To tell PIL NO SWEETS

[arainytrip]

I know … they are grandparents so it’s supposed to be their forte but surely it isn’t unreasonable to ask that the children (5 and 2) don’t have sweets like Haribo, Skittles etc? This weekend they came with those popper style things where you load it with sweets and fire them into your mouth (not sure what they are called sorry) which feels like a choke hazard for the two year old. But MIL just hands them straight to the children. My two year old has a very poor appetite as it is so just a few sweets and she won’t eat dinner.

I realise as they get older you can’t police everything but surely a few chocolates or raisins would be better?

Yabu

YANBU. I hate all those type of hard sweets and lollipops.
Nothing wrong with a bag of magic stars or buttons.

I used to have this issue and it was worsened by the fact that the GM had 2 morbidly obese adult children, both with type 2 diabetes, one of whom was my partner,a partner who died in his 50's due to heart disease and diabetes.
It's difficult to watch your children being fed blue lemonade and all the sweets and crisps they could eat in those circumstances.Nothing changed and the general attitude from everyone was that grand parents should be allowed to spoil their GC.
I think you need to make a stand on this.

So you would rather children run the risk of choking ?

They've clearly got no sense of they're giving skittles to a 2 year old so you're going to have to spell it out for them.

"Hi MIL, lovely to see you at the weekend. In future if you want to buy treats for the kids, please stick with chocolate buttons. Haribo and skittles etc are not suitable for 2yo and there's a danger of choking x"

I am finding it really frustrating as for days afterwards the five year old is asking for them, I’ve fended off fifteen requests for a lolly tonight.

I don’t want to create bad feeling but it’s just ridiculous.

I don’t know why you’re tiptoeing around the pil’s.
My dd would, quite rightly, rip into me if I walked in and handed sweets to the dgc without checking first.
I tend to take socks or a cotton handkerchief to hand over immediately and give the sweets to dd for later.
My 3 year old dgs loves a cotton handkerchief.

I probably am a bit because it’s not in my nature to create bad feeling and also we don’t see them a lot so it’s easy to set it aside but the fire into your mouth sweets were a step too far I think.

Cruel as it sounds, I found the best antidote was letting the PIL see the meltdown, and in fact low key blaming them for it.

Mine didn't respond to direction, and painted me as hysterical, which I didn't have any control over.

What I did have control over, was taking things off the kids."oh no, silly granny didn't realise how dangerous those hardboiled sweets / toys with loose button batteries / chewing gum are. Let's give them back to granny for her house." Que hysterical tears from my then 1 Yr old obviously. No one likes sitting through that, especially the people causing it. Only takes 1-2 times before they learn.

I may have to resort to that but it does feel a bit extreme without having explicitly asked for them not to bring sweets although I think MIL did sense i wasn’t best pleased on Sunday.

Honestly I think you need to step up here and put them into the cupboard. If they complain or create a fuss then so be it. If you don't want to have the difficult conversation then this is the best approach.

I’ve already penned a message to the difficult conversation but have been told not to send!

I won’t be having the face to face conversation as it’s too late by now. My ds makes elephants look forgetful and will drone on into eternity and beyond about sweets he thinks I’ve confiscated. Much easier if I can prevent it before we next see them.

I meant if you didn't want to have the conversation on person. Sending a message means it's hard to get the right tone.

A child going on and on about the sweets is poor behaviour I would also be putting my foot down to stop that.

A lot of behaviour management is prevention rather than cure and this is certainly an instance where it is.

So we could have PIL arrive with chocolate and give it to kids as they leave - fine. Happy children happy me happy PIL

or

they arrive, I confiscate, I have the conversation, there’s an awkward visit as everyone feels bad, children in tears and kicking off - I know which I prefer.

Don't send a message, if you aren't going to see them until you walk in next time, then call them and talk to them about taking the choking risk ones out of any sweet bags they are given. If she bought in a 'huge' bag of sweets, then don't you think if you ask her to change to chocolates, she'd probably walk in with a bumper bar of chocolate for them? Which would be just as bad?

I'd let her bring in the bag of sweets but take some little pots for the kids, and pre-warn them they can only choose 3/5/10 (whatever) sweets each from the big bag they are given to have before dinner, make sure you are there when they are given the bag to re-enforce what you have previously told them, then take the bag away from them.

I don’t think you are being unreasonable at all OP. I have a great number of grandchildren, and I never bought them any sweets or chocolate. Fruit, yes. Books, yes. Outings, yes.
I felt that spending time with them was a privilege, and I did my darnedest to only spoil them with time and love.

OP it is up to youg a healthy life. and DH how you parent not grandparents. If they take offence that’s them. Let them! Most people are aware todaythat there is an obesity epidemic and lots of children with poor dental health. You are trying to instil good habits into your children and getting a sweet tooth will not serve them in having good health.

Decide what you are happy with eg one smallchoc bar once a week and communicate clearly and cheerfully that you and DH would like that for your own children.

My DD told us no sugar at all for DGS and it’s fine there are plenty of ways to make time with Dgc good.

I am very surprised that a grandparent would even think of doing this. Surely they don’t just walk in the door and hand over sweets? I just can’t imagine why they’d do that. No chatting or playing games or reading a story or a little trip to the park? Or do they do that as well?

I banned sweets when DS was a baby. GM was annoyed but complied.

DS is older than a lot of the posters on MN, & has never had a filling - neither has his 13 year-old DD who never has sweets.
DGD is also slim, unlike most of her classmates.

YANBU but I've been told to unclench on here before. Especially as you don't mind a bit of chocolate, I don't think you have any reason to chill out as you've been told to. I don't get the obsession on here with letting grandparents do whatever they want. But at the same time I imagine there'd be a lot of people judging if kids are running rampant with sweets (and any other things you'd normally set limits on, screen time etc).

My PIL are great and perfectly able to enjoy their grandchildren without filling them with sweets!

I’d probably buffer the message with something like: ‘I heard from a friend recently about a child choking on a sweet, and it reminded me how careful we all have to be with little ones.’”

Curious, did that not just make you look uptight rather than grandparents realising the error of their ways?

I'm very against refined sugar (yet - child is 1) but also really want to be respectful to PIL so would really struggle in this situation.

I think YANBU at all! small hard sweets are a choking hazard and very bad for teeth.Can you say to MIL that chocolate buttons ,Milky bars are fine .Surely she cant complain about that? Raisins are very bad for teeth too and sticky .Maybe give those a wide berth.Also DH should really say to them that chocolates are OK but not hard sweets . DM used to bring carrier bags of chocs !

We don’t see them all that often, so yes they pretty much come in and hand over a big bag of sweets.

i can’t call - MIL is deaf! If I rang it would be a massive big deal; they’d probably panic and think something was seriously wrong and then think I was ridiculous for overreacting. I really genuinely think a message is the best way of dealing with this particular problem; they won’t be thrilled whatever I do but at least it isn’t creating bad feeling when they are actually there!

Giving sweets is lazy and unnecessary. Theres no need.

I’d be seriously annoyed too OP if they gave my very young children those tooth destroyers too and a choking hazard to boot. You have my sympathies.