..to think my mum is being a bit unreasonable?

[OlderNotWiser]

My DS1 is now 2 and a bit, and I have always found visisting my mums house a bit of a nightmare. It is cluttered and full of glass nick nacks, candles (lit!), vases, weedkiller/bleach etc in the extension, and just loads of things generally! I spend all my time chasing DS to make sure he doesnt get hold of something he shouldnt since it can be a bit dodgy. (She remains firmly on the sofa while I chase!) On one occasion when he was 18 months old my mum was in the kitchen with him preparing some food (I was elsewhere) and she left him alone, and DP walked in and had to take a knife off him. She then did the same thing again 10 mins later, DP chanced by (for obvious reasons) and removed knife from him again. Occasionally I can tell she has moved a couple of things out of his way ie to the back of a shelf, but normally everything is in reach...anyway, today she announced that she is no longer moving things out of the way when we visit and that 'he must learn not to touch'. Firstly, she has made so little effort to move stuff before that I am a bit taken aback by the comment, and secondly, is this a reasonable expectation of a 2 year old, and indeed of me given that presumably it will be me who has to police it (I now have a breastfed 4 month old too so timing is a bit crap quite frankly!)I guess its her house, but what do you all think?

Nannypepm I'm in Cornwall. My poor mum has been gone 16 years this year and sadly died 9 days before her first grandchild was born. She would now have had four grandsons from my brother and another grandson and granddaughter from me. My heart aches when I think about how she would have doted on them all, just like you do on your gc.

Sorry to hijack the thread Oldernotwiser. I think your mum is being a bit unreasonable to be honest. It must make your visits there a strain rather than a pleasure. Hope you can sort something out

sarah - after the pond incident, my dad put a low fence round it, which kept the girls safe but still allowed them to help him feed the goldfish. After he died my mum had the pond removed so they now have more lawn to play on.

Sorry about your mum, Stripy. May her spirit comfort you even as you mourn. As you are clearly still doing.

You sound like a lovely grandma, Nannypep. Dh and I had our dc so late, our parents were too old to do much babysitting.

Well, when our grandchildren visit, our house is child proofed for the most part, as we have a 1yr old DS ourselves!

But when we visit PIL's, they do some childproofing, which is fine. Personally, I think they'd go overboard childproofing if we asked, but we've actually told them a couple times that our DS understands "no" for the most part, and when he has difficulty with that, we simply deal with it. We don't expect everyone we visit to have their house child proofed, so we don't overly stress about it. Getting up repeatedly to stop them from getting into something is all part of having small children, isn't it? Keeps you young and gives us exercise, I suppose.

my PIL have a house like this, full of stuff - when ds was this age and stage it was hard going at their house and they made no effort to move things out of reach; and I wouldn't have asked them. it just wouldn't have occured to me to ask them to re-arrange stuff on our behalf; but it did mean we went there as little as poss, preferring to invite them to us as it was far more relaxing for us and more fun for ds not to be hemmed in by 'no, don't touch that!'.

I also found that I got NO time to talk to anyone there as I was always disappearing round corners following ds, who had ants in his pants at that age.

My dear mums house was like this, full of old knick-knackery and other dusty treasures. Kitchen fraught with danger. She never seemed to mind her funny little tables of ornaments getting knocked about though bless her.

Now she's hit her stride as a proper granny with wicker baskets of toys and it's become a joy to visit.