Just told daughters I won’t be babysitting

[SpryCat]

I have two gorgeous toddler Gs’s by my two daughters, I look after the eldest Gs, one afternoon a week, I pick him up from nursery and cook his dinner till dad picks him up and have my youngest Gs another afternoon to give his mum a break. I have been given a long a list of rules I must follow to the letter. My youngest Dd is always having a go at me for not following all the rules, I asked her if we could have her son for a couple of hours tomorrow and got a long list of things she is not happy about, mainly (as she was at work) we had her partner with their son, my other daughter with her partner and son over on Boxing Day and eldest Gs was play fighting with my H and he jokingly said Gs was a thug. It was all reported back to the daughter who was working that day by her partner and her sister. She blamed us for her son’s bad behaviour (he is 2.5 years old) and I said we won’t be looking after Gs again as so shit at it. I text my other daughter and said we won’t be looking after your son anymore because we turn children into thugs. So fuck it, let then look after there own kids as they so perfect.
I didn’t want to hear back from them and was so het up I blocked them from messaging back. I only messaged one daughter to have Gs for a few hours tomorrow and I get aggro.
No matter what I do I get arsey messages, It does my head in.

Why? Do you never have a glass of wine or a biscuit? Or a snack that's not ideal?
Do you honestly think fury is an appropriate emotion to feel if your child is given squash?
How are you going to cope when your child drinks squash of their own accord?

wow ! reading your back story is really sad , I’m so sorry you had a shit childhood and relationships, and explains why your daughters have un resolved rage
can you afford family therapy? Would your girls engage with therapy? , can you write them a heart felt letter apologising again for their childhood and how things were from your perspective? Basically just tell them how much you love them
and want to get things right but criticism hurts you deeper than the average mum ???

Yes I do recommend it, it was very thought provoking especially in a time we are told boys & girls should be treated the same. A lot of it is just old fashioned sense - that we moved away from - maybe too quickly..

I got the book when my first dd was a teenager - so felt I had missed out on the earlier years with her but able to start from the beginning with my other two DDs but you can jump in at any age. The difference in sexual encounters for young boys and girls and the lasting impact was a truthful eye opener.

How do I do that? Thank you

Massively agree with this.
I will never, ever understand why so many young parents are so desperate to push away the very people who, all things being equal, used to be the main source of support in the early years. So sad.
Now children are regarded as possessions, to be jealously guarded and used as pawns to control other people's behaviour.
The idea that my mother is somehow 'entitled' for wanting to see her grandchildren is outrageous, yet pps are lining up to justify this attitude.
It's going to be very interesting when this generation are grandparents.

I don’t blame you at all OP. My late MIL was a wonderful grandmother, and really helped us with our boys. I wouldn’t have dreamt of giving her a list of rules, she had bought up her own family, and helped lots with her other grandchildren. You either trust the judgement or you don’t, and if you don’t why leave your child.

Whilst you were also a victim, the fact remains that you left you children behind with an abusive man. No wonder they don't trust your judgement. They are clearly working hard to brake the chain of generational trauma, and want to protect their DC.

Personally I'm not keen on encouraging children to fight, so I can see why your DD might be annoyed if they have already asked you not to allow it I the past. Or maybe they're worried that you are allowing a man round their kids who ignores you when you asked him not to playfight? That does raise the question of what other boundaries he may be ignoring and what other boundaries you are failing to enforce, which then re-enforces the view that you can't be trusted to keep the DC safe.

Your reaction was also very extreme. Instead of having a conversation with them you thew a strop, withdrew childcare (even from the DD who had nothing to do with the disagreement) and then blocked everyone. Personally I wouldn't trust the judgement of someone who's behaviour was so irrational, so it's probably for the best if you don't have the grandchildren anymore.

This is horrible post and shame on you. Dont talk about generational trauma when you don’t even understand the basics about abuse.

What was she supposed to do? Drag them by their hair? Stay? She had to leave, she asked them to go with her it they said no. Was she supposed to throw herself on the pyre of motherhood? These were two teenage girls who had already been brainwashed.

She did the best she could.

On a side note - good look up the benefits of rough and tumble in children.

Quite

Press report on your original post

True. It's a well known choking hazard but I'll play Russian roulette with my kids lives and let them eat whole grapes because I did!

Should I also put them in forward facing car seats, wrap them in loose blankets and put them to sleep on their front? That's whst my mum did with me and sure i survived!

Or is it better now we have the knowledge to do better?

Silly comment 😂

The parents are demanding the privilege of free childcare moaning what they get is not enough, and expect complete control of every little thing that is done for their children whilst they enjoy thousands of pounds worth of savings plus me time because parenting is too much.

The thread is actually about chocolate and play fighting.

But if you feel bolstering your response with car seats and loose covers crack on 😂

This. For goodness sake.

Christ you all seem so dramatic...
Fine don't see your grandchildren

It's ok for them to have boundaries with their children as well which most grandparents would adhere to

2 of my kids are in their 30s and they had their grapes cut up when they were little. Hardly new.

I’m not sure that s baiting qualifies as doing the best you can 🤷‍♀️

No you don't have "rights" over your children - you have responsibilities.

A part of those responsibilties is:

• modeling tolerance
• modeling building and managing relationships with others even if we don't agree with them
• demonstrating how to agree to differ on issues
• demonstrating agreeing mutually acceptable and beneficial points when dealing with others
• looking at issues from the point of view of others
• the world is not all about Me!Me!Me
• that they are not the sole source of truth and accuracy, especially in fields which are constantly changing both forwards and backward

So from saying i didn't choke to death to saying your kids grapes were cut up? That's a bit of a switch

My mum said she never cut up grapes before giving them to me as a child - what's your point?

One of them was 11! That is not a "teenage girl" that is a child. She also didn't ask them to go with her, she "blew her top" and left alone, after a period of "not being a nice person to be around". She subsequently asked them if they would like to move in, but that was after she had already left without them.

And yes, if the only was to keep a primary school aged child safe is to make them go with you, that's what you do. 11 year old do not have the capacity to judge for themselves if a situation is safe, so the choice should never have been left to a child that young.

No. "Many" children do not and have not died from choking on grapes. Its exceptionally rare. That does not mean it isn't sensible to cut large grapes in half, but lets keep a sense of perspective.

The advice to cut up seedless grapes has changed over the past few decades as the kind of seedless grapes commonly given to children are very much larger than they used to be and so it makes sense to cut them up. When mine were little (all four were 90s babies) the advice was to cut up "large grapes" depending on which of the myriad of books you read.

Seedless grapes were sometimes labelled in little snack packs for children but were quite small then. The seedless grapes I buy now are the size of cherry tomatoes due to years of breeding because customers want big grapes without pips.

Parents of yesteryear were not thick and stupid regarding choke hazards - the commonly available choke hazards change over time.

FGS what is wrong with some of you just being nasty for the sake of it.. not one of you know one another and yet here you are tearing one another to bits..
It is perfectly ok for a young mum to want to do things her way.. we all did it when our children were young.. you have the right to say what’s what when you’re a first time mum. Over the years and the children grow up mums tend to chill out and all the things we were against, we wonder what on earth we were worried about.
It is also ok for grandparents to have their grandchildren provided they were good enough parents to you and to spoil and enjoy their grandchildren.. if that means giving them a bit of squash and the occasional biscuit..so bloody what? if you’d actually get cross about your child receiving such things then I would question a potentially controlling nature ..
As a parent of grown up children with great teeth and healthy weights.. I can tell you this.. not letting your kids have the odd treat will increase their fascination even more in the forbidden foods!
Good luck with your squabbles .. is it any wonder mumsnet has such a terrible reputation for bitching women!

I was sleeping on my friends sofa so couldn’t take them, I couldn’t force them to go with me, once I had emergency housing the following week I told them they could but they were confused and angry and clinging on their dad. They refused to talk to me. They were living in the house they were brought up in. At that time I thought it was all me and it took around 8 months to sort out that I had been coerced and manipulated for 16 years and join the dots up. I believed they were better off with him. Unless you have been in that situation you don’t know how you take on all the blame, that you are not doing enough to please and not wanting to do as your told is considered betrayal. I was told early on after the children were born that if we split up him and his family would make sure I wouldn’t get custody and not see them much. I had no family to talk too, ex didn’t like me having friends so I was very much alone, that’s not my excuse it’s what happened.
Should I have left years earlier… YES I should have but regret won’t turn the clock back. I’m a different person than I was then, no one walks over me unless they are my family. It’s not right but that’s me.

In your opinion. 😅

Yep