Grandparents keep giving toddler milky tea

[MrsTrue]

So for the third (maybe fourth) time me and DH have picked up our DD from grandparents around 6-7pm after they've had her for a few hours to be told she's had 'milky tea'. She's 21 months old.

We don't give her any caffeine at all and has asked them 3 times not to do it, we even offered bring round decaf tea bags for them as we drink decaf at home.

DH picked her up earlier to be told she had it again today. I'm really annoyed it's happened again and feel it's impacting her sleep. Apparently it's so weak ot wouldn't have an impact (it's the teabag they've used dipped in water and a splash of milk).

Am I right to be annoyed, or overreacting?

I agree, there are some toxic situations described on MN, but don’t consider the one described by OP to be one of them (edited typo/for clarity).

DGP used to give things we didn’t have at home eg lemonade, biscuits, but knew they were ‘treats’ and didn’t expect them elsewhere.

I didn’t grow up to drink lemonade or eat biscuits, it had no lasting effect on my choices, but lasting memories. I’m grateful they weren’t restricted by DM or DF and also provided a lot of emotional stability.

You are all bloody nuts. I grew up on tea and still love it. No harm at all.

Why is honey better for teeth than sugar?

For me, it's more the principles here. They get away with repeatedly ignoring your wishes on how you would like your child raised. What's next? We had this starting similar - giving the kids squash repeatedly when we said just water repeatedly, but it just became a bigger thing each time, up to the point where they took her to an indoor play area first week out of lockdown when she is immunosuppressed and I was having chemo after we had repeatedly stressed to just play at theirs. They did not see the kids again unsupervised for over a year. They know now they are welcome to see them, but within a few rules or they simply won't again.

To those who say it's important to include her in the tea and biscuits routine, she is very much included. She doesn't need to have a fairly grim sounding watery and milky tea to be included. We give her hot milk, which she calls tea or coffee, and she has the occasional sip of my decaf tea and decaf coffee, which she enjoys! For a child that is less than 2, I think that's more than acceptable as a treat and she absolutely loves it.

To those saying there's no harm in caffeine, then why are you told to limit intake when pregnant due to risk of low birth weight and miscarriage? According to the NHS there is 75mg in a mug of tea vs 100mg in an instant coffee. I wonder if everyone would feel the same if GPs had given a very milky coffee just before bedtime instead. It's just unnecessary when she o up has water and milk and is happy with both.

To those claiming it's free childcare and we should be grateful, they ask to have her because they want to, it's of minimal help to us but we want them to have a good relationship and it's nice to see them have fun together. They do help us out occasionally when we get stuck and for that I am very grateful. We'd like for them to have her more and I know they'd love that too, but they've repeatedly broken our trust in the past so that takes time to repair. I'm not being unreasonable either, they repeatedly gave us an exhausted, hungry baby and made it difficult to follow doctor's orders around a food diary. They refused to admit they could do anything differently even though others had no issues looking after her. They blamed a lot of it on BF.

Sounds like a lot of parents wouldn't even allow their DD near them after all this, which is why we reduced contact. But we equally want and need them in our lives and enjoy spending time with them. We're rebuilding the mutual trust and respect slowly and this just came out of the blue when I thought we were doing so much better.

The reason for the thread was because I was SO baffled and frustrated by the determination to give milky tea, it made absolutely no sense to me. Now I understand some people see it completely differently and GPs probably just wanted to recreate the experiences they had with their own DC. Doesn't excuse it in my view, but at least I now understand where they're probably coming from and possibly why there was so much enjoyment in telling us about it. I will have the conversation with them to understand it better though.

Thanks everyone for the responses, it's been a mix of entertaining and helpful. The completely irrational love of tea by the British clearly endures!

i feel you’re over reacting sorry! It won’t be affecting her sleep the tea bag has probably hardly been in the water..I think it’s nice for kids to have a little thing they do just with the grandparents x

I am also gobsmacked by how many people give tea to their little ones. Absolute madness and just shows the British obsession with tea.

I hope and pray my son comes home with a sensible woman who is not uptight over foolishness. Tea originates from China try again op.

There are bigger hills to die on.

I wish my kids drank tea. Much better than the soft drinks they veer towards.

Stop them having her then?

I am absolutely gobsmacked by the absolute overreaction by some parents on this thread who are going to get a right shock when their little darling turns into a teenager and is drinking much worse things..

It’s a cup of tea, not a can of coke. Get over yourself

I’m actually quite surprised at how many people have said you’re being unreasonable!

At the end of the day, you are the parents therefore what you say goes. If you’ve said no, then that should be respected, end of.

I’m not sure whether giving grandparents, who are providing free ad hoc childcare, a strict list of your childcare rules is necessary. You seem to suggest that their contact time has been reduced as a result of them feeding too much cake, varying your dictated nap times, nappy changing etc. Of course, it is essential that GPs keep your children safe, but I wonder whether their care choices should, to some degree, be their choice - provided of course they are safe, albeit not necessarily ‘healthy’. Even more so if it is for limited periods of time.

I am not a grandparent. I am a mother who had similar gripes about my mother’s care of my children. I objected to cake at breakfast, endless jam tarts, overlong naps, late nights when they slept over, ‘heavy’ nappies when I collected etc. In hindsight, I now recognise that my objections were probably, in part, based upon: feelings of jealousy, a lack of confidence in my role and a desire to reinforce that they were MY children, that I had control over, and not my mothers! I was trying to stamp my authority, but found reasons to justify my objections that I truly believed in at the time. Your objections do sound reasonable, but I am just offering an alternative viewpoint.

As it turned out, my children remarkably suffered no ill effects from the skip loads of cake for those short years, but had a magical relationship with my mum. I benefitted greatly from her spasmodic free childcare and have appreciated this more now, as I realise not everyone has this support.

I have no opinion on the caffeine issue, but perhaps your doctor could advise and you can then decide whether this is something you really want to push. You may also find that when your children start school, you don’t always agree with the choices made at their setting in loco parentis.

But they’re teenagers, they can do a line of coke then, but I still wouldn’t be giving one to a 2 year old!

This is the single most bonkers thread I have ever read on MN. The level of utterly irrational hysteria about a few mouthfuls of milky tea is completely batshit.

They have nothing better to do apart from worry about a milky tea. I wish I had their worries life sounds to easy for them.

It's non about tea or caffeine.
It's that they've been asked multiple times not to, and they just disregard your requests

We shouldn't have to explain or justify our parenting choices.

It would really annoy me too OP.

especially as you’ve expressly asked them not to.

Yes, this! Unless you’re buying very specific (and more expensive!) decaf then the chemicals in the decaf tea are probably far more worth worrying about than the actual caffeine!

My son wanted to copy us with a gin when we were at my parents house and it was a bit of a tradition. He got sparking water with a slice of lemon and ice from the age of 3 - he would sip it and say Grandad/ma you do make a better gin than Mummy!!
He would sit with us all at gin time and talk away - v happy memories,
Relax OP

Yeah you are overreacting. Baby is English? Needs to learn to drink tea... the sooner the better.

Also they give caffeine on a drip to premature babies so it can't do that much harm!

Seems more like a lot of people getting massively over defensive because others do things differently. Why give a stimulant of any kind a one year old when they are otherwise perfectly happy to eat and drink healthily?! There is plenty of time when they are old to try real tea and ‘join in’ with others. Why do kids play tea parties: because they are capable of joining in, learning, or playing along using their imaginations.

If it’s any consolation OP, my parents are lovely people and have helped out a lot with my kids/dogs/pets etc over the years but they show a total disregard for any « rules » we ask them to follow. This has gradually led to us involving them less in many things which is a shame. I’d be annoyed by this, it’s important to you that she doesn’t have tea, it’s not that hard for them to follow your request. Buckle up, I’d imagine this will be the first of many similar issues.

They really are

Sounds like a lot of GP wouldn’t let DD go any where near them after this ??????
how fucking pathetic .