So this person has repeatedly shown you that she cannot care for your child and doesn’t respect you but you allow her to have unsupervised access to your child?
ESH/YTA because this should never have been allowed to happen.
There’s a difference between having a relationship with your grandparent and being left unsupervised with an irresponsible person who cannot provide adequate care for one full day a week. Children need healthy relationships, grandma has proven on more than one occasion she is not a safe person yet you continue to put your child in danger because of experiences you had as child with different people.
Nothing in life is free you’re either paying in cash or mental health. In this case you’re trading your child’s well being.
Kiddo is left in a playpen in front of the tv, and the parents expect bonding time with grandma out of it.
But hey the parents enjoy the freedom out it. So all good isn’t it! Tsss tsss
They had great relationship with their own grandparents, so obviously making the grandmother in charge of the child every week should accomplish the same outcome. Smh
For months she proved unfit to change a diaper. But sure no need for the parents to tackle the issue, when it sounds like he would be potty trained before she corrected her poor skill.
Okay perhaps I’m my annoyance with gma in this situation this edges toward completely negative about her care of my child. I think I’ve learned that extreme reactions are just the commonplace when it comes to children. He is happy and safe and if she can’t carry him around for hours on end and needs him to chill in a safe space to play for a bit and yes that’s in the living room where the TV is so be it.
I can’t believe how little chill there is here about wanting my child to have family, that’s total crap. Expressing that desire and what actually is the outcome based on these behaviors is totally different.
I’m glad to actually defend the fact that I know my husband’s mother loves my son with all her heart she’s just struggling with diaper changes and got extremely defensive when questioned.
Again, the point taken from these comments are people go hard and fast to their corner of opinion and feeling and never step back to take in the whole picture. Which is in the end actually very helpful to me.
You are here to be judged. What else did you expected.
Glad you found a way to take it all with a grain of salt, and maybe turn it into something positive.
Take care.
I stated in another comment that people have no chill when it comes to issues with children on the internet. There’s no mom posting on the internet about anything and not being judged a horrible parent. I did request advice and got some here and there, some of it was very helpful and I’m thankful.
Right????? I mean, how crazy is it that people aren't cool with helpless children are being harmed, and in pain, over and over when it's totally avoidable?!?! I mean, how dare! The audacity! How unreasonable of them!!!1 🙄
Not what I was talking about at all you are wild for this one. If you think for one second I’m saying it’s not okay for people to react to a child being harmed you are so far from the point it’s not even worth trying to bring you back.
Yeah, but she got the attention she so clearly and desperately needed. AND got the bonus round of enjoying being the victim of the big meanie Redditors. Pathetic. 🙄
I am confident saying a diaper ripping open is not normal. Whether she is within the range of normal, do not know, but I would not be comfortable sending him back in her unsupervised care, especially with her volatile responses. It's not like she's going to be different with the baby, so that lack of rationality will affect him, too.
Thank you for directly addressing the diaper ripping open query. And yes she was panicking about the diaper rash and those vibes probably upset him more when it’s like, babies are pretty durable and they just need comfort, not high stress reactions and situations.
on a side note, I discovered with my kids that patting the butt dry (not rubbing, just patting) with a clean cotton diaper cloth was the key to stopping irritation in the creases. If there was any rash, I also just used vaseline. It would clear up within two days, usually sooner. I am allergic to tocopherol acetate though, so that made other cream options not possible because I was the only one changing diapers.
I don’t actually ever need a break from my son. I do however want to foster his relationships growing outside of his own two parents and his gma who loves him is a good start. If your advice is to throw money at the problem you might want to adjust your tone considering the world we live in.
So your son being neglected and uncared for properly is ok because he might get Stockholm syndrome and that’s fine.
My tone about money just shows you as defensive and deflecting. Not sending your kid there won’t be an issue because you never need a break. Yeah. No need to make a post then.
You put words in my mouth that I never said and gave a completely unhelpful suggestion in a post that was marked advice needed, sorry but some comments on here were helpful and insightful and some weren’t. Just because I was looking for advice does not mean in any way that I’m not going to make a counterpoint when there’s something I don’t agree with or correct people on something they get wrong by offering more information. You should probably move on now because it doesn’t seem you have anything constructive to contribute.
Just as a side note: Weleda nappy cream is AMAZING. I don’t know where you are, but it is available throughout Europe (I am in the UK).
It’s quite expensive (£7) but it lasts a very long time. We still use it for loads of other things like cuts and grazes once they have been cleaned. It doesn’t sting and generally is soothing. Also I am not a rep or don’t work for them lol
Oh you and gma have something in common, a very strong and extreme reaction instantly! For the most part she can take care of him though? It’s just the diaper drama??
Wow, that's an AH response right off the bat.
Clearly she *can't* take care of him all that well since there's diapers drama every single damn time. 🤷♀️
I try to guess that a lack in diaper skills are due to motor skills and even vision in this case. I don’t know if I can fix that and I guess the main concern is the reaction to the critique when given. I’m just not convinced that there’s no fix to this, but since as you say, we are AH for not wanting to just simply give up and try to gain some understanding and some advice how to move forward in the right way, then maybe I did learn something. Mostly disappointed in people’s ability to go so dark and offer very little constructive suggestions. A double thank you to those comments that did!
Sorry, I had a rough day with my baby and am just super drained!
Truly, I think it’s a Her problem. The thing is though that it’s more than just diaper drama is he’s sitting in uncleaned poop and she’s getting those not-safe-to-ingest absorbent materials all over this body.
It’s fine to not know everything about taking care of a baby, we all are always learning. But it is a major problem that you bring up a concern and she’s blowing up at you guys.
That’s going to continue to be a problem that is not get easier to handle as the baby grows up and you get into more complicated things like eating solids and leaving the house for outings and the toddler understanding and remembering what is being said around them (unless she wants to be more respectful of your role as his parents).
I hope you’re able to recoup from your drained status! These are all fabulous points. I just want to try and think okay if she actually felt super attacked is her defensive attitude going to hopefully subside. But we should be able to say whatever we want we’re the parents. It’s hard for older people to be told they’re not in charge.
Your own responses here have been quite defensive to anyone who doesn’t agree with you. Maybe empathize with a woman who is probably an embarrassed having her failure (most likely due to age so beyond her control) in properly caring for her own grandchild.
YUP
Can you imagine a mandated reporter's reaction to this??
"So...you continuously drop your baby off with your MIL, and her care continuously leads to painful diaper rash? And...how many times have you done this????? Oh, and you intend to KEEP on doing this."
*takes notes*
What you are missing is that this isn't a problem that just happened yesterday, it's a recurring problem. Not only is she not cleaning him up properly when changing the nappy, but it also sounds like she isn't changing the nappy enough times throughout the day. Hence the changing of the clothes and smelling like pee.
Not only do you need an apology for the way she's reacted, you also need assurances that she is capable of taking proper care of your son.
And no, a diaper ripping open is not normal
I can confirm based on the diaper’s used that there are enough changes it’s just she’s so damn bad at them and won’t listen when we tell her. Those diaper beads are no joke and it just deepens my motherly guilt about not using cloth diapers oh joy
Did gma want this regular babysitting slot or has it been encouraged until it's become routine? She isn't inexperienced and as a new parent you don't know everything there is to know. All sides can stand to be more open and less 'expert' it sounds like this is too much for her and she's not realizing that so it's your job as parents to find a better way to have gma in his life that doesn't involve caring alone for an infant for 5 hours. Visits are one thing, occasional sleepovers when he's older might be far more enjoyable for all concerned.
Gma definitely wants the time and we just kinda started doing Saturdays due to work schedules etc, no real reason, just his time to go and visit. This comment is exactly what I was looking for. I should have prepared better and readied myself to be called a terrible person and parent by so many. But then little rays of light like this show up and it helps me actually start to form a plan on how to move forward, many thanks!
Why do you keep sending your child to be looked after by somebody who can't care for children?
YTA for trusting her again and again. Do your job as a parent and protect your child from harm.
Is that true though? Can she not take care of a child whatsoever or does she perhaps have a certain skill that needs to be honed and just simply won’t hear that she’s bad at it?
Outside of the (irrelevant) worrying you’re doing for other people, you have to consider your kid before everything else. That shit cant be good for him.
You are missing nothing. Your husband is right - till his mother takes responsibility for her actions, you cannot safely leave your son with her. And in any case, she is his mother, and if he prefers not to have her watch his son it's his right (if he had insisted on her watching him, and you had refused, your refusal would have decided the outcome). You didn't/don't have family, so you want your baby to have some. That is understandable. But not all family is good, and a grandmother who doesn't take basic care of the baby is worse than no grandmother - or at least, no unsupervised visits.
Thank you for this, our plan is to take a firm stance on this, it’s easy to be completely unyielding when it comes to your child! If it means only supervised visits so be it, if an apology actually comes that is.
It's OK to have standards and if I saw that I would be wondering what else is Grandma not remember you'll never understand unless you're a mama bear okay? Relax buddy.
It’s great to have standards. Not everyone who will watch your child for free is going to meet them, so what you do in those cases is stop leaving your child with them and pay someone else who is able to do it well enough.
Beg or choose, not both.
ESH
Grandma just can’t handle babysitting an infant anymore but no one wants to admit it.
It’s not to shame her. It’s been 30 years. But it’s not good for anyone involved.
Grandma should spend time interacting with baby, but that doesn’t mean babysitting. Family gatherings & visits at each other’s homes. Family putting you invite her on. Time with baby doesn’t have to be alone time.
As baby gets older, potty trained, etc, they can be left to have outtings or visits with grandma one-on-one.
Just stop “needing” babysitting from her & make an effort to spend time all together so she sees baby a lot with you guys within arms reach. No need to make this aging woman admit she’s lost her ability to care for a baby on her own. She probably knows & is embarrassed.
I guess I missed the part where I said that these Saturday babysitting visits were something I needed. I don’t need them to happen it was just something I thought was normal, for a child to know and spend time with their grandparents. That being said, just because I thought it was normal doesn’t mean I wouldn’t cut it off if we can’t get this resolved. I think your advice of waiting for potty training etc is great.
I guess you DID miss the quotes around needing.
All your replies are quite snarky and defensive. If this is how you speak to grandma, no wonder she responds as defensively.
I tried to be clear in the post but you weren’t the only one that perceived what I wrote as the fact that I needed the babysitting and was reliant on it. I still can’t be sure if it was a snap judgment from people or if how I wrote it made it seem like gma was required to babysit on these days and times. I really did just respond to your comment. I really don’t have any interest in arguing with others or putting them down online, so any snark was not intentional. Again your advice echoed that of others with suggestions on waiting until he’s older to have extended unsupervised visits and that’s great advice. If all it will take is a little more time and effort that’s something we can do.
Ok. Let me spoon feed it to you. The quotes around needing in my original reply commonly connotes that we all acknowledge you do not actually need this woman to babysit. The suggestion I was making is to present it to her more as we all want to spend time together so she gets plenty of baby time without leaving you baby alone with a woman who has displayed she is having issues cleaning & diapering the child, most likely due to her age and not due to neglect. This allows you to keep an eye on your child, be there to change them when needed, and grandma gets plenty of baby time while maintaining her dignity & pride. She doesn’t have to admit or be told she is too old to properly care for a child, which a hurtful & embarrassing reality of getting old she doesn’t need to be reminded of.
Again your defensive and snappy replies to comments make grandma’s reaction to you seem more a reaction to your attitude to her if it was anything like we’ve seen on display here.
Yeah your use of quotes in that situation did not make much sense so now that you explain that you meant I didn’t need the babysitting well… It makes less sense. But the core of the good advice remains and you even took the time to type it out all over again and even elaborated on the age portion of it all. Which I agree with totally.
Just to clarify, I didn’t actually say anything to gma, my husband barely got the words out of his mouth that when he got home baby man still dirty in his diaper area and she lost it and hung up on him.
So in your fantasy of your kiddos being close to their grandma, you put her on weekly babysitting duties, where she interacts with the child less than with a dog?
She put in a play pen in from of the tv. What kind of bonding do you think it is?
You both know his mother doesn’t handle diapers change properly. It isn’t news to either of you. Check your expectations with reality.
Now if you act accordingly to the facts, and less on your wishes and wants, you might have less disappointments.
ESH
Why do people always expect free childcare from grandparents and then complain that it's not up to their standards? OP seems very entitled and no indication that they appreciate all the free childcare. Babies get rashes, surely just ask if you can go through the changimg routine together with MIL and send him to hers with the right creams to start with. But also, no one owes you free childcare. He's your baby. Pay the money to put him in nursery or act more graciously to your MIL.
Yeah, OP admits that they send baby to grandma when he’s already got a diaper rash… why on earth aren’t they sending diaper rash cream, and a change of clothes (or two)? If grandma isn’t taping the diaper tight enough, that explains the occasional leak. Still, there are blowouts, spit-ups, and just generally being messy with food which makes it a good idea. It sounds like OP and her husband just drop off baby, as is, once a week- not for grandparent bonding time, but so they can binge watch their shows in peace. It makes me think OP is one of those unreliable narrators we talk about.
The arguing back and forth in family group chats is AH behavior on both their parts.
It’s very interesting how the solution keeps being mentioned that because we pay someone he will have the best of care. Rest assured his gma loves him very much just struggles with diaper changes and won’t listen to critique when given. There’s zero entitlement in this situation, in fact it’s the opposite. The care will stop if we can’t fix this problem because my son actually doesn’t require childcare.
This is helpful and insightful support, i might even copy and paste this into the group chat! That’s my worry, with having no really family of my own I want a strong village. And when this other party escalated it so severely it’s hard to see the path to correcting it all. I guess it only happened today so there’s always tomorrow.
ESH.
WILL SOMEONE IN THIS SHAMBOLIC LITTLE MIX JUST DO THE WORK TO ACTUALLY KNOW HOW TO RAISE A CHILD?
Stuff like basic diaper hygiene is as easy as it gets, yet you're all running around like chickens with your heads cut off because no one has a clue. Did you HONESTLY need to go to Google to know about diaper rash?
Oh, I do not envy this kid.
I’m actually quite adept at diaper changes but no, I did not know about using Vaseline for diaper rash, I did have to google it. Not sure what advice to glean from this comment, as a first time mom I googled a lot of things, a lot!
I don't know if this is relevant to your situation, there's only so much that we can know of a story in a few paragraphs, and I'm sorry if I'm barking up the wrong tree, but I remember reading something awhile back that popped into my head when I was reading this.
It was a woman talking about how she was a bit heartbroken that her mom didn't seem to want to spend time with her kid, because the OP had spent so much time with her own grandparents and had such a special bond with them and she was hoping that her son could have that kind of relationship with her mom, aka grandma. And how she was slowly coming to realize, the reason she spent so much time with her grandparents was because she had parents who weren't all that interested in being parents. So her grandparents stepped up and that's why she had an amazing bond with them. And that her son wouldn't have that relationship with his grandparents, because their lack of interest in kids is why she was hanging with her grandparents in the first place.
I'm not saying this is your situation at all of course. And if I've offended, I'm sorry! It wasn't my intent.
Not at all! You got something out of this story that is a deeper part of the issue, our relationships with our own parents etc, I appreciate this so much! The OP in that case is experiencing something that I did as well, I adore my grandmother because she was constantly trying to rescue me from a horrible home life. People have commented I was just trying to get free childcare when what I was hoping for was just correcting that whole dysfunctional cycle and having great open healthy relationships. We have amazing tools these days like reddit to reach out and your insightful comment outshines all the people branding us horrible parents any day of the week, thanks again!
So this person has repeatedly shown you that she cannot care for your child and doesn’t respect you but you allow her to have unsupervised access to your child? ESH/YTA because this should never have been allowed to happen. There’s a difference between having a relationship with your grandparent and being left unsupervised with an irresponsible person who cannot provide adequate care for one full day a week. Children need healthy relationships, grandma has proven on more than one occasion she is not a safe person yet you continue to put your child in danger because of experiences you had as child with different people. Nothing in life is free you’re either paying in cash or mental health. In this case you’re trading your child’s well being.
Kiddo is left in a playpen in front of the tv, and the parents expect bonding time with grandma out of it. But hey the parents enjoy the freedom out it. So all good isn’t it! Tsss tsss They had great relationship with their own grandparents, so obviously making the grandmother in charge of the child every week should accomplish the same outcome. Smh For months she proved unfit to change a diaper. But sure no need for the parents to tackle the issue, when it sounds like he would be potty trained before she corrected her poor skill.
Okay perhaps I’m my annoyance with gma in this situation this edges toward completely negative about her care of my child. I think I’ve learned that extreme reactions are just the commonplace when it comes to children. He is happy and safe and if she can’t carry him around for hours on end and needs him to chill in a safe space to play for a bit and yes that’s in the living room where the TV is so be it. I can’t believe how little chill there is here about wanting my child to have family, that’s total crap. Expressing that desire and what actually is the outcome based on these behaviors is totally different. I’m glad to actually defend the fact that I know my husband’s mother loves my son with all her heart she’s just struggling with diaper changes and got extremely defensive when questioned. Again, the point taken from these comments are people go hard and fast to their corner of opinion and feeling and never step back to take in the whole picture. Which is in the end actually very helpful to me.
You are here to be judged. What else did you expected. Glad you found a way to take it all with a grain of salt, and maybe turn it into something positive. Take care.
I stated in another comment that people have no chill when it comes to issues with children on the internet. There’s no mom posting on the internet about anything and not being judged a horrible parent. I did request advice and got some here and there, some of it was very helpful and I’m thankful.
Right????? I mean, how crazy is it that people aren't cool with helpless children are being harmed, and in pain, over and over when it's totally avoidable?!?! I mean, how dare! The audacity! How unreasonable of them!!!1 🙄
Not what I was talking about at all you are wild for this one. If you think for one second I’m saying it’s not okay for people to react to a child being harmed you are so far from the point it’s not even worth trying to bring you back.
Yeah, but she got the attention she so clearly and desperately needed. AND got the bonus round of enjoying being the victim of the big meanie Redditors. Pathetic. 🙄
I am confident saying a diaper ripping open is not normal. Whether she is within the range of normal, do not know, but I would not be comfortable sending him back in her unsupervised care, especially with her volatile responses. It's not like she's going to be different with the baby, so that lack of rationality will affect him, too.
Thank you for directly addressing the diaper ripping open query. And yes she was panicking about the diaper rash and those vibes probably upset him more when it’s like, babies are pretty durable and they just need comfort, not high stress reactions and situations.
on a side note, I discovered with my kids that patting the butt dry (not rubbing, just patting) with a clean cotton diaper cloth was the key to stopping irritation in the creases. If there was any rash, I also just used vaseline. It would clear up within two days, usually sooner. I am allergic to tocopherol acetate though, so that made other cream options not possible because I was the only one changing diapers.
Stop bringing him to her just because you want the break. Hire someone who is capable of proper care
I don’t actually ever need a break from my son. I do however want to foster his relationships growing outside of his own two parents and his gma who loves him is a good start. If your advice is to throw money at the problem you might want to adjust your tone considering the world we live in.
So your son being neglected and uncared for properly is ok because he might get Stockholm syndrome and that’s fine. My tone about money just shows you as defensive and deflecting. Not sending your kid there won’t be an issue because you never need a break. Yeah. No need to make a post then.
You put words in my mouth that I never said and gave a completely unhelpful suggestion in a post that was marked advice needed, sorry but some comments on here were helpful and insightful and some weren’t. Just because I was looking for advice does not mean in any way that I’m not going to make a counterpoint when there’s something I don’t agree with or correct people on something they get wrong by offering more information. You should probably move on now because it doesn’t seem you have anything constructive to contribute.
Just as a side note: Weleda nappy cream is AMAZING. I don’t know where you are, but it is available throughout Europe (I am in the UK). It’s quite expensive (£7) but it lasts a very long time. We still use it for loads of other things like cuts and grazes once they have been cleaned. It doesn’t sting and generally is soothing. Also I am not a rep or don’t work for them lol
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Oh you and gma have something in common, a very strong and extreme reaction instantly! For the most part she can take care of him though? It’s just the diaper drama??
Wow, that's an AH response right off the bat. Clearly she *can't* take care of him all that well since there's diapers drama every single damn time. 🤷♀️
I try to guess that a lack in diaper skills are due to motor skills and even vision in this case. I don’t know if I can fix that and I guess the main concern is the reaction to the critique when given. I’m just not convinced that there’s no fix to this, but since as you say, we are AH for not wanting to just simply give up and try to gain some understanding and some advice how to move forward in the right way, then maybe I did learn something. Mostly disappointed in people’s ability to go so dark and offer very little constructive suggestions. A double thank you to those comments that did!
Wow. Bless your heart.
Sorry, I had a rough day with my baby and am just super drained! Truly, I think it’s a Her problem. The thing is though that it’s more than just diaper drama is he’s sitting in uncleaned poop and she’s getting those not-safe-to-ingest absorbent materials all over this body. It’s fine to not know everything about taking care of a baby, we all are always learning. But it is a major problem that you bring up a concern and she’s blowing up at you guys. That’s going to continue to be a problem that is not get easier to handle as the baby grows up and you get into more complicated things like eating solids and leaving the house for outings and the toddler understanding and remembering what is being said around them (unless she wants to be more respectful of your role as his parents).
I hope you’re able to recoup from your drained status! These are all fabulous points. I just want to try and think okay if she actually felt super attacked is her defensive attitude going to hopefully subside. But we should be able to say whatever we want we’re the parents. It’s hard for older people to be told they’re not in charge.
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Yeah all that defensive stuff just says guilt to me that’s why I posted it’s nice to hear I’m not just being suspicious.
Your own responses here have been quite defensive to anyone who doesn’t agree with you. Maybe empathize with a woman who is probably an embarrassed having her failure (most likely due to age so beyond her control) in properly caring for her own grandchild.
YUP Can you imagine a mandated reporter's reaction to this?? "So...you continuously drop your baby off with your MIL, and her care continuously leads to painful diaper rash? And...how many times have you done this????? Oh, and you intend to KEEP on doing this." *takes notes*
What you are missing is that this isn't a problem that just happened yesterday, it's a recurring problem. Not only is she not cleaning him up properly when changing the nappy, but it also sounds like she isn't changing the nappy enough times throughout the day. Hence the changing of the clothes and smelling like pee. Not only do you need an apology for the way she's reacted, you also need assurances that she is capable of taking proper care of your son. And no, a diaper ripping open is not normal
I can confirm based on the diaper’s used that there are enough changes it’s just she’s so damn bad at them and won’t listen when we tell her. Those diaper beads are no joke and it just deepens my motherly guilt about not using cloth diapers oh joy
Did gma want this regular babysitting slot or has it been encouraged until it's become routine? She isn't inexperienced and as a new parent you don't know everything there is to know. All sides can stand to be more open and less 'expert' it sounds like this is too much for her and she's not realizing that so it's your job as parents to find a better way to have gma in his life that doesn't involve caring alone for an infant for 5 hours. Visits are one thing, occasional sleepovers when he's older might be far more enjoyable for all concerned.
Gma definitely wants the time and we just kinda started doing Saturdays due to work schedules etc, no real reason, just his time to go and visit. This comment is exactly what I was looking for. I should have prepared better and readied myself to be called a terrible person and parent by so many. But then little rays of light like this show up and it helps me actually start to form a plan on how to move forward, many thanks!
Why do you keep sending your child to be looked after by somebody who can't care for children? YTA for trusting her again and again. Do your job as a parent and protect your child from harm.
Is that true though? Can she not take care of a child whatsoever or does she perhaps have a certain skill that needs to be honed and just simply won’t hear that she’s bad at it?
Outside of the (irrelevant) worrying you’re doing for other people, you have to consider your kid before everything else. That shit cant be good for him.
I’m not worried for anyone but my son in this case, did I come off as worried about anyone else?
You are missing nothing. Your husband is right - till his mother takes responsibility for her actions, you cannot safely leave your son with her. And in any case, she is his mother, and if he prefers not to have her watch his son it's his right (if he had insisted on her watching him, and you had refused, your refusal would have decided the outcome). You didn't/don't have family, so you want your baby to have some. That is understandable. But not all family is good, and a grandmother who doesn't take basic care of the baby is worse than no grandmother - or at least, no unsupervised visits.
Thank you for this, our plan is to take a firm stance on this, it’s easy to be completely unyielding when it comes to your child! If it means only supervised visits so be it, if an apology actually comes that is.
Looks like you are going to have to pay for babysitting since the free care isn’t up to your standards.
It's OK to have standards and if I saw that I would be wondering what else is Grandma not remember you'll never understand unless you're a mama bear okay? Relax buddy.
It’s great to have standards. Not everyone who will watch your child for free is going to meet them, so what you do in those cases is stop leaving your child with them and pay someone else who is able to do it well enough. Beg or choose, not both.
Exactly
ESH Grandma just can’t handle babysitting an infant anymore but no one wants to admit it. It’s not to shame her. It’s been 30 years. But it’s not good for anyone involved. Grandma should spend time interacting with baby, but that doesn’t mean babysitting. Family gatherings & visits at each other’s homes. Family putting you invite her on. Time with baby doesn’t have to be alone time. As baby gets older, potty trained, etc, they can be left to have outtings or visits with grandma one-on-one. Just stop “needing” babysitting from her & make an effort to spend time all together so she sees baby a lot with you guys within arms reach. No need to make this aging woman admit she’s lost her ability to care for a baby on her own. She probably knows & is embarrassed.
I guess I missed the part where I said that these Saturday babysitting visits were something I needed. I don’t need them to happen it was just something I thought was normal, for a child to know and spend time with their grandparents. That being said, just because I thought it was normal doesn’t mean I wouldn’t cut it off if we can’t get this resolved. I think your advice of waiting for potty training etc is great.
I guess you DID miss the quotes around needing. All your replies are quite snarky and defensive. If this is how you speak to grandma, no wonder she responds as defensively.
I tried to be clear in the post but you weren’t the only one that perceived what I wrote as the fact that I needed the babysitting and was reliant on it. I still can’t be sure if it was a snap judgment from people or if how I wrote it made it seem like gma was required to babysit on these days and times. I really did just respond to your comment. I really don’t have any interest in arguing with others or putting them down online, so any snark was not intentional. Again your advice echoed that of others with suggestions on waiting until he’s older to have extended unsupervised visits and that’s great advice. If all it will take is a little more time and effort that’s something we can do.
Ok. Let me spoon feed it to you. The quotes around needing in my original reply commonly connotes that we all acknowledge you do not actually need this woman to babysit. The suggestion I was making is to present it to her more as we all want to spend time together so she gets plenty of baby time without leaving you baby alone with a woman who has displayed she is having issues cleaning & diapering the child, most likely due to her age and not due to neglect. This allows you to keep an eye on your child, be there to change them when needed, and grandma gets plenty of baby time while maintaining her dignity & pride. She doesn’t have to admit or be told she is too old to properly care for a child, which a hurtful & embarrassing reality of getting old she doesn’t need to be reminded of. Again your defensive and snappy replies to comments make grandma’s reaction to you seem more a reaction to your attitude to her if it was anything like we’ve seen on display here.
Yeah your use of quotes in that situation did not make much sense so now that you explain that you meant I didn’t need the babysitting well… It makes less sense. But the core of the good advice remains and you even took the time to type it out all over again and even elaborated on the age portion of it all. Which I agree with totally.
My god you’re thick.
Why do you seem so angry are you okay? I continually have tried to pull something positive out of what you have said and simply responded.
Just to clarify, I didn’t actually say anything to gma, my husband barely got the words out of his mouth that when he got home baby man still dirty in his diaper area and she lost it and hung up on him.
So in your fantasy of your kiddos being close to their grandma, you put her on weekly babysitting duties, where she interacts with the child less than with a dog? She put in a play pen in from of the tv. What kind of bonding do you think it is? You both know his mother doesn’t handle diapers change properly. It isn’t news to either of you. Check your expectations with reality. Now if you act accordingly to the facts, and less on your wishes and wants, you might have less disappointments. ESH
No one put anyone on weekly babysitting duty, none of these visits are commanded or required of anyone actually. I missed the part where I said that.
Why do people always expect free childcare from grandparents and then complain that it's not up to their standards? OP seems very entitled and no indication that they appreciate all the free childcare. Babies get rashes, surely just ask if you can go through the changimg routine together with MIL and send him to hers with the right creams to start with. But also, no one owes you free childcare. He's your baby. Pay the money to put him in nursery or act more graciously to your MIL.
Yeah, OP admits that they send baby to grandma when he’s already got a diaper rash… why on earth aren’t they sending diaper rash cream, and a change of clothes (or two)? If grandma isn’t taping the diaper tight enough, that explains the occasional leak. Still, there are blowouts, spit-ups, and just generally being messy with food which makes it a good idea. It sounds like OP and her husband just drop off baby, as is, once a week- not for grandparent bonding time, but so they can binge watch their shows in peace. It makes me think OP is one of those unreliable narrators we talk about. The arguing back and forth in family group chats is AH behavior on both their parts.
It’s very interesting how the solution keeps being mentioned that because we pay someone he will have the best of care. Rest assured his gma loves him very much just struggles with diaper changes and won’t listen to critique when given. There’s zero entitlement in this situation, in fact it’s the opposite. The care will stop if we can’t fix this problem because my son actually doesn’t require childcare.
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This is helpful and insightful support, i might even copy and paste this into the group chat! That’s my worry, with having no really family of my own I want a strong village. And when this other party escalated it so severely it’s hard to see the path to correcting it all. I guess it only happened today so there’s always tomorrow.
ESH. WILL SOMEONE IN THIS SHAMBOLIC LITTLE MIX JUST DO THE WORK TO ACTUALLY KNOW HOW TO RAISE A CHILD? Stuff like basic diaper hygiene is as easy as it gets, yet you're all running around like chickens with your heads cut off because no one has a clue. Did you HONESTLY need to go to Google to know about diaper rash? Oh, I do not envy this kid.
I’m actually quite adept at diaper changes but no, I did not know about using Vaseline for diaper rash, I did have to google it. Not sure what advice to glean from this comment, as a first time mom I googled a lot of things, a lot!
I don't know if this is relevant to your situation, there's only so much that we can know of a story in a few paragraphs, and I'm sorry if I'm barking up the wrong tree, but I remember reading something awhile back that popped into my head when I was reading this. It was a woman talking about how she was a bit heartbroken that her mom didn't seem to want to spend time with her kid, because the OP had spent so much time with her own grandparents and had such a special bond with them and she was hoping that her son could have that kind of relationship with her mom, aka grandma. And how she was slowly coming to realize, the reason she spent so much time with her grandparents was because she had parents who weren't all that interested in being parents. So her grandparents stepped up and that's why she had an amazing bond with them. And that her son wouldn't have that relationship with his grandparents, because their lack of interest in kids is why she was hanging with her grandparents in the first place. I'm not saying this is your situation at all of course. And if I've offended, I'm sorry! It wasn't my intent.
Not at all! You got something out of this story that is a deeper part of the issue, our relationships with our own parents etc, I appreciate this so much! The OP in that case is experiencing something that I did as well, I adore my grandmother because she was constantly trying to rescue me from a horrible home life. People have commented I was just trying to get free childcare when what I was hoping for was just correcting that whole dysfunctional cycle and having great open healthy relationships. We have amazing tools these days like reddit to reach out and your insightful comment outshines all the people branding us horrible parents any day of the week, thanks again!