Reply to S/O is it unfair for grandparents to help with one set of grandkids and not the other?

Forum Index » Family Relationships

Reply to "S/O is it unfair for grandparents to help with one set of grandkids and not the other?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]So I am in a similar situation, except I am pregnant.  The thing is that my sibling makes my mom do so much more than she can handle.  She's almost 70 and has taken care of their kids for an entire summer at a time, even once getting pink eye in both eyes from the kids, but still taking care of them.  I couldn't do that to my mom.  She already raised kids and she does it because she wants to help out and is worried she won't get access to her grandkids if she refuses.  So I won't do that to her.  She deserves better.  Does it suck that I won't get free childcare?  Yes, but life isn't fair, and I would much rather she have her health.  It's a shame that my sibling doesn't seem to care, but that is on them.[/quote]

Some people are Takers, plain and simple.  OP, your MIL will give as long as your SIL is a Taker - which will be always.  Who taught SIL to be a Taker?  You guessed it, your MIL.  Be glad you are not her, or either one of them, for that matter!

[/quote]

The point about some people just being takers could not be more true in our family.  We had kids at the exact same time as my husband's sister (literally - we each have two kids and each "set" was born a couple weeks apart).  My MIL provides free, full-time childcare to her daughter.  More than just the weekdays - she's over there helping every weekend too, and in the evenings.  We all live in the same area, and we are all high earners (this isn't a money thing).   We are lucky if we see my MIL every two months or so because her time is so taken up by SIL.

We would never in a million years expect or want free family childcare.  I far prefer paying for our nanny and chosen preschool and getting to be the boss and set everything up in a way that works best for us.  We would also never in a million years expect that everything can be, or should be, completely equal as between my husband and his sister (that's just not how life works).  But, my SIL monopolizing so much of my MIL's time and energy has real consequences on the extended family dynamic.  My MIL is exhausted from catering to every demand of her daughter, and she just does not have the bandwidth to make time for us.  She regularly goes eight weeks or more without seeing our children, and we live 20 minutes away from her.  When she does make an attempt to see us, her daughter always comes and brings her kids.  I am all for cousin time, but my SIL's kids are with my MIL every single day, and as a result they are stuck like glue to MIL so she spends the entire time ignoring our children.  Apart from it just being sad that she doesn't really know our kids, my husband is extremely resentful that there is no availability for his mother to ever help us in a "normal" grandparent way - like, maybe a couple times a year she'd come spend the afternoon with our kids so my husband and I could go get lunch together, or maybe we could drop the kids off there for a day when our nanny calls off sick.  But we get absolutely nothing (our jobs are about 100x more intense than theirs, too - so we could really use help sometimes!).  It really comes down to competency - my MIL was the OG helicopter parent.  She is confident that my husband and I can handle our own lives and children (she's correct), while she trained her daughter to be utterly incompetent and doesn't think she could handle it (all signs point to that being correct too).  My SIL is completely helpless in all aspects of her life, and I am dreading the day when we are expected to shoulder the burden of MIL's elder care after being treated like chopped liver all these years. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics