Grandparent child care while parent is off sick

[NannyK62]

I look after my grandson (2) one day per week, he goes to nursery on the other days. My son and DIL both work full time.

my DIL is now off sick due to stress but still wants me to have my grandson on my “usual day”. He is still going to nursery the other days which I understand as they have to pay to keep his space but I feel like he should stay home with mum if she is off work.

I work 4 days a week myself and it would be a nice change to have that day to myself for the next month which is the length of her current sick note. I love having him but it is tiring at my age. Am I being selfish to refuse to have him? Do you think it will damage my relationship with son/DIL?

many thanks

Of course she should be looking after her son while she's at home but you did offer. You just need to speak to her and rearrange things.

Sounds like a good solution OP go round. Show you care.

she is off with work related stress. She is not working now. Nobody said it's gonna go away straight away but she gets 4 days break. I dont think it's too much to expect to give the grandmother a break in this situation. She helps out a lot and tired too. Sometimes, you need find a balance.

Yeah he'll just have to sort it so he can have a day off

Right but then day 5 she's then left to look after her child by herself for a whole day which she might struggle with. We don't know how ill she is.

I completely understand OP wanting a break but I don't think now would be a good time. Offering to spend the day with DIL and child is much better. Or reducing the hours she looks after child. Or asking her son to arrange his schedule so she can have a week off looking after her grandchild.

Right but then day 5 she's then left to look after her child by herself for a whole day which she might struggle with. We don't know how ill she is.

it's called parenthood 🤷. and the child has a dad too. I don't understand why you think this is for the grandmother to sort.

Work related stress doesn’t follow a template. It certainly can ‘work like that’, if ‘that’ means that people can live a ‘normal life’ if they can take work out of the equation. Maybe not every time, or for everyone, but you are generalising wildly to dictate ‘how it works’.

After seeing your update, continuing to help with your grandchild and also encouraging her to be involved on those days if she feels able to would be a really lovely offer.

Yes, she has work-related stress, but she’s not at work it's very rare for work-related stress to suddenly go away the moment you leave the workplace for the day and return the moment you walk in the next day and not have any impact on your life outside work

I don't think she has to sort it. I think taking away someone's support when they are vulnerable and ill is a bit shitty but if it has to be done it has to be done. I was suggesting alternatives. OP doesn't have to take them.

In that case, can your ds not work whilst his ds is asleep and give you a break? They chose to have a child even though she had a history of poor MH, which they must have known would be challenging. You're a family so all members needs should be considered.

I think the lazy mornings picking your gs up at 12, then doing an activity and dropping back at 4 posted upthread may be a good compromise. But please don’t rule out taking a day to yourself. Your dil had stress, you’re a lot older so naturally have less energy and could more easily burn out.

@Willyoujustbequiet I really agree with you. She's just taking the piss because she's got the option. Also it's not healthy to spend time off sick with stress alone doing nothing

She's off sick not on leave.

Well maybe they can start asking their FiLs to be their unpaid nanny instead? Funny how the expectations suddenly change.

I know. And I'm not trying to go head to head with you when neither of us knows the severity of the illness. But in many cases the impact is massively lessened when work is taken out of the equation, as the stress of thinking about it goes away.

I have worked with people who go on holiday, start businesses, renovate their house - all sorts of things that seem stressful in themselves - when off sick with stress, and say it is therapy, or that it doesn't count as the stress was caused by the workplace. I don't think that's uncommon, in the public sector anyway. Looking after a toddler one day a week pales into insignificance next to that, although as I said, I don't think there is a template for how these things 'work'.

Anyway, the MIL offered to have the child when the mum was at work. I don't see it as her moving the goalposts by wanting to renegotiate now she's not. If DIL is really too ill to look after her own child one day a week maybe SS need to be involved? What happens if her husband has to go away, or the mum is ill or delayed and she is unable to cope?

Each out of OP, (A) OP's DIL (B) and OP's DIL's employer (C) have a set amount of time/energy and money.

The normal situation (when no one is ill) is that B gives time/energy to C in exchage for money and A gives time/energy to her grandchild to facilitate this.

When someone is on sick leave, the employer C agrees to give B money (sickpay) without expecting time/energy in return so that B can use that time/energy to get well instead.

OP's original proposal was that rather than this, the employer should still pay the sickpay money but B would get no freed-up time/energy, but instead would have a busy and stressful day of childcare, meanwhile A gets the freed-up time/energy which was given from C to B, and B has less time/energy to devote to getting well again.

If someone was off sick from work due to a physical reason like having been in a serious car accident or suffereing from a debilitating ohysical disease that made it impossible to work whilst coping with the physical symptoms would you expect it to be ok for childcare providers to cancel their arrangements because the ill person doesn't need it if they aren't at work? I hope not because it would be insane and cruel. Mental illness shouldn't be treated differently.

It’s one two year old one day a week, not someone else’s child, her own. If she’s really incapable of doing that I hope she’s getting very intense professional help.

OP, you matter too.

I follow your logic, @OpizpuHeuvHiyo , but it depends on whether or not you see family relationships as about money. I see this as a MIL generously donating time/energy so that her DIL can work to provide for the child, even though it means that MIL gets no time off during the week. She is not being paid to do it, so she doesn't really fit into your transactional way of viewing the arrangement.

I would see someone seriously injured as probably unable to look after a child, but someone with cuts and bruises as probably capable one day a week - it depends. Clearly you are choosing to assume that person B is incapacitated (which we don't know) as opposed to a bit battered (which we don't know either). If that is the case, maybe SS need to be involved, as I suggested upthread.

I don't doubt that some mental health conditions are so bad that you can't look after a 2yo for one single day a week, after four whole days off. For example, full blown psychosis. But anything that doesn't meet the threshold for sectioning should leave you capable of at least one day looking after your child, after resting for four whole days.

I don't know how she can look at herself in the mirror just doing nothing at home all day for 5 days a week while everyone else works and/or looks after her child. What's she going to do with her day? There's only so much housework and batch cooking and long baths you can do before you run out of stuff to do.

Surely having such low expectations of oneself has got to be bad for your mental health too.

And I'd feel absolutely the same about a dad behaving like this. We'd all be shouting "what a lazy arse" if it were the dad doing this.

I hope YOU don't get run down OP.
You are a grandparent that works 4 days and childminds on the 5th day.

That's a busy full on week.
She has 4 days to herself and still wants you for the 5th day for the full month.

I would think that is a bit CF-ish.
I would say you will see how she feels next week to your son as YOU are actually feeling a bit tired yourself.

Sadly I think free childcare tends to be taken for granted very quickly.

You may be right @ShyMaryEllen but if so it is the DIL who gets to decide what she is capable of, not OP. No one chooses to be ill, and "cuts and bruises" level illness doesn't get you signed off work.

Meanwhile OP remains entirely at liberty to withdraw her help, she's a free agent. But unless she's on the brink of nervous collapse herself she should give fair notice, and she has no right to dictate that her DS&DIL's backup plan should be DIL taking up the extra, if they decide her wellbeing is best served by DC having an extra day at nursery or DH changing his working hours. OP doesn't get a choice as to how her DIL manages her route to recovery.

She asked for help when she was working, she isn't working atm.

In fact I've seen threads like this where it's the dad off work while the mum works full time and the kids are in childcare.

Our usual response in that instance would be "what does he even contribute, you'd be better off splitting with him".

My dm used to do this.

i was a single parent and she helped me with childcare. But if l was off sick she’d never take ds.

It drove me mad.

It's great how some are concerned about dil. What about op wellbeing? She is having to hold down a job and care for her grandson. She mentions feeling tired. Does her health and wellbeing not matter?