My mum doesn’t make time for my children…

[Thuraya17]

I can’t believe I’m writing this because it’s never a situation I thought I would find myself in. Long story short, we live abroad and my mum doesn’t get to see the children often. However, she talks all of the time about how much she adores them, she buys them gifts etc. But when she visits us, she kind of does her own thing, doesn’t really seem so interested in going out with the kids to kid friendly things, doesn’t consider nap times at all and whether children will be grumpy, thinks I should just crack on with whatever she wants to do and if they don’t sleep it’s fine. Which to a certain degree I understand but not 0 consideration at all.

Anyway, I brought it up to her and she said it’s because we live abroad. So, I decided to go home for a few months to allow my family ample time with the kids, I want them to grow up knowing their family and my husband was super busy with work anyway so I got his blessing to go ahead. We FaceTime him multiple times a day but he did really miss us and I did feel kind of guilty.

With that said, in the months we’ve been home, although other family members have made the effort, my mum still hasn’t made time for the kids. I’m not talking about hasn’t done elaborate days out, I’m talking can’t spend 5 minutes at the local playground because she’s busy but I see her watching series for an hour and sitting on her phone for 30 mins. I’m just frustrated, I’m not asking for childcare, I want to go with you, I just want you to join us. I know she loves them and she compliments them and sings their praises all day but won’t spare a morning or an afternoon to come and do something fun for the kids with us.

This sounds perfect.

She doesn't want to spend time so it's difficult. If it's short and something she likes that's great. I have little tolerance with health challenges. People can find kids really exhausting and unappealing especially with age.

I only ask her to the park because at home she doesn’t play with them, in fact for the most part she ignores them but she always asks me to bring them home so I did. And she doesn’t like to ‘play’, never liked to ‘play’ with us either but still had time for us. I ask her to go out with us because I feel it’s more her thing, in fact she literally told me that she would prefer to take them out but still didn’t do it even with me present. I really have tried all angles. I’m going to have one more conversation just to be really clear and to check she’s not anxious about it as one commenter suggested and then we will go back home having tried absolutely everything.

Has she other grandchildren? Could she be burnt out with 'enjoying' children?

Youre mistaken. My husband and I were completely unaware that this would be the case, hence why I said I’m surprised. My husband and I agreed on this together since we had spend so much time with his family and my family we’re missing the kids growing up. My other family members have been so happy to spend time with the kids so it was still worth it. My husband has a very demanding job with very strict leave times, he was going to be travelling a lot so the kids would have missed him anyway. We all miss him all of the time because of work, it’s not new. And we can’t wait to go home to him but it was still worth it for my other family members who have really put the effort in.