grandparents looking after baby

survey to people who use DH, if your parents were, available, willing, able and happy to help look after your baby while your were working, would you take the offer or prefer a DH. assume grandparents are on good relationship with you and are not the intruding type. Possible option is also have weekend cleaner and grandparents to look after baby during week. Whats the best option?

Thanks for your thoughts.

from my own experience and hearing the experience of my friends, having grandparents look after their kids on an on-going basis usually ends up being a bad situation.

Everything may seem fine and dandy when they just drop by to visit or to play with the the kids. And even if they seem all along unintrusive, when they are asked to be their caregivers for most of the day, many arguments and misunderstandings come up.

usually coming from a difference in ur own ideas of how ur kids shoudl be raised and discipline against their own. and in most cases, the grandparents will take ur view, but in reality, dun practice it. or they just dun accept ur ideas at all.

i may sound very extreme and pessimistic, but i truly feel for this.


so i agree with cara, having a DH and the grandparents can drop by anytime is a better option.

Agreed completely with cara. I'd much rather have a DH. The DH works for us. If there is an issue, we set the rules. We love our parents but we don't want to get in a situation where we have to argue child care.


With grandparents, they are house guests. A DH is an employee. When the day is over, there is no need to be "social" with the DH if we don't want to. She has her life and we have ours. Not so with grandparents.


Furthermore, the DH cooks and cleans. Quite frankly we wouldn't give up our DH even if we had to go the grandparent option for childcare. She has raised our quality of life immensely and is a true joy to have in our home.

thanks all for your reply, hopefully the conflict with grandparents in child raising method will not be a major issue for us. However am concern about having DH looking after/raising our baby i. e DH may be with baby from 8am to 7pm while we are at work. Understand that some DH are hardworking and honest, but can a DH provide the same level of care, attention and child development as loving grandparents. I can only imagine best case that DH who neglect baby care and perform minimum of duty, worst case, DH takes frustration out on baby. Not sure of taking the risk with baby's well being. axptguy38,michelley,cara are you working parents?

"can a DH provide the same level of care, attention and child development as loving grandparents."


No question. Our helper loves our kids and they love her. And no, she's not faking it. Of course we pay her (well) but the level of affection, care and attention displayed is well beyond a mere "job".


Our DH has wide latitude and is encouraged to use her initiative. However she takes care of the kids within OUR guidelines. If she has an issue with those guidelines, she may discuss it with us. But in the end she parents on our terms. I have a hard time believing grandparents would manage that. They will certainly be loving, but child care is more than that.



"I can only imagine best case that DH who neglect baby care and perform minimum of duty, worst case, DH takes frustration out on baby."


That's not accurate. A good helper would never be that lazy. Our DH would never dream of giving less than 100%. Hard work doesn't faze her and when there's a job to be done she never slacks off, even if we ask her to.


Best case DH takes care of your child as if it was her own. Our helper plays with them, disciplines (correctly) when needed, consoles when they're sad, fixes up bumps and scrapes, cooks healthy and delicious child meals, and generally is a great "parent". We KNOW our kids have the best care when we aren't there.


Your worst case is of course possible, but the worst abuses are extremely uncommon. Just for starters, very few people will knowingly hurt a child. Indifference or lack of attention are more common, but if you get the right helper that won't happen.


One important thing is to avoid micromanaging. You shouldn't (and shouldn't need to) tell a DH every single thing she has to do. She should figure it out based on a schedule and guidelines you set. Correct errors, of course, but let her use her brain to attain the goals you set. Micromanaged employees turn off their brains and do the bare minimum. Those given real responsibility typically respond by going that extra mile.



"axptguy38,michelley,cara are you working parents?"


I am not. However we have no issues leaving the kids with the helper. To be frank, she is a more capable "parent" than I am once meltdown time hits. ;)

axptguy38, u seem to have an awesome helper! if u ever need to give her up, let me know. ;) as i'm a stay at home mom, my helper is only there to manage the household duties and to take care of my baby when i need to out without her. but when she does need to take care of my baby, she's not bad. but i can't say taht she's performing up to the level that i would do. hahahah. but my main concern is that she loves my baby and won't harm her. anything else, i can let go of; since i'm there most of the time.


yiphong

i can understand ur concern regarding the level of care given by ur DH as u're not there to monitor her and it'll take time for u to trust her completely. and it might even take u some time to find the right one for ur needs.

but really, in teh beginning just look for the basics. LIke how the DH is handling the baby when u're there. Somethings u can't fake. Just try to look to see, if she is teh type of person who likes to be with children. If she genuinely likes being with children, at least u know she won't hurt ur child to begin with. Everything else, she can take time to learn and adapt to ur ways. But regardless, it WILL take time for u to build that trust.

so in the beginning, u can have the grandparents drop by just to check up on things.

Goodness cara. If that was my mother, my wife would have cut off contact long ago. What does your husband say?

mother in laws are like that!!!!! i sooooo hope that when i become a mother in law, i dun become like that.


but that's the same problem i find with my relatives too...whenever i try to instill some order, they just think everything is funny. my baby is still only 8 months, but there aer somethings which i dun like her doing like biting, and throwing things. but everytime i tell her not to do it, the relatives just laugh and say "hahaha, she's biting." i'm just completely like wtf!


i feel u cara.


we tried to say something to them one time about respecting our ways in disciplining and raising our child our way. but it was taken completely the wrong way. situation gone completely bad....they were mad at us and thought we didn't wlcome them into our home etc etc etc....sigh. they just dun get it.

For the record, I love my mother in law. Great lady. Yes, I know I'm weird.



"but that's the same problem i find with my relatives too...whenever i try to instill some order, they just think everything is funny. my baby is still only 8 months, but there aer somethings which i dun like her doing like biting, and throwing things. but everytime i tell her not to do it, the relatives just laugh and say "hahaha, she's biting." i'm just completely like wtf!"


Very rude. Actually I don't think any of our relatives would do anything like that.

I also have a Chinese M-I-L / F-I-L but luckily they do not interfere with our upbringing of the children. I feel for you cara! They show lots of love but do understand where the line is drawn and understand that unlike most around us we do not bring our kids up in a bubble. They also see how happy the grandkids are.


Back to the original question though I couldn't leave mine with the grandparents, not because of any discipline issues or being spoiled it's just they are in 70's and although extremely active and fit I'm afraid they are no match for the energy of young ones! So we have a DH BUT the grandparents are also very much of the day with ours and will come over to join for lunch, or have lunch at their place and join in at the park when out. It's a great balance for us but in this respect we are very lucky.

We operate under the assumption that the more people who love our kids, the luckier our kids are. That being said, there's no way that we'd trade our DH for any of the grandparents on a full-time basis. Not that the grandparents wouldn't *try* to do things our way, but there's a lot of baggage associated with even the best parent-child relationship [who wants to hurt their own mother's feelings by saying that you want your kids raised differently than your mother raised you?]. Plus, DH is likely to be younger & more energetic, which is important particularly in the first few years [think about how many times we pick the baby up from the crib; pick him/her up from the floor; chase after a crawler who just can't stay away from the only 0.25 linear meter spot in the living room that isn't babyproofed; bend over to "walk" a baby who is learning to walk...].


It is important to spend quite a bit of energy choosing the DH, though, as they are not all created equally -- look for somebody whose strengths complement your own and whose weaknesses are not going to drive you absolutely ape$*#!.


The other thing that we have found useful -- no matter who is looking after your kids, there will be some places that they just don't do things the way you want them done. If this is a no-consequence matter of preference, remind yourself that it is good for the kid's socialization. If there are consequences, make sure that the person who is not quite listening to you is also dealing with the consequences.

Hello,


My mum takes care of my baby and has been doing so full time since baby was three months and I went back to work. I'm so glad she's around because I think she does a great job.


But it's a FULL TIME job for her. She's widowed and 60 years old, her wrists have some sort of arthritis problem from picking up the baby, and she works longer hours than my husband and me because she needs to be at my house before we go to work, and wait until we get home.


We have been searching around for a full time helper so that she can have a break when she wants to!


What everyone is saying in these posts is true - there are good DHs out there who will love your children like they're own. Of course, there are also others who are not so great. I'm glad I have mum because I trust her 100%, but I believe we still need a full-time helper just so my mum can have help and a break sometimes too!


Good luck!

Maybe this doesn't apply to all families & their situations but please ponder on the following........


There's a Chinese saying.........Having an elderly person in your home is equal to having a treasure in your home.