"Helpful" grandparents

Elli143 · May 2013

My MIL had her first son (my DH) when she was 20, and then another son 16 years later with a different father who is now 15 years old. So she has basically had kids in her house for 31 years now.

When we told her that we were expecting, she declared that the best part of being a grandmother was that she gets to do all the fun stuff with the baby, but diaper changes and "gross" stuff that comes with the baby gets handed off to the parents. Which, if you've been raising your own kids for 31 years, seems understandable I guess.

Last weekend MIL and family was over and she was feeding DD (enjoying all the crazy faces) and letting her get her fingers all in the bowl and everywhere on the highchair. Halfway through she asked me if it was okay if she was letting her put her fingers in the bowl, and I said sure, why not. You're feeding her, do it however you want. So when DD finished up, MIL stood up and said, "Look at what a mess your hands are! Your mom is going to have fun cleaning that up!" and walked over to the sink to wash her own hands and left DD in her highchair.

Um, what? Oh. THAT'S why you asked me if it was okay.

MIL had volunteered to babysit that night, but we couldn't get movie tickets so we just hung out at the house. Around 9:00 (about half an hour past her bedtime), DD was fussing so I picked her up and said I was putting her to bed. MIL was disappointed and said, "Oh, so I guess we're not babysitting then." Which I thought was an odd comment - it was late, and even if you babysit you still need to put the kid to bed right? And then I realized that her version of babysitting would have been playing with DD until we got home, probably 2 hours later.

Does anyone else have grandparents with this mentality? It's not that big of a deal really, just seems a little weird.

nealbl · May 2013

Not here. Both sets of our parents do everything. My fil has even changed poopy diapers and had to wipe my poopy toddler when he was watching her.
Now I don't expect them to do that stuff when I'm there but if they are going to babysit they will have to do that stuff

AbuDhabiMommy · May 2013

Oh that would irritate me and I think I would have to say something... Even though she's had children in her home for 30 years, she hasn't had babies during all of that time, so you might want to just give her a friendly reminder on your LO's schedule/habits etc before she does something that might really upset you...