My in-laws are wonderful grandparents (my parents are deceased). We see eye-to-eye on the appropriate level of discipline and independence expected of children; they spoil our kids without ruining it; they let us parent, but aren't afraid to step in with discipline when we aren't around. We had kids "young"--30-35--and are fairly right-of-center by today's DCUM standards, but would be bleeding heart pariahs in Peoria. In other words, we read "The Coddling of the American Mind" and agreed with pretty much all of it, but don't attend church and think Trump and his coterie will most likely turn America into a fascist theocracy if they can get away with it. Interestingly, my in-laws were and are very left-of-center by their generation's standards.

Anonymous wrote:I've had this conversation with several friends about how our kids grandparents have completely unreasonable expectations and flat out don't remember what age their kids were when they learned various skills and concepts. Things the grandparents were surprised my 4 year old doesn't grasp over Thanksgiving weekend:

How much $2 is (like she knows what 2 is, and she vaguely understands what money is, but has no idea what you could buy with $2).

Spelling--they know she can't read yet, but how is it that she can't do a word search effortlessly?

I'm only 44 and my kids are 14 and 12, so I may have forgotten SOME things about 4 year olds, but my 4 year olds could definitely do both of those things....

No, mine are out of touch as their parents always swooped in. They were lousy parents and are selfish.

I don't know...on the one hand, I don't think previous generations of grandparents were so much better. The Silent Generation or the Greatest Generation weren't hands-on parents or grandparents even though they would've been on the young side. Same for the Boomers. I think the difference stems more from the fact that modern parents are so much more involved in their kids lives than previous generations were. Also, the fact that most families are independent from their family of origin probably contributes to grandparents being out of touch.

It obviously depends on the particular family dynamic and the person at issue as well. My 95 year old grandmother has a lot of old-fashioned ideas about things but is very practical, accepts that things have changed, and recognizes that kids are kids. She is as active and involved in all of her grandkids' and great-grandkids' lives as she can be. Whereas my MIL was a young and healthy 60yo when her first grandchild was born (DH and I were late 30s). Yet spending time with her grandkids consists of turning the TV on for them while she sits next to them texting or playing on her phone. She never got on the floor and played with them when they were younger. She just doesn't know how to interact with kids.

Anonymous wrote:I don’t disagree, it I think what’s compounding it is that parenting in this day in age is so very different than when they were first parents.

Yup, our parents are the same parents who, when we were in our teens and twenties, were helicopter parents and pushed us to succeed in school and go to grad school, and be lawyers and doctors and professionals. So we do that, and as a result, get married and have kids later because we're working on our careers first. And by the way, these are also the parents who encouraged us to be saddled with massive amounts of student loan debt.

Now we're in our 30's, working our tails off as professionals and now parents too, plus trying to pay for houses that cost 10x as much as they did when our parents were our age, and we're still paying off student loans. Meanwhile, our parents are in their 60's and 70's, can't give us the child care help we need, but also put additional stress on us to do things as part of the family that just aren't tenable with a young family or with limited time off or funds. Then they guilt us when we say no.

My ILs were in their late 50s when we had our first child, the first grandchild in the family. Even if we’d had kids 4 years earlier when we first got married at 24/26, I sincerely doubt it would have helped them be any more in touch with children, understand the hassle of traveling with toddlers, why a one bedroom place for 4 adults and 2 toddlers doesn’t work especially when they claim the one actual bedroom and there’s no space to both open the fold out sofa and put up two pack in plays in the living area, that just because a child is a girl doesn’t mean she likes princesses and dolls and maybe pay a minute of attention to what the kid actually likes if you expect a 3 year old to gush over your present to her since shockingly, 3 year olds have not mastered the ability to fake endless enthusiasm over a gift that has nothing to do with their interests, that opening the baby’s room and hovering over its crib while whisper yelling after it just took me an hour to get the baby down and you wake it right back up again muggy cause me to have a nervous break down and snap at you….I could go on and on and on.

Uh, so I'll likely be even older than my own parents if get to be a GP. What should I do to not be so clueless? Please don't say follow kid trends because once my kids are adults, I plan to forget all that kid stuff.

Anonymous wrote:My parents had their kids in their 20s and are very much of the mindset that they’ve already raised kids, they’re not going to raise ours too. They’re doing all of the things they couldn’t do in their 20s because they weren’t as financially well off and had small children.

Same here. My parents are in their 60s and very fit and rarely help out with our grandkids. They're too busy with their hobbies, and my dad is still working because he just can't seem to let that go and my mom has caregiving duties with her own parents.

DH's parents are in their 70s and they don't help either (and DH financially helps them).

We figured out not to rely on grandparent help a long time ago, so now we just enjoy whatever time any of them can spare!

My grandma was in her early 50s when I was born. She still worked full time and had a busy social life - she loved us but her perception was that she already had her kids and was done raising them. So she was very much hands off.

My 60 something retired parents, on the other hand, are super enthusiastic and present grandparents.

Anonymous wrote:I don’t disagree, it I think what’s compounding it is that parenting in this day in age is so very different than when they were first parents.

Agree. I think it’s a huge change than how they parented versus how they were patented. We are so much more child-centric in general, whereas they and their parents were more adult-centric. It’s probably hard for them to relate.

My mom was 59 when my first was born. She was out of touch. Was judgmental about so much (claimed everything was easy that I was having a hard time with). So much had changed in the 30 years since she had me but she had a hard time accepting that.

For some, OP, but my grandparents were older when my sister and I were born (grandma had my mom when she was 36, my mom had me at 29) and they were AMAZING grandparents. My MIL was only 60 when our DD was born, and she's really uninvolved. I think having grandparents who aren't still working is part of it, as a PP noted--it's hard to be as involved when you're working full-time.

My parents had their kids in their 20s and are very much of the mindset that they’ve already raised kids, they’re not going to raise ours too. They’re doing all of the things they couldn’t do in their 20s because they weren’t as financially well off and had small children.

I think it's because so many of them are divorced, and they hate to admit that there are any negative consequences of their divorce, so they get defensive and judgey when they aren't getting as much attention or grandchild time as they want.

God yes. My MIL has all these bizarre romanticized ideas about her kids and what an awesome parent she was. She even commented that my daughters crying was so very much louder than her sons’ polite noises. Her kids never fought, not a once. Everything was amaze balls. It’s amazing because she’s incompetent, filthy, undisciplined and disorganized so, mind blown that she had these dream children.