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.

Why do you think that you know these grandparents better than their own children know them? Perhaps if you’d been their child you’d be aware of what kind of people they really are. My children will never have any contact whatsoever with my father, and they have and will continue to have a perfunctory relationship with my mother. Having a relationship with grandchildren is not a right.

I've only two friends who are grandmas, one a very new one, the other to a 3 year old.

The gm of the 3 year old really has to mind her ps and qs and refrain from ever expressing an opinion, as her DS and DIL are very rigid in their parenting. She doesn't dare rock the boat in any way. I think it's a bit of a shame - gps are supposed to spoil their GC a little bit.

You can't judge all grandparents by the standards of your parents. Having loving grandparents is a wonderful thing in a child's life, and I will always regret that my parents both died when my children were very young, because they adored each other.

The majority of grandparents are the people who love your children nearly as much as you do.

I wonder who raised these adult children to be so unreasonable.

Half joking

But in all seriousness - I am a ‘young’ mum and I do have boundaries about how my parents and in laws behave around my children.

For instance - no drink driving with the baby in the car, actually not sure it was okay 30 years ago but it definitely isn’t now, and I would stop GP’s seeing them in a heart beat to keep them safe.

The average first time mother is 30 so she was born in 1994/5. Her parents know about car seats and sleeping positions.

Child car seats were invented in the 1960s and were in common usage in the 1980s. And Ann Diamond's Back to Sleep campaign started in 1991 just months after her son died and was absolutely everywhere in the 1990s. The NCT were on board from the beginning and by 1993 the government advice was changed. I was a student and knew about it, there is no way a woman having a child in the 90s wouldn't have known to but her baby back to sleep.

Another one: the UK recommendations in the 90s was to exclusively breastfeed for 6 months and to continue breastfeeding after 6 months alongside introducing solids.

Advice is updated over time but parents in the 80s and 90s were being given different advice to their parents so this is not a new concept. People who are old enough to be grandparents are not from the dark ages.

Oh come on, who on earth would allow or would have allowed their parents to drive their children around after consuming alcohol?

My eldest is not far off that age, and I can promise you, it was a complete NO back then too! My parents didn't drink anyway.

This 100%!

The advice though was to start weaning at 4 months in 97 and 99, but it changed to 6 months not long after that, certainly before my youngest was born.

I ebf the three of them until at least a year old.

I don't think I am an ill-informed dinosaur just yet!

My nan rubbed my face in urine when I had an accident aged 2 at her house.
She believed that smoking caused no harms ever and I witnessed her multiple times giving my cousin his asthma inhaler for asthma whilst chain smoking.

When my daughter was reacting to dairy in my diet she said I should stop breastfeeding and switch her to formula (regular formula not hypoallergenic formula) denying completely that there was any dairy in dairy based formula! Thankfully it was COVID and I was unable to see her so my mum was doing the communication. I stopped seeing her as a child aged 8 once I had some autonomy. I'm sure my mum got the blame when my nan spoke to her friends

And likewise, you can’t assume all parents want a blasé attitude like ‘grandparents are supposed to spoil their grandchildren’. No, they aren’t. I don’t want that, many parents don’t want that.
I'm sure my mother loves my children. That isn’t enough though.

Most normal people don't get on like that.

For instance - no drink driving with the baby in the car, actually not sure it was okay 30 years ago but it definitely isn’t now, and I would stop GP’s seeing them in a heart beat to keep them safe.

FFS. The 1967 Road Safety legislation was when a blood alcohol limit was introduced. It was not socially acceptable to drink and drive long before the 90s.

In my limited experience, if parents restrict their children's access to grandparents, the reasons are generally copper-bottomed. Good parents don't want to deprive their children of a loving relationship with someone whose longer life and experience will be enriching. Nor do they want to cut off their nose to spite their face, in terms of two way care; they look after your child for a couple of hours after school, the child (especially an older one) lets you know if all's well with Granny and Grandad and by the way, they said the back door's sticking a bit and could you look at it the next time you're over?

For a serious breakdown to have occurred, a grandparent would have had to behave in a way that was downright reckless and selfish, far beyond the dispensing of biscuits an hour from dinner for example. There's a gulf the size of the Victoria Falls between that and the flouting of allergen restrictions and any grandparent who genuinely loves their DGC will get it.

Well I think that's sad. Unless you have reason to believe that she will actively harm your children, then I think it's deeply unpleasant to deprive them of that relationship.

I allowed my parents to spoil my children. They didn't see them every day by any manner of means as we lived too far away. They got such joy out of plotting and planning things they could get for them, and outings etc in what turned out to be the last years of their life. Did I always agree with the spoiling, no, I didn't, but I loved the relationship they had with each other, and they would never, ever have done anything to cause them any harm.

I would have happily entrusted my children to their care, as did my cousins, who lived much nearer.

From what I read on here, that's not always the case.

Any grandparents I know IRL seem to have close and loving relationships both with their children and their grandchildren. I don't know any who are estranged.

You haven’t met my DM then…..

Gosh, you seem to be an absolute delight. If your "friend" is anything like yourself I cannot imagine why her daughter is depriving her children of such a lovely grandmother who is clearly charming, well balanced and not toxic or brimming with irrational rage at all. 😬

Crikey, your bar is low. You think that actually harming them is the level to hold people to for having a relationship with your kids?

What you chose to do with your kids is your decision. Mine will never be left unsupervised with my parents. That’s my decision as the parent.

What you're complaining about, though, is in most cases the parents' desperate compromise to still keep the grandparent(s) in the child's life. You're not saying the parents are cutting contact altogether, but that they are requiring certain behaviour from the grandparents in order for them to see the grandchildren.

For example, let's say one of the grandparents decides to live with/marry a sex offender. Is it reasonable for the parents to say "you can see the grandchildren, but not at the house you share, and SO cannot see them at all?" Yes, I think it's reasonable - but even if someone thinks it's not, the choice ultimately falls to the parents (not just the mother) because it's ultimately their responsibility to protect and make decisions for the child.

Now, if the grandparent in question responds that this isn't acceptable and SO has to come along then yes, the parents are going to stand firm and the ultimate outcome is that the child won't have a relationship with that grandparent. I'm not sure I'd blame this on the parents, though. And I don't think it's just young mums and dads or just in the past few years - although it may seem more common because we're hearing about it online, etc. rather than just in cases of people we know personally.

My grandfather was a paedophile. I absolutely should've been protected from seeing him but I wasn't. Luckily he died when I was very young but I continued to live under the abusive home life he'd created by doing what he did, as a result I protected my children and they had next to no contact with their grandparents on that side of the family.

Not saying it was socially acceptable in the 90’s. But two of our parents did it regularly with their own children in the car, and still often drive over the limit.

Not necessarily blind drunk but 4-5 drinks easily.

I wish it wasn’t something we had to make a rule about - but it is.

The average first time mother is 30 so she was born in 1994/5. Her parents know about car seats and sleeping positions.

Yes, we knew what the rules and advice was then, but things evolve.

Car seat advice now is very different from in the 90s.
Co-sleeping advice has moved on.
The way you make up and store bottles of milk has changed.
When to start weaning, and what to first wean them on to has changed.

I'm sure there are lots of other things.
Just the same as there were lots of things that those of us that had dc in the 90s did differently from our parents.

Its also completely insane 😂

I had my last baby nearly 3 years ago and have forgotten most of the details.

How anyone thinks they can remember 30 years on in is insanity.

I remember my mum claiming she didn’t post partum bleed when asking what the adult disposable nappies were for. Still to this day she denies it and asks ‘do other people have that problem too’ 😂

Well all of my XH friends are divorced and several also abusive, so I could believe this is a group of friends with like minded messed up views of parenthood who have now had DC go NC with them as a result. Sometimes its the company you keep because of who you are so its not statistically unlikely in specific cases. If OPs standard of good parenting is that they survive to adulthood then I expect she'd surrounded by people with similar grim beliefs about being a good parent.

Parents wishes? 🤣🤣 Would you listen to yourselves!
My parents were never given “rules and laws” and they had a great relationship with their grandchildren. Ditto the next generation.
I’m done, off to the real world where people just get on with the job without being pathetic.

The same 'real world' that you are moaning about on this thread?