How much support with childcare do you get from your family ? Has this suprised you?

[fufflebum]

Just wanted to start this thread as in the last 4 years since 2 DC have been born it has suprised me how little both sets of Grandparents seem to want to offer in the way of childcare or visits to their grand children.

With the exception of my mum who visits quite regularly we have had very little practical input (regular babysitting/taking out for day etc).

One set live a long way away, Scotland, and visit once per year, if lucky. The other live about 1 1/2 hrs away. All are in good health and are retired.

No siblings near to offer assistance.

I have to admit both DH and I are quite 'independent' and like to get on with stuff.

However, I wanted to do a 'straw poll' to see if my/our experience is usual.......

I peeked at photos too unlikely - gorgeous!! His smile would surely make up for anything

IL's dont bother with us, never have done really and didnt seem at all concerned that their son was being shot at on a daily basis whilst away.........who needs them?

Amazed to see so many people are like us, when everyone around you has on tap chilcare it can meake you very depressed sometimes.

We are an hour away from our parents.

MIL visits about once every month, we visit her about every 4-6 weeks

My Mum has seen DD3 twice since she has been born and she is 9 months, whole big story there but I hvaen't spoken to her this year.

Have seen my Dad once this year, he is always promising to come to visit but never does.

This is a very personal question so please feel free to ignore, but to those of you whose parents take no interest in their GC were they good parents to you? Is it a surprise that they don't want to be more involved?

i agree sweetkitty, i thought it was just us that had a crap family, everyone i know gets lots of help.
i agree, its is quite lonely and depressing and really hard work, but as they say, i made my bed...and too be honest i love the business of it and the sense of pride that we manage on our own.

Dh's dad and step mum are 20 minutes away but we only see them a couple times a year, they have never looked after the dd's but would provide money if needed.

My mum will look after the dd's but only for a couple hours, has never had them over night and never taken them out.

My dad has looked after dd1 for an hour with a little help from his new lady friend. Dad would be happy to look after the dd's but before (when he was on his own) i wouldn't trust him to look after them as he's so forgetful and accident prone.

libra, to be honest i have never ever got on with my mum. she had us very young, and split up from my dad when i was 5,i am the middle child. i dont think she ever forgave us for ruining her life so to speak.

i would of expected her to make more of an effort with the grandchildren, she does not work so has no excuse really.
like i said before though, her loss

my MIL left my partner with his dad when he was about 8, and moved 300 miles away.
i see a pattern forming here

My parents do take an interest in their grandchildren, they just live a long way away. They also worked full time until recently. I think if you're a working grandparent or elderly grandparent you want to see your grandchildren but not be looking after them. My relatives see my children when they see me. I don't feel my family are a crap family because they don't do free childminding and find that attitude quite sad and selfish. They're a great family, but they have done their share of child rearing and love seeing the kids but don't want to do the parental disciplining and childminding stuff.
I'll probably be the same as a grandparent. Happy to see the kids with my children, but not be expecting them to dump them on me and swan off when I've been at work all day or am in my late 60s and retired.
I've never had a problem finding babysitters who want to babysit and need the money. You do have to make the effort to look for them though.

1. No. They were bad. But until I had counselling and realised what passes for 'normal' and 'good' parenting I didn't know that.
2. Yes it was suprising at first because my sister has five kids and they have always worshipped her and her children and her dh.

2.b. ...so no again, because my sister was always my mother's declared favourite out of the five of us and I now realise that my mother is a fuck up and jealous of me because my father has always had the hots for me. I got into shit relationships because of this dynamic (boring textbook crap I'm glad to say) and she revelled in my failure on that front.

I was never expected to have children (too much of a fuck up obviously...and she made me have an abortion fifteen years ago to make doubly sure) and now that I do have a son they have done too much damage to make up for it really.

happy happy happy eh?

Honestly, am just thankful I now have the chance to be a mother and I try to ignore all the other cult-like family wank stuff..

Burgers for tea.
Onwards and upwards.

Thanks so much for kind comments about my lovely boy.

Libra - to answer your question, no, my mother was a dreadful parent (emotional abuse). She is a very damaged individual. Not sure if I'd say my father was a good parent or not. I love him dearly but I couldn't understand why he'd let my mother treat me the way she did. In his defence my mother would get very jealous and make a huge scene if he tried to spend time with me or was nice to me.

ohdear yours sounds similar to my experience.

2rebecca, you took my comment the wrong way, sad and selfish. i dont want free childminding, it would just of been nice for my mum to have met my youngest child, particularly since he spent the 1st week of his life in hospital with suspected meningitus, and previous to that i lost my daughter aged 13 days
yes, to me, that is being a crap mum

I feel really sorry for everyone who has little support and hope you all have good friends.

My Mum and Dad both work but will babysit at the drop of a hat and looked after them for 10 days when we went on honeymoon.

PIL are very good and take them once or twice a week for tea and away to their caravan in school hols etc.

My only issue wih MIL was that when dd was tiny we were really hard up, but she wouldn't help out with childcare so that I could work. Her reason was she didn't want to spoil the relationship. Fair enough but I coudn't get job because we couldn't afford childcare.
Now BIL has had a baby she's talking about living with them 3 days a week ( they live 3 hours away)so that SIL can go back to work. BIL earns £80,000plus a year so they can obv pay for childcare.

Sorry to rant but I can't stand favouritism.

Libra,

my DP always thought he had a wonderful upbriging and relationship with his parents. They were very involved grandparents for his elder brother's children too, and for the first two of his sister's children. When we had ours they were terrible, utterly uninterested, have never babysat, remembered birthdays, they didn't ever really bother to work out which dd was which.

We were surprised. They had seemed as though they'd be very good grandparents, and had done LOADS of childcare for his siblings' children. DP was hurt and upset.

Really, it does't bother me, but then I'm not very close to my parents and don't have many expectations of them as grandparents (so they have actually been OK, better than I expected, but still not much use for babysitting). But it was sad for DP.

notsoteenagemum....i think you got the better deal, i would rather live in a shoe box than have MIL 3 days a week

My parents were pretty rubbish too, emotional abuse with my Mum here too, my Dad is a idiot not toxic like she is but more benign neglect, was never at home really.

I don't want free childminding either but would have been ncie to have some support from time to time especially when I was pregnant with SPD.

Also sad the DDs will not have a typical GPs relationship

kitty, would you mind telling me what SPD is, hope you dont mind me asking

Very lucky in that PIL's are very hands on and have the boys a lot, one day a week they have DS2 whilst I work and have them overnight at weekends about once every 2 months. They actually ask to have them overnight(including 2 nights at their caravan over the Easter holidays). I thought once they'd retired that they would be off and about but they love their GC and love having them(also have a Dnephew now).

My family live 150 miles away, parents are divorced. My Mom comes up a lot, but she does work, she took a week off work to help out with childcare last year.
My Dad is remarried, with teen sons, he comes up about twice a year and always has the boys overnight when we visit (we normally stay at my Mom's).
I am very lucky, I guess and it has surprised me because I have more support than I ever imagined.

MIL would look after DD all the time, but unfortunately lives in another country.

FIL is also in this other country (the other side to MIL) and alcoholic, so no luck there.

Dad visits with us once every few months, and has offered childcare, but I can't take him up on it, stepmother is a bit mental and I don't want DD exposed to it without my presence. Plus any favour from them quickly becomes a guilt and manipulation tool, so I'm steering clear of that.

Mum is "toxic", and I broke contact with her when DD was 18 months. The only childcare offered from her before then was 2 hours on a Sunday when DD was a baby.

We had to walk DD up to mums house (30 mins walk away), walk back to our house for an hours break, then walk back to mums house and then walk home again! It was an utter fiasco.

DD had reflux and just generally not sleeping well issues, so we'd find the faffing about back and forth just too much effort, and end up spending £20 a week on cab fares just to catch a miniscule break. We were (and are) on a very low income and simply couldn't sustain such spending on a weekly basis.

Then mum started huffing and puffing about being "SO tired" by the childcare (SHE was tired! ), so I just thought "fuck this" and stopped taking advantage of her "generosity".

DB 1 is lovely with DD, but is depressed and often hiding from everyone, so difficult to get much help from, never mind regular help.

DB 2 Lives too far away and is not really a looking after little ones sort- he's at Uni, nuff said.

Uncles, Aunts and cousins are all rather distant (emotionally and physically).

My grandmothers are both in their 90's, really not childcare candidates.

I am the first of my friends to have a kid. So not much help from them either. They're all happy to help out when DD is asleep, but rarely under any other circumstance.

So, yeah. Sucks to be me.

gardeningmum05 - SPD stands for Symphilis Pubis Dysfunction also called Pelvic Girdle Pain. In pregnancy you produce a hormone called relaxing which softens up the pelvic joints prior to giving birth but some women produce too much too soon resulting in unsuitable pelvic joints, for some this can leave them on crutches or even in a wheelchair and a very unlucky few have it even after the birth. For me it was agonising pain when I moved, crunching of my hips, pain in my hips and feeling like my fnajo was being ripped apart. Not nice when you have a 3 and 2 yo to look after. DD3 was born in July and my mother had not seen me since the January, apparently she had todl someone that I did not like her to see me in pain thats why she had stayed away

My Parents live 1 mile away from us. I have 4 siblings, 2 of which have DC, 1 is due in 3 weeks with her first and I am due in 6 weeks with my first.

Mum has always made it clear that she has brought up her children, with no help and pretty much expects us to do the same.

She will definitely be there if I needed her but tends to moan about babysitting my nieces and nephew if she's asked to. So I don't expect any different when my LO arrives. So we won't ask her unless it's an emergency. But I can sort of understand it. There were 5 of us and she's finally now got a life of her own and only sees my Dad at weekends as he works away so they don't really want to be babysitting when they get so little time together.

My SIL is going to have our little girl for two days a week when I go back to work and we're paying her for that. Wouldn't have it any other way because then there is a commitment.

Some parents don't want to be involved and some are too interfering, it would be nice to have a balance!!

no toxic grandparents here, but they all live a long way off

Childcare-wise, I don't have any help from my mum or PIL - they all work and I wanted it that way. My children were always going to go to a nursery as I personally don't agree with grandparents looking after grandchildren (waits for a battering).

For babysitting, my mum lives 5 minutes away and she has always been available for us if we want to go out. PIL have never babysat for us - more often than not, they are in bed for 9 o'clock so we would ruin their evening! And besides, they prefer to give their help to their daughter who lives 200+ miles away, at regular intervals.

My mum has looked after daughters for the odd afternoon here and there is I need to go off to do something and my sisters will also take either or both for a couple of hours, but these are not regular or scheduled - just on an as and when basis. My PIL have had my eldest on a couple of occasions, but only when my SIL has been around with her children and taken them all out for a day.

I never thought of that gardeningmum

I can take comfort in the fact their pfb will be weaned on hotdogs!

Oh, I feel so guilty reading this.

Although I have no help with childcare when working (I pay a childminder 5 days a week) I have as much help as I was any evening or weekend.

My inlaws live at the end of our lane & they are stars. As well as that, we have 2 of dh's uncles and an aunt living right beside us too, & our children tend to wander between the 3 houses (we always know where they are, they're not ragamuffins!)

As well as that I am from a rather large family, and I'm the youngest, which really means I have done my fair share of babysitting nieces and nephews over the years so now my sisters and brothers return the favours!! Well, only one brother.... but my sisters are more than happy to swap kids for weekends.

Also, I have one sister who lives pretty close to me. After I got married she had a new baby & developed PND, at that time I took a few weeks off work to help her out. As a result I got extremely close to her son (now her middle child) and I adore him, adore all my nieces and nephews actually (all 20 of them!!)but especially him... anyway what I meant to say was that my sister often has my children for the weekend then we'll return the favour... or if her dh is taking her for a meal they drop their kids at the end of my lane & they wander up here to me!

I guess I am lucky to have a close family, and some that are so willing to give of their time for me...I must remember and thank them, as reading this thread, I probably take them for granted a bit.

MIL, I have to say, is a total gem, she will gladly have the children any time at all, she works full time but in the evening and at weekends she and FIL are happy to have them. They just potter about and colour or watch dvds.... nice seeing them together as they are their only grandchildren!!

Connie - your situation sounds lovely to me, just perfect