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?

Ok but I don't care about your view, with respect, I'm talking to the OP.

I agree with their view. You don't have to agree with my view or even acknowledge it.

It’s a very thoughtless and upsetting comment to make - especially if the baby’s mum has gone through years of sadness trying to conceive. Yes, I would have gone ballistic and DH knew that. If MIL had said that to me, given that they live 80 miles away, there would have been very few visits after that.

It's not them - it's you. I imagine they are very close to cutting contact with you. At least you can't claim that you don't know why.

Because she want to follow safety advice?

Would you let your grandkids play with matches? Have some alcohol? Smoke a cheeky cig? Because all the health advice is just fear mongering, right?

Like I said, speculate and create stories if it's helpful for you.

I don't understand how grandparents struggle to know their place. It's so simple. It's not your baby, so you don't call it your baby, you don't kiss it, you don't put pictures on Facebook or send to people or take pictures without permission, you don't tell people things about their baby or their parenting. You don't tell another parent they need to put socks on their baby.

I don't understand how it's hard, it's not your baby, so treat it like it's not your baby.

People don't pick babies up as soon as they stir as often they're not actually awake, they're just active dreaming, then you wake them up. Also, you shouldn't be going to pick someone else's baby up without asking. It's just common sense imo.

Before reading your follow up, I was going to say it’s every parents right not to have their child on social media and you should always check. The fact they told you not to put photos up and you did it regardless, I’m not surprised that they’re frustrated with your boundary overstepping. Think about how it happened when your babies were young, you didn’t share on social media as it didn’t exist. People either made the effort to see each other, waited or went without. They don’t have a right to a photo online

On the note about kissing. I held this rule after seeing first hand what a young baby and their parents had to go through when a grandparent kissed their baby. They’d had a cold sore that hadn’t been visible any longer and passed the virus on. It was awful and resulted in so many hospital trips as it got so bad at times the baby couldn’t feed properly. I flat out held the rule of no kissing from anyone after. It’s safety of a young baby

NHS Lothian recommends "clean hands & only kiss baby if the main carer".

I assume this means you follow safety advice when it suits you.

Just don't pretend to be a loving grandparent when you're prepared to risk your grandchild becoming ill because you can't follow advice and you getting a kiss you want is more important.

You say you don't care about other's opinions but you sure enjoy posting your own.

Are you one of those MNers that like to speculate and have the last word like you've won a prize?

Here's your biscuit. Enjoy.

Says you replying to everyone.

My parents had a bad marriage.

Mum was 19 when I was born. Neither kissed us kids as youngsters. Prob no "bandwidth". My siblings & I lived for our trips home to Ireland to see our gps. Boy we got showered.

When our parents divorced I lived with my maternal gps in Ireland. As for the parents - meh.

Now as a gp I have been & am still relied upon daily. The wee one dotes on us.

Never social media posts. Ever. No visiting if ill. Kiddy first.

We followed the parents wishes implicitly but for us there was never a no kissing rule.

This

I cared for a disabled baby who had been a forceps delivery, hen e slight grazing to the scalp. Mum had kissed him on the head and had a cold sore at the time when less was know. Baby became profoundly disabled.

Its a bit of col A and a but of col B for me OP.

The FB pic was tactically a very bad move on your part especially as a MIL. You knew they didnt want it and didn't anyway.
That breeches trust and sends a signal.

My mum was equally keen so I set up a WA group for everyone (my mum gavee the numbers) and I put photos on. If I hadn't she'd have cracked on and plastered my kids on fb because she couldnt not....

The letting a 3m self sooth is nuts.🫠🫠🫠🫠
Like... honeslty crazy bad parenting.
I'd love to know what their presumably niace MC friends think of this....

Equally they are OTT loons but they are the parents.
I have a 4 and 2 yo and am nothing like them. The whole "our own little bubble" isnt something I recognice

If I were you i'd give a big apology about the photo and then take a big step back and keep quiet about how cold the baby looks.

Why can’t you accept and lean in to their style of parenting? Yes it’s different to your but that doesn’t mean yours is right and theirs is wrong. If you try being supportive as opposed to quietly resentful with intermittent ignoring their wishes . You may find your relationship improves.

Are you kidding me - of course you listen to your son/DIL's fairly reasonable rules. I am not someone worried about germs so my siblings were encouraged to hold them on the day they were born (though they never kissed them as newborns but that was on their own accord and as larger babies/toddlers they are obviously kissed all the time). However, I would be furious if any of them posted publicly pictures of my children - you absolutely do not have the right to betray their privacy that way and you're clearly deeply out of touch on modern views of children on social media if you don't recognise why that's an issue. I also left my kids to self soothe for bits which worked wonders and I'd have been furious if someone messed with that given how hard it is psychologically as a mother to do that (again, a reminder, you are not their mother and so don't have a million hormones screaming in your body to protect the baby so try to remember that). And calling them "my baby" is beyond weird - they aren't your baby, they are you son and DIL's baby. If you want to help - you need to be someone who respects their rules, doesn't make it all about you and the "respect" you deserve (you seem to think respect equals a right to do what you like around their child for some reason). They don't invite you to help out because being around you and your expectations that your personal desires are really important is more exhausting than not being around you from the sounds of it - your sleep deprived DIL for some reason probably doesn't have much headspace to worry about your feelings when you're busy ignoring what they have asked for with their own child. If you educate yourself on some more modern views on parenting, listen to them about how they want to do things and focus on being a relaxing, low stress presence who makes their lives a little easier by looking after them not the baby they will be glad for the help.

There is a lack of respect but, its coming from you. Not your baby. End of. Grandparents are secondary to parents. End of.

Just wow.... and then you cried when you took it down. Insane. I have never had to ask family or friends not to publish my child on social media - they never would. And it is not your baby, it is your son and DIL's baby. If you keep acting as if you have rights to do whatever you like regardless of their wishes about their child because apparently he is "yours" then don't be surprised when the level of contact keeps going down and down.

Not at all - they told her in both cases before.

If you otherwise have a good and respectful relationship it is lovely and wouldn't bother me. If instead you had spent a bunch of time entitled and acting like you had "rights" to do what you liked instead of what the parents wanted they may react differently, I would. OP definitely comes across as the latter.

@justme39 , you've got it really wrong so far. I'm sure DIL did not need the stress of you posting on SM when specifically asked not to, when she'd just had a baby. I imagine she cried, don't you??

There are likely 9 things that go unsaid for every thing they ask you not to do or complain about. No new mum wants to have to worry about this stuff, much less cause conflict.

It is also important to remember that our spouses/partners, of either sex, know all the worst parenting that we were subjected to, which our parents may have forgotten or not even be aware of, so it will always seem luck, rather than judgement that their children survived unscathed.

You're right in saying that there is no respect, but you have it the wrong way. I'm sure your DIL would love to have someone she trusts to help out, but you have really made it clear that it is not you.

Start to fix it, OP.

I never understood this and why as women we are so hard to deal with when it comes to MIL. I have never heard anyone say this to a woman who has a SIL. Imagine we are told "Make sure you are messaging him directly and not via your daughter. Make sure you think about what he likes and how you can help make those things happen. When you work on that relationship, and really mean it, it will involve them all". Why can't she communicate with her own son? Is he in some way not an adult capable of communication?

Ridiculous imo. It won’t last !!

Well, Op has since responded that she was , in fact, asked not to.

But otherwise, it is common sense in this day and age. You do not ever post photos of other people’s children on social media. I am in my sixties, so well into the grandparent age, and I know it. Why would Op not understand it?