AIBU - kids sleeping over at GP’s

[Chiavennasca]

My 2 boys, aged 4 & 8, love staying at their GP’s house (DH’s parents.) They stay over every Friday after school. Me and DH love the child free night and usually pick them up the next day about 1/2pm.

here’s my problem. I know they love being fun grandparents, and I get it but sometimes I do wish they would “adult” a bit more. They don’t put them to bed at all, there is no bed time, they get to lie in bed and watch tv till they fall asleep. This is usually after midnight. But both my boys are early risers so they’re still up at 8am the following morning. This means when I pick them up the rest of Saturday is spent with angry, overtired children. but GPs see it as a fun thing “no bed time at Gran and Papas woohoo!” For note - they are both retired and complete night owls themselves.

my other issue is food. Again, they are coming at the angle of being fun grandparents so every meal seems to be optional. Today, MIL said to me “we offered DC (8) x y and z for breakfast but he didn’t want any of it - so he ended up having a packet of wotsits!” I don’t give my DC a choice for breakfast they eat what’s set down in front of them. I know for a fact if she’d given my DC toast or cereal or whatever without question he’d have eaten it.

after we picked them up today, at 2pm, both DCs were hungry (both only had snacks all day - was told sandwiches were made but not eaten) and overtired and crabby. Honestly the rest of the day was a right off and now they’ve both had to go to bed super early on a Saturday night to catch up on sleep. I’m exhausted. For reference - both kids are genuinely super easy go with the flow kids.

I said to my DH that I think we need a break from sleepovers. They are our only outside childcare so they don’t sleepover anywhere else. Me and DH do love the time alone together on a Friday night / sat morning but honestly I don’t think it’s worth it for how rubbish the rest of our Saturday ends up being.

AIBU?

Mmm, that depends on the pizza. A lot of ready-mades are laden w salt and saturated fats.

I think you should just have a word with them and ask for an earlier bedtime, I would let the food situation go. Growing up I only had my Nanna. I have such amazing memories of sleeping over every week. My Nanna used to spoil me with loads of sweets and bring me breakfast in bed. She was a very early riser and would go downstairs and not even put the tv on incase it woke me up. My Nanna died nearly 20 years ago, I'd give anything for that time back. I think grandparent relationship are so important.

They might be grouchy even with the adjustments. I find mine has somewhat ‘masked’ after a sleepover where she’s been a perfect angel and then BAM I get all the feelings in one go! What I would give for a night a week though so I would take it!!

I think have a chat with grandparents about bedtime and a proper breakfast & lunch.
I think it's mean hearted to stop them going .
Kids love their grandparents it's a special and important bond.
You get time as a couple which is also important.
Anyone on here saying you should stop are only envious they don't have these options.
I loved my grandparents if I was stopped from staying I'd of not liked my parents they taught me many good things.

I think it is a lovely tradition to stay with their grandparents on Friday night.

I would talk to the children and explain they have to eat what they are offered and go to sleep at somewhat reasonable time or they will have to stay at home. I would gently explain to grandparents how lack of sleep and too much sugar is causing the children to be over tired and takes from the family weekend with you and their father.

Start saying no to sleepovers
This nonsense is not worth the few free hours.

"This nonsense"..? Having a lovely routine of staying with their grandparents a night a week, doing crafts and activities, running around in the garden with the dog, and having real quality time with people they love and who love them dearly?

I have the best memories of regularly (shock horror) staying with my grandparents. They were
really hands on and my parents were very young when they had my brother and I.

It was much less routine, much more relaxed and I look back now with such fondness. They let us have toast with honey at night and ‘bing’ from the Mr Bacon van.

i wouldn’t change it- takes a village and all that. Maybe try and alter one thing at a time eg get nan or grandad on board with breakfast then work on nighttime.

You sound like a good mum. They sound like fun grandparents and the kids will reach an age when that will stop I imagine. Don’t do anything hasty.

Nurture this relationship as it’s such a special one. As mentioned bring some breakfast items for the children and suggest an earlier bedtime.

Why are they going so often? Keep them
at home so you can parent them’

Right. It is normalising poor sleep hygiene and extremely unhealthy eating habits, it's just far too often for this to be happening. Once a month is a treat, once a week is a problem.

I would reduce the stays
to once or twice a month

one day in 7 is excessive outsourcing of
your kids

No, but you are handing over a whole day of parenting every single week to people who encourage your kids to eat unhealthy rubbish and disrupt their sleep and this is causing Saturdays to be unpleasant every single week.

Just ask your parents to have them once a month, once a week is too often to disrupt sleep patterns and ruin eating habits, it's normalising this to your kids. And although your parents may seem happy to give us such a large chunk of their time atm it will only become more exhausting for them as they grow older.

Once a month sleep over with relaxed rules solves the problem entirely.

I'm also a grandmother who has grandkids most weekends. I'm not ultra strict on bedtimes and I don't try to enforce rules as they have those all week. But I do make them eat properly ie veg with their meals and get in the shower before bed.

It sounds like your DC have a lovely relationship with their GP's. So I wouldn't want to spoil it, but perhaps gently say that 10pm bedtime is plenty late enough for two tired kids who have been at school all week. They'll soon reach an age when they don't want to stay there and want to see their mates instead.

Completely agree. And of course her parents "love it" except I bet they don't.

As someone suggested, they are probably being so lax because they're knackered and can't be bothered parenting kids - they've already done that.

I’d be picking them up a little earlier and giving them their Saturday lunch to make sure they are not hungry. After that let them have a bit of down time, maybe in front of tv, maybe reading them a story. I certainly wouldn’t be giving up a night alone together by stopping something the DC and the GP all enjoy. Remember as the children get older they won’t be so tired and grumpy.

I don’t know any parent who is away from their children every Friday, Friday night, and all of every Saturday morning !! That’s a lot.
and on top of that then Saturday afternoon is a write off for them if they’re tired and haven’t eaten well. Probably time to decrease the frequency of their sleepovers.

My mum would be like this if my son slept over, she was strict with us but she seems to want to give my son his hearts desire. He's two and she would happily give him dessert the. ask if he wants a cornetto too. She reigned it in when I said, you know its very easy to make children like you if you ply them with sweets, she was offended but it hit home as she calmed down on the indulgence. Perhaps a break from sleepovers and an honest remark from your DH to his parents that the sleepovers are making family time on Satirdays fraught and not fun to hit home the knock on effect it has.

It's huge, I could not have done this, would have absolutely hated being away from my kids every Friday night and Saturday morning and they would have hated not being able to just come home and sleep in their own home each Friday night and being dragged around knackered every Saturday.

OP wants a nice long break from her own kids every single weekend so she and DH can hit the pub, or whatever they like to get up to every "childfree" Friday night so she will either have to let her parents continue to normalise unhealthy eating and terrible sleep hygiene, or parent her own kids.

Solution - ask her parents to have them once a month, give her parents their precious time back, visit them for a catch up for a couple of hours in between the monthly sleep over.

But OP won't have a bar of this, of course.

You clearly didn’t even read the post as they’re not my parents, they are my husbands.

And no we don’t go to the pub - we chill in the house together.

Do you really have nothing better to do with your Sunday than come onto Mumsnet and be bitter?

Well since the grandparents in this case love having the kids, and the kids love going there, I'm not sure how what you and your your kids would have liked or disliked is at all relevant.

I’m fairly new to Mumsnet and I genuinely didn’t expect the arsey comments 😂 this is wild to me!

my DH is an only child and his parents worked 24/7 so they could retire early (they are both only in their 50s) they have both said they feel like having their grandsons is giving them the family time they never got with my DH so I definitely don’t want to take that away from them. And now that they are the only GP’s my boys have, as both my parents have passed in the last couple of years, it’s important to me they keep their strong relationship. I understand as the boys get older they won’t want to sleepover or visit their GP’s weekly but for now, they do, and I think that’s special. I’m sorry if that pisses people off on this thread.

we (DH and me) are going to speak to them about bedtime this week and see if we can have it enforced a little better

Ask them to put some of these things in place such as real food and an actual bedtime if they don’t reduce there time to 1 per month until they do at end of day your kids your rules.

People can disagree with you without it being “wild”?

I would find it wildly strange if my kids slept away one night a week and no wonder their routine is disrupted. Mine only stay at their GP’s every month or so when we have a real need and it’s a real treat. But each to their own I guess.

I don’t know op- I would never think I owe my kids gps their weekend time because they made very selfish choices when they had a child. They chose work, and they didn’t need to as most of us don’t get to retire at 50. Maybe dh and I could if we also fucked off our kids and our parenting role and focussed on work, but I would never ever do that, nor would I send my kids to compensate now for if their gps were bad parents. Their not doing bedtime etc sounds like they are still very selfish and not interested in what’s best for your dc, only what’s the most satisfying and easy for them. That’s not the best environment for your dc to spend substantial time in. Make the right decisions for your family, you dh and the kids, and remember kids can have strong relationships with gps WITHOUT spending significant parts of every weekend with them, mine do.