sister and grandparents act entitled when it comes to my kids

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP I’m all for keeping boundaries but you sound a bit psychotic about your phone. How else are they going to talk?

+1
She is a bit abnormal.

It could be that she is a frequent DCUM troll.

[Anonymous]

Actually they don't sound entitled. You sound weirdly territorial and smug about having kids.

[Anonymous]

You need to set a schedule—for example Wednesdays after lunch you FaceTime with grandma and show her what you’re working on in art class. Every Sunday after lunch you FaceTime with the aunt. If you have a predictable schedule you cut putt all the asking “when can we talk to the kids?” drama.

Also, you need to get over your issues with your phone. It’s essentially functioning the way you used your landline to call relatives. Do t be weird about it.

[Anonymous]

Parents should teach their kids good manners and to care about other people.

Talking to your grandparents a few times a month is polite and a nice thing to do if you are a kid. Even if they don’t particularly like it, it is good for them to learn that sometimes you do something nice for other people.

[Anonymous]

OP sounds weird and trollish.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our kids, all under 10, have liked talking with my family once in a while. They've had nice phone calls and usually, after about 10-15 minutes, I take the smartphone away because i don't want my kids thinking my phone is for them. Same goes for my laptop and Zoom. After many months of this, the kids are starting to lose interest in talking with my sister and parents. They've started handing the phone to me to go play outside or watch a TV show after 5 minutes. I'm not going to force them to sit through the long, question-filled conversation my mom likes to foist on them. My oldest one, who is nine, is already complaining.

I've limited the calls to once every two weeks or so, but they'll still text asking to talk to the kids. I've tried to tell them nicely, the kids are doing school work, playing, running around outside, but my family is now getting indignant. They've always had big issues with boundaries and are now behaving as if they're entitled to long calls with my kids and if my kids don't want to participate in these calls, then I'm a mean person who doesn't enforce how important auntie and grandma are. And again, my kids are not using my phone as they see fit, and i'm not buying them one for this purpose, either. My own grandparents and other relatives were never like this. I don't know where my family gets this behavior from other than they're becoming increasingly entitled as they age. My in-laws don't behave this way. I really need them to pull back on this and they refuse to.

The strangest part of this whole post is the bolded. 🧐

[Anonymous]

Have you considered talking to a mental health provider, OP? You don't sound well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our kids, all under 10, have liked talking with my family once in a while. They've had nice phone calls and usually, after about 10-15 minutes, I take the smartphone away because i don't want my kids thinking my phone is for them. Same goes for my laptop and Zoom. After many months of this, the kids are starting to lose interest in talking with my sister and parents. They've started handing the phone to me to go play outside or watch a TV show after 5 minutes. I'm not going to force them to sit through the long, question-filled conversation my mom likes to foist on them. My oldest one, who is nine, is already complaining.

I've limited the calls to once every two weeks or so, but they'll still text asking to talk to the kids. I've tried to tell them nicely, the kids are doing school work, playing, running around outside, but my family is now getting indignant. They've always had big issues with boundaries and are now behaving as if they're entitled to long calls with my kids and if my kids don't want to participate in these calls, then I'm a mean person who doesn't enforce how important auntie and grandma are. And again, my kids are not using my phone as they see fit, and i'm not buying them one for this purpose, either. My own grandparents and other relatives were never like this. I don't know where my family gets this behavior from other than they're becoming increasingly entitled as they age. My in-laws don't behave this way. I really need them to pull back on this and they refuse to.

The strangest part of this whole post is the bolded. 🧐

Haha! I wonder if OP occasionally makes her kids clear out everything in their rooms just so they don’t think they own real estate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So I understand your issues, but you also come across as a bit nutty/controlling with this idea that if your kids talk to their grandparents on *YOUR PHONE* for more than 10 minutes, they're going to become super entitled brats who think it's their phone. Somehow, before the age of cell phones, I was able to talk to my grandparents on the phone and still understand that the phone and landline belonged to my parents.

As the dad of three kids, what I would suggest from experience through 2020 is that you set up some sort of activity for the kids to do over the phone, or even better, FaceTime or Zoom, with the family members. My youngest reads books with Grandpa over Facetime several times a week (Grandpa is filling in where virtual schools aren't). This requires a little bit of pre-planning, in that we buy two copies of the book on Amazon and ship one to each.

They can do games, they can even just watch a show together. I'd also recommend that sometimes it be one on one. But the main idea is that they do some sort of shared experience, and get away from the series of endless question and one-word answers with which they've lately lost interest.

Good luck.

Good ideas!

NP tagging on to this. My dd is 10 and enjoys these kinds of things with her family facetime too (although in her case she looks forward to it and is used to it since she's always lived far away from faamily so has done video calls since she was a baby). Additional things that she has found fun via facetime: baking with grandma, taking a walk outside (my mom lives where there are woods to walk in and farm animals to visit), and with her other grandma she like doing her nails. She also likes getting cousins and grandparents to play monopoly or clue with her via apps.

[Anonymous]

It is up to you if you don't want your kids to have to do this, then fine. Just keep telling them no. You can't get them to stop asking, and trying to is self-defeating.

However - I actually think "making" a kid talk to grandma on the phone for 10 minutes every other week, or every week, is really reasonable. Just as it's important to eat your veggie, bathe regularly, and do your homework, it's important to be kind to family and to stay in touch with them.

If you don't agree, fine. But personally - I think this is something I'd make my kids do. PARTICULARLY if grandma and auntie sends them presents with any sort of regularity, or babysits or visits or do anything else the child values. Relationships work BOTH ways, and it's important for kids to understand that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Parents should teach their kids good manners and to care about other people.

Talking to your grandparents a few times a month is polite and a nice thing to do if you are a kid. Even if they don’t particularly like it, it is good for them to learn that sometimes you do something nice for other people.

This is the age where the foundation was laid to have a very string relationship with my grandmother until she passed when I was 29. It’s up to the parents and grandparents to facilitate the conversation. I am extremely thankful my mom and grandma did this as we were extremely close despite the distance. I have no idea what we talked about but she called every week and I talked to her before handing the phone off to my mom. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to build a relationship, especially since you can’t be together in person.