A Worrying Trend

[Buzyizzy21]

I am of a certain age where many of my friends have become grandparents in the last few years and I’m appalled.
Several of their daughters seem to think it’s absolutely fine to attempt to emotionally blackmail their parents into behaving a certain way if the poor grandparents wish to carry on seeing their grandchildren.
I have to ask them, who on earth do they think they are? Parenting doesn’t come with a manual, and I’m sure as eggs is eggs that these same daughters will make many mistakes along the way too.
I’m genuinely horrified that these young mums and dads think they can treat their parents this way. So upsetting and totally unnecessary. There is no excuse. Ever.

If the OP gives examples, they will be so bereft of details and context that it will be impossible to say whether they are reasonable or not.

Her tendency to immediately go on the attack against anyone who expresses a different perspective to hers tells you all you need to know.

Absolutely this. OP, I really wanted to agree with you, but you have given no examples and just attacked others commenting on your post. You must understand that times have moved on since GPs were in the trenches with their own children - many of the things that you were able to do are illegal now. Parents nowadays have different pressures and standards to keep up with and they don’t need to be undermined.
Without any sound examples and your follow up messages I think you are very unreasonable.

Do you think that grandparents don't know this? Are they living in some hermetically sealed unit with no access to the world??! Or do you think they're all stupid?!

"Grandparents have had their time" - yes, to be parents, no, to be grandparents.

Depends what you mean, which you've very carefully not actually stated:

'You can't see your GC unless you commit to child care x days a week for x years'...

Is a very different story to:

'You're not having unsupervised contact with GC after you smoked in the car whilst driving them around balanced on a passengers lap, forgot to change nappies for a whole day and fed them cows milk when they have a cows milk allergy and you'd been expressly asked not to do that'...

There is not a chance in this world I'd have let either of my parents have more than limited, very supervised contact with a child I'd produced. Its entirely hypothetical as I can't have kids and one of them has been dead a while... but both my parents were pretty abusive (physically and emotionally) and saw absolutely nothing wrong in much of what they did.

I totally appreciate, people do the best they know how to do at the time, with the information they have - but if someone does not know that back-handing a 5 year old in the face, or holding their head under a cold tap to stop them crying (because of the slap in the face!) is abusive, there is really no excuse for that. She may not have known what she should do, but she absolutely did know that wasn't acceptable, as she ensured she only did it where no other adults could see!

I wonder what the back story is to these seemingly unreasonable children.

I'm in my 60s and a lot,of my friends are lucky enough to be grandparents. They all seem to have a wonderful relationship with them and their DCs and spend a lot of time together. I'm very envious and hope I have GC one day.

The only situation I know of where things are tricky is one GM who fed her 6mo GS chocolate against his parents wishes and then denied it when they asked her - unfortunately his sleep suit was covered in chocolate which gave the game away. They are reluctant to let spend time alone with him now.

The GM still doesn't think she did anything wrong. She turned up at a dinner party after this happened ranting about how unreasonable and controlling her daughter and SIL were being. She was shocked to the point of tears when, one by one, everyone around the table gently said they agreed with the parents and she shouldn't have done it and when challenged she should have owned up and apologised. Her husband and other children have also said she was wrong.

Despite all that she still won't apologise. She sees the grandson every week but always with other family members around and feels very wronged.

There you go, this post sums it up. You and your friends think you know better than the mum's and dads. You don't. Each parent knows what their child needs. If you as a grandparent can't respect the parent's reasonable requests, then you won't get left in charge of grandchildren.

Of course this isn't to say that parents are always reasonable. But without examples, we have no reason to think they're being unreasonable in this case.

I’m a grandma of 8. I also have a good number of friends who are grandmas. Of course there can be some ups and downs but mostly the grandmas and the parents all get on pretty well and there is goodwill on both sides. I think the OP sounds extremely bitter and has a huge backstory here. They’ve provided no examples and it would be very interesting to hear the daughter’s/sons point of view (or more likely DIL)

Beautifully put.

I see tales on here of grandparents not using car seats, ignoring dangerous food allergies because there was none of that in their day, hitting their grandkids because they think smacking is OK, not accepting that their grandchild is autistic... All of those are cut off worthy, wouldn't you say?

Survival is your standard of parenting? I would have been better off if I never knew my grandparents on both sides. Not every grandparent is wonderful and I'm sure you know that.

I'm also of the age where many (in fact most) of my friends are grandparents and I have not one example of their being treated in the way your friends are. Not really sure how you can call it a trend.

I'm not entirely sure what you are referring to because you haven't given any examples but it would seem that you have friends whose adult children have said grandparents, your friends, can't see their grandchildren or maybe see grandchildren less. I don't have grandchildren but would suggest that contact isn't discouraged unless there are very good reasons. Grandparents should also remember that they are just that, not the mum and dad.

well, there have been stories on here about grandma snoggling the 10 year old, giving them pizza and crap food, drinking on the go with her lunch, leaving the baby hungry

any comment

My kids absolutely love it when my mum comes to visit, but sadly my mum has a huge problem with their dad and is often awful to him in front of them. I have had to limit their contact to when he will mostly not be around, which isn't often. It's heartbreaking and I wish she could hide her feelings from them. Their dad will never be going away, he's their dad. I know it's not intentional and is really due to her worrying excessively, but last time she visited she upset my son with the attitude, now he is getting older I really feel it can be damaging for him. I spent far too long explaining to him why grandma was mean to him. Although my OH's mum has a totally different parenting style than us, she probably gets more contact with them because she is always kind to me. So I don't know what happened in the situations you mention, OP, but there can be reasons and there are sometimes (at least in my case) things that could be done to improve the situation on both sides, just that takes a lot of emotional effort that may not be forthcoming.

You seem to have a lot of anger and a bit of a nasty vindictive streak there @Buzyizzy21. You might want to consider therapy yourself to work out why you have so little empathy.

(For the avoidance of doubt, my kids see GPs on both sides very regularly as both sets of parents are very welcome here. I am incredibly lucky as are my kids.)

Honestly you seem to be hell bent on the grandparents are always right ..

I am in my 50’s parent of a teen .. my mother would see my child over my dead body .

you have given no examples here .. hard to know however things have changed . Parents are far more aware of things like sugar intake , car safety as just examples.. and actually parents do have a right to raise their children the way they see fit .

Im sorry so many of your friends are upset. That must be difficult.

I have a great relationship with both grandparents, yet on occasion I will hear on the grapevine (months later mind you) that one or the other has been upset about some complete non event.

An example of which was when grandparent had childminded multiple times that week (as usual); dp and I were going to dinner. So we asked his sibling and partner if they would like to babysit for the evening. Total non event. We thought this was the polite thing to do rather than ask GP again, and nice for the sibling to have some time.

Turns out it was a very big drama. Which I found out months later. So I can only conclude that either it wasn’t actually a drama and GP just wanted something to gossip/ moan about or they were actually upset. I have no idea 🤷‍♀️

But I would take these things with a pinch of salt. Because it’s probably not as deep as made out.

@Buzyizzy21 you haven't given any examples and you're coming across as a bit unhinged, to be honest.

Your friend that's been in tears could be an absolute horror of a woman who's put her grandchild's safety at risk. Or she could be a lovely grandmother who gives a bit too much chocolate for the mums liking.

But we don't know. Because you're not giving examples, just lashing out in a really weird way.

I'm not sure that parenting has changed that radically. I'm talking from the POV of someone whose children are in their 20s, and the 'back to sleep' campaign was at its height, and child safety was generally taken very seriously. We all used carseats - in fact my parents bought mine along with me - and bought sturdy, safe buggies. There's probably more awareness of SEN and allergies, but unless the gp is senile, it's not that hard to catch up on it in the sensible person.

Maybe someone whose children are 40s/50s has a more old-fashioned view, but everyone is capable of learning a new approach if they are willing.

I would hope that everyone aspires to do better in life than the previous generation. But also acceptable behaviour changes.

Im really doubting that these 'friends' exist and it is OP's own kids who have an issue with her.

Can't see any other explanation for the touchy, snarky responses or the lack of detail.

Maybe you could be honest OP and entertain someone elses opinions and ideas... maybe that would actually help you fix things?

It would help if people were less defensive and more open to other’s views in a calm and respectful way. On both sides.

I've never heard of anyone cutting contact with their parents out of anger that they didn't have a relationship with their grandparents 🤷

I don’t think the op / possible troll is coming back.

I suspect the op/possible bridge dweller with no real world "friends" or actual examples has mistakenly ended up here instead of the gransnet estrangement echo chamber.