Reply to Regret asking my mom to “help”

Forum Index » Family Relationships

Reply to "Regret asking my mom to “help”"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think you have too many expectations of how your parents can help you n your house.

My mom and dad came from another country and helped with my newborns for several months.  I had hired help for cleaning and also outsourced other stuff, so my parents were invaluable with supervising.   If my mom asked if she could help, I handed her and dad the task of holding the baby and sitting on the couch and watching TV.  My toddler was more than happy to snuggle with them and watch cartoons.  Of course, having additional people meant that we were buying more groceries, cooking more, doing more laundry etc.  But by and large, their presence was a moral support to DH and I, and our kids were more than happy snuggling with them and reading books or watching TV.   They cannot be expected to take over the running of your household.

I would often request if my mom could fold laundry while watching TV, and she was happy to do that.  Another thing she was very good at - chopping vegetables at the dining table.  I would make their breakfast and coffee, and then take a big basket of washed veggies and also put the cutting board, knife etc on the dining table and say that if she wanted to help, could she cut the veggies because I plan to cook XYZ for dinner.   As they became more comfortable in our home, they were pitching in a lot more.  My dad would love to walk down to the nearest grocery store every day, he loved to iron all the clothes while watching war documentaries on history channel, mom loved to massage and bathe the babies.  My kids are super close to my parents because what they got from them was a lot of patience and willingness to spend time with them.  My parents would sit for hours in toy room with the kids while my children played.  They watched their serials while my kids napped snuggled with them.  I knew my kids were loved and protected.  I knew that my mom and dad would keep an eye on the people who came to clean the house, I knew they would iron every last scrap of cloth in the house (my kitchen towels were also ironed!!).

Basically, the successful grandparents visits are ones where the grandparents are spending time with the kids at home, and keeping an eye on things.  Our parents  are not great at functioning like hired service providers.  They need a lot of instructions and usually balk at doing things that they fear they will mess up.   And each time they visited, I had to ease them into using all the appliances, turning on the TV, explaining them the various faucets etc of the bathrooms etc.  What we take for granted is overwhelming for them. [/quote]

I mean… it sounds like a nice visit, but pretty much none of what you described is actually help. Great for maintaining and building relationships, sure, but that’s not the kind of help most new parents require. And I am glad you were in a place financially where you could outsource a lot of things and have grandparents focused on guiding the help and snuggling kids, but we weren’t in the same place when we had our first - all the house stuff was on us. So having my MIL in the house was basically just having another person to cook for and clean up after. It was extra stress for me at the time that I did not need while also recovering from delivery, struggling with breastfeeding, and going through the baby blues. The second time around I wore the baby in a sling while taking care of my toddler, outsourced the cleaning, and life was so much easier without an extra adult to worry about. [/quote]

Are you kidding? Folding laundry, keeping small kids preoccupied and helping with meal prep is not actually help? Most new parents would be very happy with that kind of help.[/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