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I am sure if you asked my in-laws, they would classify me as a controlling parent who deprives them of seeing their grandchildren just because "I don't like them"
In reality, they have caused so much stress on our marriage with their overbearing, demanding, meddling, bizarre behavior that any confidence I had with them being caregivers to a child was lost many years ago. In fact I do not even trust them to be with my children unsupervised. They have caused this to happen to themselves. It is sad and quite a shame that I can't even ask them to babysit which I would love to do but they are just not normal human beings. Another sad part about the situation is that they have no clue what they did and what they have done over the years. We tried to bring it up a few times some of our concerns and they would just gaslight us. So with people who there's no talking to, they completely shut down any attempt to try to correct their horrible behavior, the only option we had was to limit their involvement with their grandkids. I'm sure this hurts them very much, but at the end of the day it's my children I'm trying to protect. My spouse has lasting negative effects of their parenting, and I would be a negligent parent if I were to let history repeat itself by giving them unsupervised access to the kids. They are abusive mentally, they have an uncanny ability to get inside people's heads and fill it with lies and nonsense but in the same process making themselves look like deities. I believe the word is narcissism. They love-bomb you, then tell you how much you suck. The emotional roller coaster that these people have put both me and my spouse and my children on in the years that I've known them is emotionally and physically draining.
My parents watched my kids quite a bit and I never really cared what they did with them since I trusted them. I learned on my own what worked and didn't work for me but I didn't see the harm if others did some things differently while my kids were in their care. Adapting to new things is probably something kids should learn anyway. As the kids got older they would complain themselves if there was something they didn't like and we'd deal with it. A 7pm bedtime at my in-laws put a stop to them spending the night there when they got a little older, for example. Some things can't be forced.
I'm not talking about things that are harmful or dangerous, obviously, but things like giving kids food/sweets you don't allow in your house, or waking them from a nap, aren't worth fighting over because that phase of their lives is over in a blink but fractured relationships may never heal.
I do get what OP is saying on a larger scale though, people who use kids to manipulate or control others are the worst.
I am sure if you asked my in-laws, they would classify me as a controlling parent who deprives them of seeing their grandchildren just because "I don't like them"
In reality, they have caused so much stress on our marriage with their overbearing, demanding, meddling, bizarre behavior that any confidence I had with them being caregivers to a child was lost many years ago. In fact I do not even trust them to be with my children unsupervised. They have caused this to happen to themselves. It is sad and quite a shame that I can't even ask them to babysit which I would love to do but they are just not normal human beings. Another sad part about the situation is that they have no clue what they did and what they have done over the years. We tried to bring it up a few times some of our concerns and they would just gaslight us. So with people who there's no talking to, they completely shut down any attempt to try to correct their horrible behavior, the only option we had was to limit their involvement with their grandkids. I'm sure this hurts them very much, but at the end of the day it's my children I'm trying to protect. My spouse has lasting negative effects of their parenting, and I would be a negligent parent if I were to let history repeat itself by giving them unsupervised access to the kids. They are abusive mentally, they have an uncanny ability to get inside people's heads and fill it with lies and nonsense but in the same process making themselves look like deities. I believe the word is narcissism. They love-bomb you, then tell you how much you suck. The emotional roller coaster that these people have put both me and my spouse and my children on in the years that I've known them is emotionally and physically draining.
So I guess there are two sides to every story.
Sounds like my in-laws. So normal and charming in public, so completely undermining in private.
What they did to the relationship between my husband and his children has still not been undone. Same with my husband's brother and his child.
My mother-in-law has been deceased for five years now but her legacy is a trail of broken relationships that still have not healed.
She was the main force in absolutely denying adulthood to her sons, in her mind her sons and the grandchildren were all on the same level--children. No one was an adult but her.
Aided and abetted by my father-in-law.
I'm not for denying grandparents access to grandchildren. That can back-fire when the grandchildren grow up and feel their parents deprived them of knowing their grandparents.
Sounds like my in-laws. So normal and charming in public, so completely undermining in private.
I'm not for denying grandparents access to grandchildren. That can back-fire when the grandchildren grow up and feel their parents deprived them of knowing their grandparents.
Supervised visits only though.
Sounds like my in-laws as well. I invited them to every event - birthdays, Christmas concerts, recitals, baseball games, etc. It helped they lived 300 miles away so they could only come two or three times a year but then stayed with us for three days. They treated me like the hired help or temporary maid.
At the time, I did what I thought was right for my children as grandparents are important. In retrospect, I feel like I was ill used and wonder if I made the right decision.
All of these things would make me come down on the side of the grandparents. I won't let you see your grandchild unless you give me money or babysit full-time for free? That's ridiculous.
On the other hand, Grandma waking up my sleeping baby so she could play with him, which meant he screamed all afternoon after I took him home, finally took a very late nap, and then was up all night, was not OK. Giving my exclusively breastfed 3-month-old bananas because the doctor told her to give her 3-month-old bananas thirty years ago was also not OK. I don't think I was being especially difficult or unreasonable by asking her not to do these things, and when she persisted in doing her own thing, stopping letting her babysit small infants.
We had lots of supervised visits until they were older. By the way, my kids had and still have a wonderful relationship with their grandmother. She is a very nice person, she just had a hard time accepting that she was not their mom, and that times have changed. We don't wrap a belly band around newborns to protect their naval any more. She was quite annoyed with me when I refused to do that.
I "dragged" my very educated mother to the pediatrician 30+ years ago so he could explain to her why we don't use antibiotics at the drop of hat. I had grown tired of having that conversation.
I have mixed feelings about this - too many different personalities come into play.
For instance, I have a sister in law who is a terrible house keeper and is also a hoarder - and she smokes in the house. And she has dogs and cats in the house who shed everywhere and she doesn't always clean up their pee. It's a terrible situation and yet she is mad at her daughter for not allowing her only grandson to spend the night there. Well, it's so bad that I can't even stay there and I'm an adult and am not hypersensitive to pet dander or cigarette smoke - but it's just too much. And there's no way she could possibly make that home "child proof."
I used to have a swimming pool. Thankfully all my grandkids are older and they also had a pool so they know how to swim - which is the only way I would have a pool. So there's that scenario too.
That being said, with my first grandchild, my daughter used to drop her off and tell me, in front of her "OK, Mom, she goes to bed at 8 pm and she gets ONE COOKIE and she can only watch shows that I've pre approved." And I would say, right in front of her, "OK so here's what we're going to do - we ARE going to call your mom about any shows. But you can stay up till 9 pm and you can have two cookies."
It was sort of a game - and I wasn't breaking any big time rules or whatever.
My late husband had a son and the son's mother, his ex wife, used to have my husband's mom "watch" (aka provide free babysitting) his son occasionally but it was with strict instructions that if she let my husband know he was over there, she'd stop bringing him over there.
As a mom and grandma, I just think this is so weird. You woke your own kids up to play with them? Bizarre.
It rather sounds like my Mom did to me when I visited her on the weekends.......and I worked the midshift. I would crash at 4 pm, thinking I could get 6 hours and then do a crash launch to drive the hour back home.........
.........but she would wake me up at 7 for dinner. Among other things, I started my work week very sleep deprived, far behind the power curve. Up to now, I put it down to day people not understanding night workers, believing that our sleep could be achieved by "well, you can always take a nap".........
..........but this throws an interesting twist into it.
My house, my rules. My kids know that. I tell the grandkids to stop doing what I don’t like and I don’t care who’s around. When I’m at my kids house I keep my mouth shut. Seems to work so far.
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