aibu to think grandparents are just expected to know their place now?

[justme39]

honestly feeling quite upset and not sure if i’m being unreasonable or not.

my ds and dil had their first baby a few months ago and ever since it’s just been rule after rule after rule. no kissing baby, no picking him up straight away if he cries because theyre trying to teach self soothing, dont call him my baby because apparently thats boundary crossing now 🙄

i’ve kept my mouth shut mostly because i dont want drama but yesterday i honestly felt humiliated. baby was asleep on me and i kissed the top of his head without even thinking and dil immediately goes we’re not doing that in this really sharp voice in front of everyone. atmosphere after was awful.

i do feel there’s a lack of respect if i’m honest. i’ve raised 3 children perfectly well, all grown adults with good jobs and houses etc so its not like i dont know what im doing. yet if i mention he looks cold or maybe he’s overtired suddenly im undermining.

another thing that upset me was photos. i put ONE picture on facebook after he was born because family were asking and you’d think i’d leaked government documents. ds rang me asking me to remove it because dil was really anxious. i did remove it but i wont lie i cried after because it just feels like nothing i do is right.

i’ve also offered loads of help. meals, cleaning, having baby so they can nap etc but apparently they want to figure things out themselves. then dil posts online about how exhausted she is all the time. i honestly dont know what we’re meant to do anymore as grandparents except buy things and sit there quietly.

now ds hardly messages unless she’s included as well which never used to happen

aibu to think younger parents are so obsessed with boundaries and gentle parenting they forget other people have feelings too?

Re sharing photos on fb.
I had set up a group of relatives to share photos but one relative didnt tell us they had been hacked and so the stranger was viewing my kids photos. Yes i was pretty angry the relative hadnt said so we could unfriend..

i dont think dil is that unreasonable. Due to coldsores.
You arent listening to what they say and advice has changed.

Visiting relatives recently the grandad was feeding a 12w old tastes of ice cream. Which i wouldnt have allowed with my kids. He didnt even say or ask first. But the parents didnt give a crap so crack on.

🤣🤣🤣

I expect she got carried away in the moment when posting the photo and didn't remember she'd been asked not to. I'm sure she didn't do it on purpose to upset them.
I don't think she's 'slagging them off' either, ot playing herself as a victim.
I think she's upset .

Fellow granny here and I have also had this same experience with one of my kids and their first child. But I wasn't the only one that felt this way, her siblings were set the same rules as me and we all struggled. She was allowed free rein with her nieces and nephews/my other grandkids. But the other granny had normal full access.

We weren't allowed to even visit for 2 months (we all have a good relationship historically). I was allowed to hold him at that 2month visit and in the same way as you explained, I was cuddling him whilst she ate and without thinking I kissed his head. And yes, before we all met up she let us all know the ground rules, no kissing, no feeding, no changing nappies and only take the child when offered, do not ask.

I was offered him, so I took him and in the midst of cuddling him, I didn't plan to kiss his head, it was just a natural reaction. She was not pleased.

At the 2month stage my son called at their home (his sisters home) after work on his way home, with the gift they had been waiting to give for the baby and he was turned away.

I do get that it is their child and that they get to decide, but it hurts. The others were never like this and its just so unexpected that I can't show my grandchild the spontaneous love that I want to and my daughter has made it clear she does not want me there. She is not being nasty, we have done nothing wrong, but this is how she believes it should be done.

We are all abiding by her wishes (bar the one slip) She cuddled and got to love her nieces and nephews when they were born and posted pictures everywhere, but we all feel punished, held to hostage and exiled.

PP above was asking whether a GP should tell the parents that their baby is too cold when their hands are cold.

my point was that cold hands don’t mean baby is cold.
Something I learned fairly recently as my children are young.

If that information has been around for a longer time as you said then it only supports what I’m saying, which is that times change and what the GP believes to be true (in this case cold hands =baby needs warming up) isn’t necessarily true any more (in fact clearly GP advice in this case might be very out of date)

There seems to be a lot of passive aggressive attitudes towards grandparents in the last few years. Hard to know how widespread it is, as I haven't come across it so much in RL. Young parents sometimes seem to be weaponizing their babies/ children against their own parents and in laws. Boomer and gen X parents come in for a lot of stick on how they bought up their millennial and gen z kids. Parenting styles change with each generation, but this seems to have something almost vindictive about it. Is it because younger parents resent the perception boomers and gen x for having ' everything handed to them on a plate' and this manifests in an attitude of 'at least we can control when/ if you get to see ,and what you can/ can't do with your grandchildren? That's not to say that some grandparents don't blatantly disrespect the parents rules and that isn't acceptable at all. Families seem to be getting more insular and the ' right ' of grandparents to be involved with their grandchildren comes at the price of strictly . toeing the line. Non kissing might be a throw back from the pandemic, but there is difference between kissing the top of a babies head to slobbering all over it.

I know cold hands don't mean a baby is too cold. As I said it's been common knowledge for over 20 years, ma even longer tbh.

So if I was to mention it I wouldn't have been giving " out of date information"

And my first grandchild was born when my youngest child was 5. I doubt my information was that much out of date at the tine

Oh behave 🙄

Oh stop it.

Yes I’m agreeing with you, the previous poster wanted to give the opposite advice, which would have been out of date (and they hadn’t been asked)

Nonsense! It's not somebody else's baby, it's the grandmother's (amongst others) baby. It's part of the sweet talk one does to babies of your own bloodline.

This. Honestly your DIL sounds batshit to me. It's really sad. I'm not a grandparent yet and I'm not much older than your DIL but I can't imagine behaving like that. To not let immediate familly kiss my baby? Bonkers.

You were completely out of order posting a photo on Facebook when told not to. I would have been furious about that.

Also it’s weird that you call him “my baby”. He is NOT your baby, stop doing that, it’s probably creeping SIL out.

Also you shouldn’t have kissed him when told not to.

Also, giving your opinion when not asked for is undermining. Stop doing that too.

In summary, YABU.

It comes across as all information grandparents have is. out of date though. , that's all.

As I said earlier if any of my kids started all that then I'd just let them get on with it, but then I wouldn't be jumping to help when they finally considered me worthy

How sad for you all. Not meeting your grandchild until they were two months old is just awful. Turning her brother and his gift away? And even now you can't ask to hold them?

You and her siblings are going to end up closer, and she will be more distant from the family at this rate. And how will that help her child? Her child's cousins must be very confused too.

‘My baby’ is used as standard where I’m from. It’s a pet name. We say ‘my angel’ ‘my cookie pie’ ‘my menace’ in the same way we say ‘my baby’
it’s a term of endearment. It’s not a protest of ownership. The ‘MY’ part doesn’t mean ‘belonging to me’

Didn't remember? Yeah right. She clearly has boundary issues. I don’t know why anyone would defend her posting a photo when she was told not to.

I think some balance is needed on here.

As a mum to two teenagers, grandparents are a godsend. If you are as invested as you sound, then all the childcare will not only allow the parents some well needed and deserved breaks, but allow baby to bond with their grandparents.

My kids have lovely bonds with their grandparents who have spoiled and doted on them. If DH and I had not had this help from them, I would have had to give up work as they helped with childcare which would have been unaffordable when I went back to work.

Your DS and DIL will realise at some point what a goldmine they have that you want to be so invested. When I mention to friends and colleagues about the support we received, we have heard many stories of having to struggle on without such help and wishing they’d had a bit more support. It’s early days, they’ll come round when they want a night off.

Of course you can’t kiss a young baby who is yet to have finished their full course of vaccinations. People carry so many germs that a babies immune system is incapable of protecting them against. Why would you want to risk making your grandchild poorly just to kiss them. RSV makes young babies so poorly. And what is the obsession of wanting to kiss babies anyway. I did not allow people (including both sets of grandparents to kiss my baby I didn’t even like DP kissing her but I had to allow that she is half his) now she is over 1 GPs do kiss her, and I still hate it because she’s mine but I allow it as she doesn’t care and these days she eats mud so a kiss is the least of my germ worries. It might have been done back in the 80’s but childhood illnesses and cot death was higher then too. Me and DP are 40 and had to teach our parents just because they did it and we were fine doesn’t mean the world hasn’t moved on. I suspect this isn’t the first time you have kissed baby without thinking about it.

With sharing pictures online again we didn’t allow anyone to share pictures of our baby. We also rarely post online and when we do it is to a select audience. Older people don’t tend to have the same understanding of pictures online or sharing/security measures aren’t as strict. Also did you steal their thunder posting the picture. Did they want that proud moment to share the most precious thing in the world to them and you did it first. You were crying - maybe you made a freshly post partum mummy cry.

My MIL always offered to clean/tidy/cook etc and whilst I love her to bits made me feel like she thought I wasn’t looking after my family properly. I am fiercely independent and so that is a me problem. I didn’t mind my own mum doing that stuff and so I think as MIL you might just need to accept that.

not picking baby up as soon as it cries - you’ve probably been too over bearing and they are saying that so you don’t jump to pick baby up the second it makes a noise. Offer advice of cold/overtired etc when asked. Otherwise let them learn how to look after their baby themselves.

sorry if this comes across as harsh but your post is all about me me me. Have you thought about how you’ve made your DIL feel.

apologise genuinely for kissing baby when you’ve been asked not to and tell them what a great job they are doing as parents and how proud you are of them. And that anything they need from you for help or advice you are there for them when they want it and they just have to ask. And then step back and enjoy being part of their family with lots of baby cuddles (but no kisses!!)

Oh my god this nearly made me cry. So, so sad. That would break my heart if I was a Granny. I'm so sorry.

The advice about not kissing the baby is now standard NHS guidance. DIL isn't batshit... The people who are batshit are those who think they have a right to loss a baby that isn't theirs, regardless of the guidance to protect a baby's health...

www.gloshospitals.nhs.uk/our-services/services-we-offer/maternity/after-your-baby-is-born/keeping-your-baby-safe-think-hands-and-no-kisses-thanks/

I must say I disagree with you.
It's generally said that we live in an ageist society, and I do hope things improve by the time you get there.
Of course, there are areas where knowledge has moved on, but that doesn't change the fact that a mother who has brought up several children is an invaluable resource when a newborn baby arrives home from hospital
I think that, at least some of the 'unsolicited advice' might be worth listening to.
I'm unsure how a grandparent is expected to stand by and say nothing if they see something not good happening with the baby,
As one example, perhaps the parents are trying' self soothing'. Grandma sees the baby is very distressed. Apparently, she is supposed to tand by and say nothing; even a gentle 'do you think perhaps it would be a good idea to pick up the baby' might mean her DC goes NC or at least LC.
I'm afraid it's a bit barmy from where I'm standing.

Is it considered dangerous for aren't to kiss their own babies as welk

I married into a big Yorkshire family where everyone's name is preceded with 'our'!

So we go to see Our David and Our Anne, and congratulate Our Christopher on his exam results.

I love it. That feeling of belonging between all the cousins etc warms my heart.

It's just a control thing , they'll be begging you to look after the baby in a few months .

I would try not to let it upset you and maybe just leave them to it for a while