Grandmas Who Don't Babysit

I live in a mother daughter house with my parents and my husband and children. We did this for many reasons but one being my mother watches my children. I have 3 school age children and a 1 year old. She also watches my sister’s infant son as well. My mother enjoys watching our children, she is the ultimate grandmother. While at 60 she does get tired she admits that if she didn’t baby-sit she would more then likely sit around and just get old and cranky. Both of my parents are very involved with my children and love to do things with them.

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Glam-mas are lame. They sound sad, selfish and sorry to me. Not saying grandparents should be sitter-slaves, but not looking forward to hanging out with grand kids at all? Can't pitch in for a night or two? They obviously don't understand what most parents "get" the second they hold their newborn child- That bringing a life into the world is a lifelong commitment. Not just a 5-9(pm) job for 18 years.

I really couldn't imagine such selfish indifference. My folks are divorced, remarried and even step grandparents (just plain grammas/grandpas here though) can't get enough of our kids. Great-Grandma, too. They say it's the very best part, fun without the hardships. I'm sure it's great. =)

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Well, you can't force these feelings, I guess. The whole "glam-ma" thing does seem pretty lame. On the other hand, it makes sense that if you really invested yourself raising your kids, put everything else on hold 'til they grew up, then built a career after they left, you might not want to just roll it all back the minute a grandkid arrives. Somebody told me once, "Some people just make better grandparents than parents." And maybe the opposite is true, too...some people make better parents than g-parents?

Mary
http://www.squidoo.com/obamaletter

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My kid's grandparents are involved in their lives and absolutely love to baby sit. That being said, I never feel that it's THEIR job. As parents we CHOSE to have our kids. We chose to make that commitment. I don't think that my parents have any obligation beyond what they want to do. I think anyone who thinks that someone else owe's them babysitting or help is selfish. They worked their whole life, they raised their children. If they want to relax and be left alone, all the power to them, I say. It's sort of like that Octomom thinking everyone owes her. No one owes her anything. She chose to make those kids and she's the only one responsible for them.

Plus, I really like kids in general. I volunteer to baby-sit my friends' kids. But I have seen some kids I can't tolerate for more than 10 minutes. I can't imagine how horrible it would be if I felt obligated to want to be near these kids without any power to retrain them. It's not always as cut and dry as people make it. These sort of things should be a choice not an expectation.

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My husband's family is wonderful! My mother-in-law would love to watch our kids but, because of medical conditions, she can't. My grandparents were great. I would spend weekends or a whole week with them when I was a child. I learned so much from my grandparents.

My parents are no help. YEARS AGO, I asked my mother to babysit her first grandchild for 2 or 3 days while I was in the hospital giving birth to her second grandchild. It was to much of an inconvience for her! This was the first time I had ever asked her to babysit. I never asked her to babysit again and she has NEVER offered! My father...well...if you're trying to pick-up a woman that's 10 years younger than your daughter, you don't want a little kid around calling you Grandpa! He doesn't babysit (I wouldn't trust him anyway). If you have parents that help, YOU ARE LUCKY!!

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I think this is a very good and interesting topic but did you really have to drag the Obama's into it? Couldn't we have some post's without them? Just why is that? Am I the only one to gag on this day in and day out?

I love and adore my 3 grandchildren and I do enjoy babysitting them once in a while. I however do have limitations. If I have notice, I love it. Would I do it every weekend? No, I wouldn't want to. People have to realize that it's the weekend for grandparents too. Don't we want to enjoy a Fri or Sat night? If I had them every weekend, it would simply be a "job" for me and wouldn't be fun anymore.

I will also not babysit while they work unless it's a case out of the ordinary. IE, daycare has the day off or one of them are to sick to go or if the school calls and one of them needs to be picked up for whatever reason. I am always here IF they need me and they know that. BUT I am not the parent and I shouldn't be expected to be the caregiver of these children.

The reason is simple. If I were the "daycare provider," I wouldn't be able to be the kind of grandma I want to be. I don't want to be the disciplinarian. I want them to remember how much fun they had with me and how much I love them and not that I gave the time outs. I've raised my kids and I had to do what I had to do but it wasn't my choice for my kids to have kids and while I love them and welcome them, it's not my job.

I recently had 2 of my grandchildren for a week when my son and his wife went to Hawaii and I had a great time with them but this kind of "babysitting" is different. I don't feel anyone should be made to feel they "owe" their kids babysitting services every time they ask. It's not right and you should not have kids if your not ready to take 100% care of them yourself. It's NOT your parents job to raise YOUR kids. They've already done their job and raised you.

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RJ, so sorry, that sounds horrible!

Back to the subject, though....I also live in a mother-daughter home, and my mom LOVES to spend time with her granddaughter! I am a firm believer in the "it takes a village" theory, too, and it's how I grew up. My grandma was wonderful, she was there when we got home from school everyday, and she was there if my mom couldn't be (like when my mom got pneumonia and was in the hospital for two weeks).... I don't get the whole glam-ma thing either.... I mean, I know you raised your children already and all, but wouldn't it be wonderful to, I don't know, "teach" them how to raise their own children?

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I'm lucky. I work full-time and my mom takes care of my two-year-old and my three-month-old while I am at work. I currently work out of her home office so I am here to help out too. I don't know what I would do without her.

My toddler knows his alphabet already thanks to her too!

I have an ideal situation. They often miss each other so much on the weekends that we have to stop by for a visit!

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My parents adore my kids, but they are 65-ish and both have health problems. My mom in particular gets very fatigued after just a little exertion, and just stressing about something she has to do can put her out of commission for the rest of the day. My dad has physical issues for which he has needed physical therapy and surgeries. So when it comes to my two active 2-year-olds, it's not about what I need / want / expect. It's about what my parents can and want to do.

My mom always said that if I had a kid, she wanted to babysit. But she was talking about the infant stage. We missed the infant stage as my kids were 17 lbs and mobile when they came home. I have never asked my mom to babysit. If I had a real need, I believe she would do it to her best ability. But it would be more of a burden than a pleasure.

My dad has begged me to let him babysit, and I've had him come over several times, including one overnight stint. He loves it, but it's not the best thing for him physically right now. It's also far away from his home. It's just really inconvenient for him. So I don't call upon him very often. Just often enough for him and the girls to do some quality bonding.

My mom's mom babysat for us sometimes, but she charged my mom when it was a "regular" thing. My dad's mom never offered and was never asked. She did get stuck with her autistic grandson a lot, and that was more than enough, considering she was a widow and about 60 years older than he. Both of my grandmothers also worked outside the home when we were little, so that may also have been a factor.

I agree with Joy - it's not the grandparents' job to parent the future generations. I don't think it's good for kids to have their relationship with their grandparents be based on duty versus love.

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Why should grandparents be the ones who watch children on a daily basis? The answer is that they should not. Grandparents already raised their children and should not be the everyday parent of their grandchildren. Raising children is the parents job. Going to spend a night with Grandparents should be special, and a once in a while thing. Weekly maybe but certainly not daily. My wife and I had our children young, and although I sometimes think about what grandchildren will be like, when we are in our fifties or sixties we plan to enjoy the rest of our lives together traveling and just reconnecting. I see people all too often dumping their children off on other people for no other reason then they want to go partying or for other moronic reasons. You had the kids, now raise them. If it means that one of you works nights while the other works days then so be it. Stop pushing your duties off on other people.

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It's sad that some kids won't get to have the type of relationships with their grandparents that many of us fondly remember, but many things have changed since I was a kid. My grandparents were all retired by the time I started elementary school and they'd had several years to themselves to do the things you can't easily do with kids.

My parents still have another 10 years or so to go until they hit 65 and my in-laws are about 5 years away. They all work full time and have to deal with allocating vacation/sick days to help care for their parents, their school age kids, and squeeze in time for their grandkids. Both my parents and my in-laws were still actively parenting their younger high school age kids when their first grand children were born. They were not as involved in my son's first few years as I would have liked, but I can forgive them, because they had plenty on their plate and just not enough time.

I wonder how many of the grandmas who aren't into being a grandma barely get calls from their kids/grandkids unless they've got their hand out for a gift, money, or a favor? I think on top of the stress many modern grandmas have, that might be enough to push them into being less than excited about having grandkids and the prospect of endless requests for toys and free daycare/babysiting.

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My parents don't live close enough to be involved on a daily basis. But they visit often, and are pretty close to all the grandkids. My older 2, their Dad's parents decided to cut them off not long after we divorced. They claim that it was because they thought the youngest of the two was stealing. (He was 6 and accidentally got a pair of his grandmothers sweat pants mixed in with his Christmas stuff when he came home. We sent them back as soon as possible.) They never could come up with anything he might have stolen. Oh well, their loss.

My youngest, his Dad's Mother (Father passed away before our son was even conceived) would drive past our house on the way to visit another family member, her nephew, but she wouldn't stop in. She never sent him a birthday card, or even a note for Christmas. And then she blamed us for not being close, we didn't have our own car at the time. She passed away when he was 2. He's 6 now.

My only Grandchild lives in New York City, I'm on the West Coast. I'd love to see him everyday, I'm lucky I can see him once a year.

Some Grandparents waited to "have a life" until after their children were grown, and now don't really have the time or interest in babysitting their Grandchildren. If they like visits, and take the time to spend a week end or something with the kids, that's all I think they NEED to do. They raised their kids, and now have time to do their own thing, let them. It's the ones who don't seem to be interested in any visits at all, who don't seem to care one way or the other about them, or who try to pretend they don't have grandkids that bother me.

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No one babysits my kids--including gp's. We live on 750 acres with most of my family and every Sunday we have a family meal with everyone present--with the exception of illness, work or baby under 12 weeks of age (limiting immune system to all the peoples there)

My parents visit once every other month with a standing dinner invite--which happens with my siblings as well--we have a schedule to insure equality. My parents make at least one game of every playing age child per season--there is one sat in the fall that they see all eight soccer players on six teams because we play ea other. They cheer half for one team, half for the other---they attend every football game on friday night, every monday night basketball, every thursday track meet, and sunday softball or sat baseball in soccer offseason.

They do not babysit, period. They love the kids and all the grandkids--but they raised the children they chose to have without sitters and expect us to do the same--

Even with the birth of second or third children, you include the others--figure it out--or do not have them. My parents are loving and taught us the same, but the idea of pawning off the children you chose to have is just not accepted in our family.

My inlaws--my kids are not allowed(by me) in their home--it is not clean enough--they are invited over at least once a month, but if the church plans something--forget it. They left the oldest grandson's graduation from high school to go to a church party.

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