When Grandma is The Other Caretaker....

[daycare]

First off, I love love love any time a child can spend time with family. Mom, Dad, Aunt, Grandma/pa, whoever. I love that family wants to participate in helping to raise their extended family or grandchild.

I have a little girl that is 3 years old that comes to my house 3 days a week. Has been here since June. The other 2 days of the week she is with grannie.

Well, it's not working out. Grannie has no rules, no routine, no naps, eat whatever you want. Basically she has the typical spoil your gandchild mentality which would be ok if it was here or there or holidays, weekend, b-day type stuff. The poor girl just can't function here.

DCP are divorced and dad lives out of the county. They both agree that they don't even like having grannie watch the girl, because when they pick her up, she is just a rotten little boogar...

DCP have asked before about having DCG go full time with me. I want to bring it up, but how do I do it without insulting the grandmother? BTW the grandmother is as sweet as pie....

[Starburst]

You can try casualy bringing it up like "So, what did she do at grandma's yesterday?" or something like that and then see if they bring it up again. I'm sure the grandmother is doing what she thinks is best for the child but in the long run she will become a spoiled brat if she doesn't have rules or structer. One girl I used to babysit (she was about 9) once told me once that her grandma would always give her candy and ice cream even when she wasn't hungry and the grandma would tell her "your just such a good girl". From my personal expierience, if that girl was the grandma's idea of a "good girl" I would hate to see her idea of a "bad girl" because she has taken extra juices or my roomate's soda without asking and has on many occations tried to trick people to let her do things that where not allowed and she always broke the rules that even most 5 year olds can follow.

Honestly as bad as this sounds, this is the reason why when I have kids I would NEVER leave them alone with my mother- I would have to be very desperate and possibly drunk (I never drink) because that is all she did with my younger brother and me. I had to take on the role of the adult and my brother was spoiled because he didn't have any boundries and wouldn't listen to me because I wasn't his mother- but then again he wouldn't listen to our mother either, he's almost 20 and still doesn't. And now I have very little to no patience (and possibly no respect) for my mother because sometimes it still feels like I am the mother and she is an over-grown middle aged teenager.

Sorry for the rant but it just irks me when people waste valuable time with children not teaching them anything and not giving them any rules or structure.