Do you have regular, good-quality help with your small children from your family?

[MrsBadcrumble]

Because if you do I am so !

I am at my in-laws'. BIL is here too. DS has had the time of his life, he has never once come to me to ask me to do anything other than get him some food (v reasonable imo ), and MIL and BIL have basically taken care of him all day. Tomorrow DH and I are going out together whilst they look after him and at some point I will have a haircut and not need to think about childcare.

Compare and contrast life with just me and DH, who works full-time. It's bloody knackering, I couldn't possible go to the hairdresser's and shopping for anything is a nightmare. (Hence why I look like a midden. [rueful smile]) There's a relative lack of variety by necessity because there are things to do that ds unfortunately has to deal with - shopping, a bit of cleaning, gardening etc. Every day is, well not a struggle, but doing the simplest of things is harder than perhaps it ought to be.

It struck me today, some of you live near your parents, get on well enough to have them help out a bit...What's it like? Could you imagine not having them there to help you?

No, me neither. Any help I get is paid for!

MIL lives 2.5 hours away but I know she would be a regular help if it was poss. She has another grandson who lives 10 mins away and she looks after him at least once a week and loves it. She does take my lot (all three!) off my hands when she can and they spend weekends with her, so that's brilliant. It would be lovely to have someone like that nearby though, I am also of people with helpful mums, sisters etc round the corner. My mother and father are both dead, but I reckon they would have been good sources of babysitting, helping out. My sister lives about 45 mins away and has a daughter about the same age as ds1, but she's not very forthcoming with help. I offer to have dn but she doesn't take me up on it, and the one time she has babysat for me it took two weeks of very careful negotiation for her to say okay, and then she just kept telling me how my older two didnt go to sleep as they were too excited and she had to sit on the landing for an hour to get them to stay in their rooms. Sigh. Some help is just not worth the hassle. Sorry, rambling.

I am in between. We have irregular help from both families. In-laws more willing to put themselves out but my parents do occasionally have the children overnight. Normally I do swaps with friends for day to day requirements. Or take time off work but leave the children in childcare. However I had a crisis yesterday with CM being ill for DS and SIL had him. It did involve DH in doing 4.5 hours driving instead of 2 but was a one off. Normally I would have a local friend to help but they were all away or working.

I remember there was a thread ages ago where there were some posters being ever so slightly sniffy about leaving children with paid help and a good proportion of these had parent who helped out, in some cases a lot.

When Ds was born my PILs lived about a 2 minutes walk away and it was pretty much the only thing that got me through the early days. My MIL who is in her very late seventies(!) used to come round in the afternoon, make me a cup of tea, send me to bed, walk up and down with DS, and wake me up with another cup of tea two and a half hours later. Or she used to beg me to drop him off for a couple of hours so she could invite all her mates round to pass him around, or so a couple of them could take him for a walk. DH said he always knew when DS had had a trip to his mothers as he used to smell like the inside of her handbag - mixture of parma violets and face powder!

She is a lovely lady and I was extremely lucky. Unfortunately they have now moved to be closer to DH's sister, but often come and stay with us for a couple of day and are insistent that we go out while they babysit.

My mother on the other hand lives a very easy hour's drive away, talks a good talk but in reality is not fantastic. But then I do appreciate she has her own life. I'm always slightly amazed when I hear of mothers who have dropped everything to dedicate themselves to sustained childcare of grandchildren

Although we do have fantastic family support, and we could have had family looking after DD for all of my work days we chose to also use a nursery for DD, and PILs one day a week. It was the right balance for us, and it worked well for us.

Not regular help, but good quality, yes.

My mum lives 200 miles away and comes to visit about 4 times a year, for about 10 days each time. My brother often works abroad so we don't see much of him.

Dh's family all live in NZ (except for one aunt and we don't see her often either)

But my children love them all very much - especially their uncle!

none from anyone ever!

My mum & dad are great. They live an hour away but are always ready to come through if needed, but I try not to take advantage.

Mum has even offered to help out with child care as my work arrangements may turn out to be complicated. I don't want them to have to do too much they are in their 70s although very active and have done their parenting but I don't know how I could do without them. My mum is so supportive of whatever I do and never passes any sarcastic comments. My dads a bit hands off , frightened of dropping or breaking our ds, but he loves him dearly.

I didn't realise that I would have to rely on them as much as I am really independent, but it has also improved our relationship and I can put up with the odd strange remark from those other than my mum. Me -" I have just been to weaning talk and the WHO recommend not doing it until 6 months" Dad - "Ah but DGS is a BIG baby he needs weaned now( at 16 weeks!)" ( this from the man who I am sure had absolutely zilch input into the time I was weaned) oh and from my aunt who lives down the road from my parents, Aunt - "Oh why aren't there any bubbles in poor DGNs bath", Me - "Recommended practice etc etc" Aunt ( to DGN) - "oh you poor little thing no bubbles I bet you'd enjoy it more with bubbles" then later Aunt - "Oh and do they not recommend drying all their little creases these days either." Grrrrrrr....
But its worth it because they all love our precious little prince and are just trying to express that as best they can.

I am the same as the OP. We don't get much regular help and my parents though very loving and willing are fail and in their 80's so visits to them are not often more work than staying home.
Il's also frail and elderly - plus live a plane flight away. At least my parents are only an hour's drive away.

BUT - for the last three weeks, my 14 year old niece and 12 year old nephew are visiting my parents and I have made excuses to visit because
I like seeing my niece and nephew obviously but mostly because it is so damn easy !!! when I am there.

When I take ds (20 months) to the park - I literally sit on the bench and watch my eager nearly 13 year old nephew play with my son , willingly chase after him, go down the big slide with him, play in the dandpit etc - oh the biss of a relaxing park visit!!. Then after an hour sitting down and reading a magazine (with half an eye on son and nephew) I get up and we all go home.

Also said niece and nephew entertain ds with sand and waterplay in my parent's garden for what seems like hours while I read a book !!

Also I can go out of the house and do stuff. I wouldn't leave ds with my frail parents but with my parents plus a willing and able teeneager I am happy to do so. Also dh came along for a couple of days and we went out for a film and meal in the evening - oh joy.

Yes if my parents were a bit younger, lived a bit nearer and my niece and nephew lived in this country if , if , if - Sigh they have gone home now- back to normality now

but my 14 year old help

None whatsoever. Mum is 65 miles away, 61, disabled and works full time so when we see her we spend time together. Dad is 200 miles away and when he visits we all spend time together.
ILs, live 10 min walk, in same village, haven't even so much as taken ds (12m) for a walk, though keep saying "oh we were going to xxx yesterday but then it got too late".
My dh is only home 1 or 2 days per week so the rest of the time it's just me trying to do my best. FIL also works away so MIL could easily offer to play with ds when she finishes work at 1pm but she's too busy wasting time elsewhere. They buy the biggest, OTT things for him, make such a fuss about how wonderful he is, but don't seem to want to put too much effort in to it all. MIL babysat for the first time 2 wks ago, fell asleep (even though she'd brought a freind) and didn't even check him once. I wouldn't like to ask if she'll even have him for an afternoon because I dread to think how she'll transpose that to others- "she asked me to have him because she can't manage to do xy or z, everyone else manages though..." I can just hear her.

We just try to do our best for ds on our own, knowing that we are doing it all without any help.

No, but we have built up quite a good network of friends and we help eachother out instead. Friends are the new family I have heard

we have no family locally and a dh who is often away, so I used to put my ds's in nursery part-time to give me a chance to do stuff.

No need now as ds2 is off to school in Sept - paid my last set of nursery fees last month

yes

Inlaws round the corner and fabulous

MIL has my girls for the three days I work (apart from the last 6 weeks as she has been crook after hernia op)

HOWEVER I can't get night time babysitters as they have them in the day and it feels a bit of a cheek to say 'yes, I realise we took them 2 hours ago, but can you bob back round? thanks!'

No,

My mum did look after dd1 while i was having dd2 but apart from that she has never taken them anywhere ,baby sat or anything.

Dh's step mum and dad have never had them but they live over an hour away.

We live in an area where we only know a few people. Families are too far away for day to day contact. It is tiring but we quite enjoy not having family "pop" round all the time.

actually my mum will come and stay sometimes and helps out - in fact she's coming today to cat-sit for a week whilst we are on holiday

My parents had ds for an hour this week when I was feeling unwell - I think that was the third or possibly fourth time they have looked after him since he was born (he's 3.4).

My inlaws have never had him, but that's because I wouldn't leave them in charge of a gerbil.

I am aiming for an arrangement like Twiglett describes, but it's hard because most of my friends do have family locally, and many of them have as much free child care as they want already, without having to look after my ds in return.

this is the bain of my life

we have no help and the lack of any support is really depressing me.

P.S.
am very jealous of people with support, but notice that some mums seem to get too used to granny etc. taking the kid(s) when they are too much of a handful and then the said mums forgetting who should be doing the hard work........

No. At one point my in-laws were going to relocate nearer to us but then the house they wanted fell through and they ended up buying one near where they lived.

I am quite pleased in retrospect - although I like them a lot I think I would have ended up resenting them because I would have expected them to help out more than they would probably want to. They are retired and very busy. they are a couple of hours away so are definately close enough in an emergency.

I think having a network of friends to help out is far better.

None. My dad dead, mum on the other side of the world (but unreliable anyway). Like Bugsy, any help I have is paid for.

Nope. Al gp's love too far away, dh is an only child and my siblings know nothing about kids so I wouldn't do that to them!

All three of dd's surviving grandparents would love to look after her on a regular basis and they have offered to take her during school holidays for a week when the time comes. I'd be happy to leave her with any of them tbh. When we visit them or they visit us they all offer to babysit either night or day so dh can have some time to ourselves. They all enjoy the one on one time with dd.

My dh isn't close to his family but I am extremely close to mine! My dh was away a lot in the first 7 months after we had our ds and my parents were fantastic, in fact I'm sure I wouldn't have coped without them.

We had to move 200 miles away from them last year because of my dh's job and I hate it! It would be so much easier if they were around to help me and have my ds sometimes. I'm now pg and hate having to drag ds along to midwives appts and things, I don't have anyone I can leave him with. It's tough not having any support! I travel to see my parents as often as I can because I need the break that they give me!!

"Do you have regular good-quality help with your small children from your family"

No. The only member of both sides of our family that have had the kids is my mum, and since her crappy car accident 4 months ago no-one has offered. So I can't work, we're skint, on mortgage break etc, and everyone pointedly looks away when they see us coming, just in case we may ask for a little cover once in a while.