JUST GRANDPARENTS!!!!!!

[arabella2]

Hello
Mine or should I say my ds's (my parents) are a pain in the neck. Of course they love ds etc etc and want to spend time with him. Ds really gets on with my Dad and this is great... I think it's important for children to know and have a good relationship with their grandparents, I have a nice memory of mine and I think added to your parents they are another "safe" place to be.
However, my parents are overwhelming when they come here. They are all over ds and no one else can really get a word in edgeways, constantly taking pictures of him and only him, their whole air is of people who are kind of "collecting their due" and have a "right" to time alone with their grandchild. MIL equally loves ds but does not behave in this over possessive way. My Mum is Italian and my Dad English. We are only speaking English to ds for the moment (dh is Gujarati) but recently my Mum has started speaking Italian to ds sometimes - never when she is in the same room as us, ds is 22 months and I think it's too soon for another language to be introduced but she seems to be obsessed with the thought that he should know a few words of her language. However with us (me and my sister she has only ever spoken English really, we used to sometimes speak Italian at the weekends but badly). When I see them with him I sometimes think they think of him as their possession... My Mum is often asking him who she is - he has known who she is for about a year but she sometimes gets paranoid that he might have forgotten. I don't know it's all too much when they are here - it's all about them, they never seem to just sit back and just watch him play either by himself or with other people. They do play with him nicely and I suppose better this with all the over-possessive aspects that seem to go together with it than grandparents who don't give a toss.
They are over in England roughly every 4 to 6 weeks when they will spend a week to 15 days here, coming here definitely every 2nd day and sometimes more, by the end of their stay I am saturated... My Dad definitely only comes here to see ds.
Anyway, do I sound unreasonable???? I think it's because I just didn't expect to see quite so much of my parents. Before ds I saw them less and I feel like I have been dragged back into the family fold which I was free from.
Also I am pregnant with no. 2 and I am dreading them doing the same whole over possessive "WE ARE YOUR GRANDPARENTS" with him/her as well.

I can really empathise with you, arabella. I sympathise with the posters without family, because I really do love my Mum, but what you describes sounds exactly like how she is. Everything seems to be about her. She has to be with ds and she is the centre of attention. A lot of things she says really really sting, although she doesn't mean them to, and I'm sure anyone else listening would not find it hurtful.

Since becoming a mum I have discovered a lot about myself and my relationship with my mum, and I'm beginning to sort it all out. But I agree, it is difficult. Sorry not to offer any advice.

Arabella, I think u know why you feel the way you do and that one of the other posters summed it up in a comment about them making better grandparents than parents. Maybe you could try to discuss it with your mum, in the 'when you do this I feel this way about my childhood/our relationship'. Maybe her response can help you come to terms with how you feel, or at least make her rethink some of her behaviours. But at the end of the day, the past is the past and not a lot can be done about it and sometimes you just have to file it away. I hope that doesn't sound glib - or easy. I know from my own experience that it is certainly not easy. Good luck!