Grandparent care. . .

I think that this is just ridiculous. All the unconditional love, security and fun us grandparents provide for our grandchildren is just wonderful. I think it must have been a slow news week for the media to put out something like this. Fake news I say. Bollocks!

journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0185420

reading the article and not the distilled BBC article. someone took lots of other research and made their own conclusions from it. possibly they needed a new article to justify their post doc.

unlike many of you I'm guilty as charged,mine get sweets.In fact they have a "sweetie drawer" so they can help themselves.Guess what? They dont stuff themselves full of sweets every time they're here .When my daughter was small she had no sweets at all...ever.She blames me for her chocolate addiction now.at the opposite end of the scale I had sweeets ,many home made,tablet,coconut ice,candy balls etc on a regular basis and I dont eat sweet stuff .Much prefer a chunk of cheese...now when will there be a study on cheeseaholics so I can find out why I am one

OMG. Life's too short to read that load of codswallop.

I'm the one gently suggesting more stimulus (apart from tv), exercise and cutting sugars in food with my GS! I would like to think I had their best interests at heart and that this research is bullis**t.

Thank you, grandadoscar I am off to read it. My search of the online journal Public Library of Science one produced nothing relevant at all.

I did notice that the 56 articles (not 56 Glesca grannies) they studied came from 18 different countries, many of which smoke like kipper factories and have numberless other health dangers, yet we are seeing a horrified reaction by the UK media, where smoking (the number one cancer hazard) gets less every year. Publish the sensational news first and blame the auld yins, reflect later?

I'm careful to listen to the parents - some in my family are stricter about sweet treats than others and I try to do what they would want. The problem arises when they are all togather......

Here we go again, when our DGC were looked after by us once a week we would often go into town and they were allowed to choose a bar of something or a few chocolate buttons, one lot did have sweeties at home the other didn't but nothing was ever said, a comic alongside made a good morning out as far as they were concerned.

I must admit to giving the grandchildren the occasional sweet treat, but my GDs aged 4 and 6 keep count of their 5-a-day fruit and veg!

Bloomin' cheek! I rarely see my GC because I'm always at work. I'd love a 'sedentary lifestyle'. |When I visit (about 4 times a year) I take treats but nothing edible. What children eat is up to their parents in my opinion.

OK - I've only looked at the smoking grannies section so far. Of sixteen studies examined, only one was from the UK. That one concluded that the influence of grandparents was beneficial. Some parents voluntarily change their smoking behaviour to protect chil;dren, whilst others do so when requested by parents.

Let's find something else to point fingers and accuse the battered Baby Boomers - we who provide childcare, listening ears, help with housing, and a multitude of other services that rarely get a mention. From my experience the grandparents I know always defer to the rules set out by parents - we certainly do, as to let children do and say things that are 'against the rules' is not helpful to the DGC. All of our grandchildren have tried to play the sides against the middle - the whispered request for something that you know Mummy or Daddy has just refused! One GD will try to convince me, with a wide eyed stare, that she is allowed to do such and such. My usual reply is that if I ring Mummy no doubt she will agree - and suddenly small madam is bouncing off to play something else - perhaps to try the same thing with GD!

List of smoking studies if you are interested. journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0185420

easybee it was actually a systematic review of 56 studies with data collected in 18 countries. It was in fact a Cancer risk factor study.
It wasn’t just 56 case studies.

And it states “the studies did not take into account the positive emotional benefit of children spending time with their grandparents”.

Again we baby boomers are being blamed for something else - last time it was our fault that houses were so expensive rise up Grannies and Grandpas and fight back!!

Grrrrrrr!!! Firstly, as an 'estranged grandparent' I'd give my eye teeth to be in a position to give my grandchildren sweets now and again...! Secondly, yes, a very biased report except for the fact that the person on the radio said 'but the survey didn't take into account how good it is for children to be cared for by loving grandparents' .... Exactly!!!!

I blame the “sound bite” for the rise in controversial stuff that isn’t accurate.

My 14 yr old grandson 'grazes' all the time and now that he does a paper round and has his own money the parents can't do much about it. Last time they visited I baked some healthy cakes/biscuits which neither grandson or parents even tried - it was off to the shop to stock up on the favorite snacks. I am resigned to seeing them acquiring chronic illnesses although so far none of them are overweight.

Diet - of 27 reports studied, two were from the UK. One asked 300 chilldren aged 9-11 in three schools in Leeds whether their grandparents indulged them. They said they did, so that was counted as an adverse result. The other asked 50 parents and 50 grandparents of children between 2 and 8 about their feeding practices. "Impact mixed. GPs reported using more maladaptive food practices, eg using food to regulate emotions and restricting food, but also providing a healthy food environment. More hours parent spent with child, the more grandparents reflected parents'"

That last sentence is relevant - if they are only with grandparents for a short time, the influence (good or bad) is smaller, and they had already excluded reports about GPS who had sole charge of their grandchildren. They do seem to have ignored aspects tyhat didn't fit with what they wanted to prove.

I think this is another case of granny bashing. From my experience grandparents are very aware of too many sweets and cakes and will always encourage home cooking with real food to ready made junk. How many times lately have we heard negative comments about the 'ageing population' being a drain on society. Now according to the surveys in the 'popular press ' we can't even keep our GC safe. What rubbish, I hate to sound like my grandparents but where is this country heading?

We take our GS into to pubs!

Yes, another case of blame everything on the boomers. We all actively voted for sky high house prices, so we could boast about how much our houses are worth, we spend all our money on cruises, while telling younger people that if they didn't have iPhones they'd be able to afford a house....

Anyway, I can imagine that the odd little sweet or piece of chocolate is a last resort of grandparents valiantly doing their best to help with childcare that would otherwise cost a fortune, and knackering themselves in the process.

The other day - dd was staying over with Gdcs aged 1 and 2 - I admit that we did use TWO chocolate buttons in order get the elder in the bath - she was kicking off about it - and her teeth brushed.
I hadn't even bought the chocolate buttons for Gdcs, they were left over from Halloween. Dd was only too glad that I had them available - we were both pretty exhausted by then. In general they have very little in the way of anything remotely junky.

I'm sure there is the odd grandparent who allows endless junk and sugar, but I bet there are just as many parents who do the same.

Weight - of 17 studies, 3 were from the UK.
Two of them came to opposite conclusions - one that there was no difference in the weight of 13,000 3-year-olds cared for informally by grandparents or by a parent, the other that children born between Sept 2000 and Jan 2002 and looked after informally by GPS were more likely to be overweight that those looked after by a parent.
The third compared the weights of children looked after by maternal and paternal GPs. Ity concluded that where the maternal GM provides care, child is 20% more likely to be overweight. Insignificant for paternal GP but underpowered.
journals.plos.org/plosone/article/figure?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0185420.t001

I’m stricter on food than their parents! They give them things I would never give them!

So reading back on my posts about the various accusations, my imprerssion is confirmed that only a small proportion of the studies thay have analysed are of children in the UK, most of them are from countries where smoking is still almost universal, and some from where mothers and grandmothers are still having to struggle so hard for a daily living that spoiling grandchildren before they too start on the daily grind doesn't seem a sin.

UK results are scattered over adverse, beneficial and no impact at all. Pretty middling, in fact, as you would expect, but hey! let's not hold back on blaming the oldies on something else.