AIBU to stop 2yr from nights away

[WittyStork]

I feel that I’m not BU here obviously but it’s a tricky situation.
2yr old likes spending overnights with her grandparents and due to distance it’s for 2 nights at a time only once every other month or so. Since the start the grandparents have refused to say goodbye to her because it makes them upset, instead they drop her off and sneak out as soon as she’s distracted.

Toddler finds this very upsetting as she doesn’t get closure and know where they’ve gone, queue lots of looking around asking where they are and we do explain to her that they had to go home but it just doesn’t click in her brain as they just disappeared that they’ve gone home. It takes another 2 days for her to get over this and clearly makes her anxious.

I have told them that they need to say goodbye even if it makes them uncomfortable to see her sad as it’s unfair for her to go through all the searching and anxiety.

I simply got a ‘no she’s too young to understand’ and ‘we don’t see her often enough for her to understand that we’ll see her soon’.

Grandparents are now asking about new dates to have them and that they wanted to take her to see Santa and I have said that we could all come down as a compromise as then as a family well say bye to grandparents house and town etc to offer closure. The response I got was essentially ‘no, never mind what we wanted to do is fully booked’.

Side note I did check and it’s still available for booking but I think I’ve really put them about the whole saying bye and if not we all need to come down. We have another baby and would have been staying in a hotel with no expectation of us being with them or interrupting grandparents time with 2yr.

So, am I being unreasonable and if so, what is a more reasonable option if they will not say goodbye to the toddler.

What a pair of weirdos. Are they the inlaws? No way would I have grown adults to that to my toddlers

They’re idiots. Selfish ones at that.

The only unreasonable ones here are the grandparents. They need to stop being so selfish and think about the little ones feelings instead if their own

No, that is odd! Both sets of grandparents here live 3 hours away and they alway say good bye when they leave. My parents often know when they are next seeing them so will say ‘we’ll see you in x weeks’

This. Very strange.

I can’t see anything wrong with them avoiding making a fuss out of saying goodbye. I have a Dgd, and sometimes after we’ve visited and been playing with her she looks sad when we are getting ready to leave, so my dd just distracts her so we can slip out without creating drama. Your ds probably is crying that they’ve left rather than the fact they haven’t said goodbye. Incidentally, does your dc get equally upset when Dgp are just on a day visit, ie a couple of hours? But if you want to make a huge issue out of this by telling them overnights are no longer on the table, when your dc seems to have such a beautiful relationship with them, then crack on I guess.

This sounds like an underlying power struggle to me. They want to handle your child the way they decide to but that's your call, not theirs. I think you should stick to your guns because otherwise, they will continue to feel like they can disregard your wishes with your child.

YANBU.

2 year olds are very familiar with ‘waving bye bye’

Just stop using this overblown ‘closure’: it’s the normal social ‘saying bye bye’

I would just sabotage the sneaking off with waving and kiss blowing rather than having psychological discussions with them.

That is really weird behaviour. If they bring it up again I would ask thy their fee matter more than a 2 year old, when they are old enough to understand. I also would not be allowing them to take her to see Santa. Unless you don’t mind, but she will be able to understand more and feel the magic. It isn’t something I would want to miss out on.

Have you been enabling this to a degree?
If they are old it takes a while to get to a car, get in and start it. Just make start including her in the goodbye at your house or meet them half way and do it at a car park.
So many workarounds for this am struggling to see how it came to be such an issue.