Am I unreasonable to want my daughter playing downstairs with grandad?

[Lalaland2020]

Am a weird for feeling uncomfortable with my 6 year old daughter being alone upstairs in the bedroom with her grandad (my father in law - my dad isn’t around). My in laws keep the kids toys upstairs in the bedrooms, so she often goes up alone with him there (grandma is usually downstairs in the kitchen or with my son). I have asked my husband to bring the toys downstairs so they can play around other family members, but he says there isn’t an issue with her going upstairs to play and she asks to go up. I came home today to her and grandad being upstairs in her room with the door closed whilst my husband, grandma and my son were downstairs playing in the front room. When I asked my daughter to come down she said that they were on her bed with the iPad. I’ve sad to my husband that I’m not comfortable with this, but he said I’m making it weird and making my daughter feel bad. Am I a freak for feeling like this?!

Or "Grandad took me upstairs and he shut the door and we played on the bed".

That would have me phoning the SS.

yup and that's a bell that cannot be unrung

Same …their safety is everything

In response to previous poster: Of course we can see where the DH is coming from. None of us 'think our fathers are abusers'.

The thing is tho how many grandfathers are shutting themselves away from everyone else and laying on the bed with their GD?

If both parents have decided that a grandad is ok to provide child care alone, that's not the same thing as a grandfather insisting on being behind closed doors with a GC.

This sort of thing is very very hard to deal with and i feel for you OP.

But deal with it you have to.

I was 7 I think when I was abused by a family member. Door closed.
My mother was a police officer. I never told her but I told my sister. She called me a liar and hurt me for it.
I would never had left any child with that person.
My father would have killed him and it would have broken his heart.
I can spot a pervert a mile off. Don't take the risk. It effected me all of my life.

That behaviour is a massive red flag. YANBU at all. The toys come downstairs into a public area or you leave with your DC

That's a crazy statistic, i didn't realise it waa anything like this!

A lot of red flags here, which others have pointed out. Out of interest, does Grandad insist on playing with your son, upstairs, alone and with a closed door? Or just your daughter?

I would be looking out for signs of grooming here. It may well be that nothing overt has happened yet - she is still very little. But if you establish a pattern of behaviour for long enough, it is easy for an unpleasant man to begin pushing those boundaries in a way that your daughter may not really be aware of until it is too late. A safe man would also realise that insisting on closing the door would be a red flag - and wouldn’t dream of it.

Good idea to trust your instincts sure, but there is a lot of paranoia on this thread. Kids play in their bedrooms and adults play with them there too. Feeling suspicious of a father or grandfather playing games with their kid in a bedroom is going too far for me.

I trust my dad with my life but if he kept taking my DD’s upstairs to play and shutting the door I’d think it was very odd behaviour, I wouldn’t think it was untoward but I certainly wouldn’t like it.

Trust your gut on this and sod your husband and his hurt feelings. His father should know not to be lying on a bed with a child, with the door shut for goodness sake. CSA is most common with family members.

there is a lot of paranoia on this thread
Feeling suspicious of a father or grandfather playing games with their kid in a bedroom is going too far for me.

Feeling suspicious of a slightly pervy FIL playing with your DD in his bedroom with the door closed is not paranoia.

Door shut???

No way

Why?? Hiding something?

So one poster says that based blanket rule of no men upstairs with door closed.

Thing is… I trust my dad 100%. Completely. And he would never tell my children to come upstairs with their toys and close the door. It’s just very odd. Very odd indeed. And odd you can’t seem to see that’s odd

I spent half my life with my grandparents and half that time alone with my grandfather.
I adored them.
On a school trip, I was r*ped by the town mayor who was a chaperone.
I was 16.
He was a friend of my parents.
While it might be someone close to your family, it isn’t always the person you suspect.

And being a drunk jerk at a wedding is a far cry from being a perv who harms little children.

I would never dismiss your concerns as a mother - that’s not what I’m saying.
And I don’t understand why they can’t play with toys and iPad downstairs amongst the rest of the family, either.

I would NEVER EVER EVER want what happened to me to happen to any other child.
I just don’t know how to look at people and decide who’s a perv and who isn’t.
They should come with a P on their foreheads, don’t you think?
I do.
Or maybe a big red R.
That would’ve really helped me.

What happened? Was the police involved?

Is fil dh's actual df?
Who's ipad?
Alarm bells ringing for me.
I missed signals to my utter horror.
Dc abused very much in plain sight. As in 4 other adults in the house. Dc regularly removed from sight by a relative.

I'd rather my FIL thought I was rude than my daughter was abused. This has to stop.
My mum never let me be alone with my paternal grandad because he gave her the creeps. We never got to find out if her instincts were right.

It was the 70s.
I never told a soul.
But then in the 90s he killed himself and I wore a red dress to his funeral.
And people thought I was the inappropriate one.
Sheezus.
But by then I’d told my sister - the only person I ever told.
We had a right good laugh over the tiny little minds in that tiny little town.
And I won. Because here I am.
I don’t even think about it much anymore.

No, as someone who was raped by a family member when I was very little, while other family members were in the house, I assure you that a man's hurt feelings are not the worst thing in the world.

I'd upset any number of men to save a child from going through what happened to me. Feeling hard done by or insulted doesn't come close to the trauma of rape.

All adults should be aware of the concept of safeguarding these days. This grandfather should know that being alone with a child, away from everyone else and with the door shut is just not what you do, even if you're the most wholesome and innocent person in the world.

If you really want to tiptoe around his feelings, say that children need to learn for their future safety that it's not ok to be alone with an adult who isn't their parent, or that you want everyone to be together so the kids don't get into the habit of skulking off to play alone. And as PPs have said, just do it, don't negotiate. Take the toys and your child downstairs.

At the very least I would want the door left open and I'd be checking on them often. In fact this could be the way you test the waters. Go up and chat to them for a bit, then when you leave, leave the door wide open. Check back in 10 mins, then 20. If someone has closed the door, go back in there. Repeat this exercise a couple of times. If the door keeps being closed then you need to say something to your husband and be really bloody assertive about it.

You wouldn’t have played in your bedroom with your father?

I agree with everyone else, this is ridiculous and totally inappropriate. Why not frame it to your DH that if anything ambiguous (for want of a better word) did happen, then his father would be under suspicion?

why is the door closed and what are they doing on the iPad? My in laws wouldnt do that. So yeah not great.