I live fairly close to my mother and step-father, and yesterday they babysat for us. They rang us when we were on the way back and asked us to pick up takeaway so we were longer getting back than we had arranged. When I got to their house, I found my ds (age 8) crying in my mum's arms and when I asked what was wrong, she said "you've been too long".
I was a bit cheesed off by this answer, as we would have been on time if we hadn't stopped to get the takeaway they'd asked for! Also I felt really guilty thinking she meant that my ds had been missing us (although it surprised me cos he doesn't usually mind a few hours at his gran's once in a while). But what she actually meant was that SD hadn't been coping with the dc, I guess, cos the story came out a bit that Step-dad was having a stresshead and diabetic episode: ds had been jumping on the sofa, hadn't stopped fast enough for SD and he had been shouted at and put on the floor. Which sounded fair enough, really.
Got home later, and ds said actually SD had smacked him and called him a big baby when he cried. (I don't agree with smacking and everyone in the family knows that.)
I am quite upset about it. It's my mum lying about what happened as much as the smack. They are/were due to babysit again, this time overnight (in a month or so) and I think I shouldn't let them. Or maybe I'm overreacting.