Glad I'm NOT a grandparent

I thought I would not have GC (I have 4 Step-GC) as my DD is in a very loving relationship with a woman (Civil Partnership & Marriage). I now have a lovely DGS aged 6, last year I moved to be nearer to them as I am now widowed & it may be me that needs them more than the other way around.

I only see them occasionally, school, football training & matches & swimming lessons all take priority. Not been required to baby-sit or go to park etc as when we do meet up there's lots to talk about.

I don't carry a photo of my DGS with me & certainly don't babble on to others unless we get on the subject.

As another poster says we discuss lots of different topics on here, some of them very lively!!!

Princesspamma -
My step-son is sedimentary geologist, so I've heard all that before too!

Day6 It's sad that you feel used by your adult Cs and only see your GCs when you are needed to look after them.

But your post reminded me of the person who wrote to an agony aunt, upset because she never got invited to parties.
The answer? 'Do you ever give any?'

I'm not sure why speaking to your daughter would necessarily mean a 'showdown'. Why don't you just think of somewhere nice to go, and ask the family to join you?

Don't know what happened there. What I was going to say was that I liked your post princesspamma we all all different. You are happy in the life you have you have chosen and that is the most important thing. Why should you go down a path if you don't feel it is right for you. I worked with children and families with problems for many years, and the number of children that were born but then the parents found they needed to spend time and take care of them. That is when the problems began. Enjoy the life you choose, whether it be with children, grandchildren, with a much loved partner or even on your own.

Bionicwoman - I admire your bravery in posting as you have! The reactions have been very interesting.

I too am not (or not yet - who knows?) a grandmother and I chose to join Gransnet as there are good tips and informative posts and I like to look at the views of people of my own or similar age.

If truth were told, I would like to be a gran - but not yet. And if my children were to ask me to constantly babysit or look after their children, I would not want them to assume that I am automatically available.

Enjoy your life as you choose, but be wary of appearing to criticise those who enjoy different things to you! I have been caught out by this and it always gets people's backs up.

P

Gangan1 I thought that this was a free country, please correct me if I am wrong.

PS to Day6 - we took our own photos of us altogether with the dsgc, made sure we did some good short trips (the park can be lovely), and made an album and collage photo in frames for our house and for their houses.

The darling grand children loved them and without making the whole thing into some terrible competition (!) we are now as visible as everyone else!

A friend of mine would send a letter to her GC every couple of weeks or so, with a painting book or whatever, do that she also wouldn't be forgotten as she lived a long way from them.

???

I thought this was a site for Grandparents I don't understand why someone who neither has grandchildren nor wants any should feel the need to put comments on here.

I completely get it Bionicwoman. I am not an especially maternal person. I loved having my own children very much, and felt very maternal with them, but I have no interest in babies and children now. The screeching of kids in supermarkets and even in neighbouring gardens makes me cringe and want to be somewhere else. One of my daughter's has three children aged 22, 16 and 14. I love them and I have had the youngest two to stay, but it suits very well that we live 300 miles away, as I wouldn't want to be 'grandma' on a daily or even weekly basis if I'm honest!

I have a son who has cut me out of his life since I divorced his father 8-years-ago. He has three children. Two of them, I only found out about when my eldest saw it on Facebook (he cut her and her family off too, he 'has issues'). I was devasted for the first several years and grieved for the loss of him, but it has never really bothered me that I don't see his children. Since I don't know them, they are strangers to me and it doesn't trouble me. It seems that this makes me odd. Most estranged parents seem to pine for the Grandchildren they have never met!

Also, I have two friends who chose not to have children. The flack they got for that choice when they were younger is remarkable. Family members telling them that they were selfish and friends and aquantances telling them, in their child-bearing years, that they would change their minds, or regret their decision. They never did either. ?

Jalima ..... Thanku for your interest, good to meet a fellow footwear afficionado! Clark's knee length in dark brown suede, Faralyn dawn or something I think they are called. Ridiculously expensive, but am expecting to get a good 10 years out of them, so actually very good value x

To everyone and especially to Day6 - I'm a step granny, and am always delighted to help, in whatever way including babysitting, and love to have some days out with the family but do find the MIL granny and grand-dad somewhat possessive and overpowering, so I empathise TOTALLY with you.

I didn't have children myself, didn't meet the right person till too late, and I have been very surprised by some mums and grannies who are quite dismissive of people without children or grandchildren, for whatever reason.

BTW we got a dear little rescue dog by chance (I think!) after a particularly difficult time with the MIL granny who had been more than usually possessive with darling SGC .... love our darling dog to bits AND my step grandchildren, and also love having some time in my own, and getting involved with work, local politics, gardening, etc, etc!

There really is room for everyone in this world and more than enough love to go round.

???

Day6 I feel for you! Some of my granchildren see much more of the other grandparents and we hardly see them as we are further away. But I try not to dwell on it and enjoy the time we do have together.

Hmmm. On reflection my above post probably belongs on another forum.

As for being a Grandmother, well, I adore my grandchildren.

I didn't particularly want to become a granny though and it wouldn't have worried me if my children had decided to remain child-less. Once the babies arrived, I felt instantaneous love for them.

I don't drone on about my GC. I have lots of interests and wouldn't want to bore anyone with tales of my GC. However, anecdotes of any sort whether they be about the dog, the running, the boat, the new curtains, the holiday etc, etc, can be interesting if they are short, but boring if they become the only topic of conversation.

Perhaps bionicwoman ought to be on her guard. Is she boring the pants off her listeners with tales of her exploits?

I'd also advise her that a little tolerance is a great and likeable characteristic. It doesn't hurt to listen, nod along and smile, even if the topic of conversation is about a child you've never met.

Must admit that much as I love my two grandchildren, my value now to my own children is that of baby-sitter.

I am rather disappointed that they have lots of fun days out but me and OH are never invited to participate. Our children often ask us if we are free on certain days, and there is a glimmer of hope that they might want us to come to lunch or on a picnic, or for a day out in the park, or on a trip to the theatre for a children's show, but no, invariably it will be "Oh good. Can you look after......?"

We adore our GC, but it rankles slightly that the parents of our children's spouses, the other set of Grandparents, do all the fun family things, and we don't. They get all the fun slots.

My child has an album full of photos of GC's other grandparents, two of them step-grandparents as well, but none of us with our GC.

Sorry if that sounds petty. I know I am hurt by it and never let it show. I agree to all the baby sitting too without comment. It's a situation I can't do much about unless I have a showdown, and I really don't want to cause bad feeling.

So, yes, grand-parenting hasn't been the joy it should have been. The children I love with all my heart - I'd walk over burning coals for them - but I am giving up quite a bit of my freedom to baby sit.

princesspamma - what kind of boots, always interested in boots
(ps and a couple of young relatives work in the oil industry, always interested in new finds)

An observation for the Random Thoughts Provoked by a Gransnet Thread shelf: before I had grandkids I didn't actively want them, nor did I actively not want them; I don't think I thought about it at all. I think I knew, somehow—perhaps from a long ago conversation, or by the fact that when Minibags was born and they were rising eighteen and twenty, they were thrilled and enchanted—that my already grown up daughters wanted kids at some stage, but that's as far as it ever went.

Then DD1 rang me one day to tell me she was pregnant (unplanned but she and partner were happy about it). It was very exciting. Minibags became an aunty at the age of eight. Since then they've had another child and I think both my grandsons are fabulous, as are their parents.

I'm not very hands on because of geographical distance and because DD and son-out-law are extremely competent. They are closer geographically to the paternal grandparents, who were also freer than me to travel, and through them get to see their numerous cousins on that side of the family, which is great. I didn't have any cousins until I was twelve and then only two all told, one of whom has a daughter the same age as Minibags.

Families are all different. Minibags told me a year or so ago that she didn't want to have kids. My response?... Shrug, wotevs; your life, your choice. She's already sounding less certain about that

I am going to start by saying that isn't it wonderful that there are all sorts of different people in the world, with all sorts of different views and opinions? I am not a parent, and so not a grandparent. I made this as a choice, although my husband and i did flirt nervously and half-heartedly with the idea of having a child soon after we were married (because he is younger, and i was 40 when we married, and if we were to do it,we couldn't wait). Thankfully we did not manage to produce a child. I am not maternal, not interested in them in any way, and frankly I do not want to share my partner's attention with someone else, nor do I want to have to put a child first in terms of my time, attention, or financially. He is much the same, although with a different partner i actually think that he would make a good if rather uninvested father. Selfish? Yes, but that is my right, and it is absolutely as valid as the decision to want children and all that they entail. Each choice comes with its own set of pros and cons, and neither is without sacrifices or disadvantages. What i think OP was saying, and what certainly holds true for me, is that all the parents/grandparents think that when we state our preference, it does not have equal, that we are to be pitied, or as some have even said in this thread, we 'protesteth too much'. No. Really, no. And as for a non-parent daring to say that they aren't interested in talking/hearing about your offspring and their doings - well heaven forbid! But why can't we say that? Granted, it is rude to go in with your big feet and state straight away that you don't want to hear a word about anyone's sprigs, but why would you assume that I would be interested in the minutiae of a life I neither share nor want? Are you interested in those boots I just bought myself, which i have been hunting obsessively for months,or that we watched 3 episodes of House back to back on Netflix last night to take our mind of how hungry we were because Thursday is a fast day, or that one of our cute little couple-y things is that we sing along to the closing (but never the opening) music to University Challenge, each with our assigned roles and silly voices, and the challenge is to keep in time over the bit where you cant hear the music? Of course you aren't, and trust me i dont want to subject you to that sort of personal-to-me waffle ad infinitum, even though I have plenty of stuff to tell, and time in which to do it, given that I have no children filling up my life and giving it value.... It is reasonable, and interesting, to hear some details about the lives of new people one meets, including of course their children/grandchildren. I like that. But I would also quite like you to have the same degree of interest in my life, even though it is different from yours in all sorts of ways. I would like parents/grandparents not to feel sorry for the aching gap in my life, because there isn't one. I also don't want to spend an entire evening listening to a group of people talking about things in which i have no interest, and cannot contribute, be it children, or football, or crochet. A little while, sure, but not the whole time, because that is just rude. I am a sedimentary geologist, my specialisation is secondary porosity in oil-bearing sandstones, with a particular focus on turbidites, looking at how the different facies within a sequence differ, how grain size and mineral content affects the primary and secondary porosity, and how diagenetic processes can either improve or inhibit porosity. These factors are very important to the oil industry, as they can inform the decision on where to drill within a sequence.....are you bored yet? I think my point is made.

It so interesting as some single posters throw a curved ball in then disappear never to be seen again

LullyDully there have been quite a few lately, haven't there. Curiouser and curiouser as Alice would cry! (no, not my DGD - just a way of bringing DGC into the conversation ).

Lully I find it interesting that there have recently been knocking threads started by people from all corners of the spectrum (IFSWIM) We've had "too much about grandchildren", "too tame" and "too aggressive"
Elegran Quite
Perhaps it's just that GN is becoming more widely known

Bionicwoman

Please would you list the positives of not having grandchildren, as this would really electrify Gransnet - come on, you know we want to !!!!

I'll start you off,

1. Freedom

Um, I'm kind of with the original post but more sad than cross really. I'm not ever going to be a gran but we've dealt wth it and moved on and life is good. But I am missing my friends. Sorry but even if you don't realise it, you do talk about your grandchildren all the time. If you put ten pennies on the table and moved one every time you mentioned a grandchild or even thought about bringing them into the conversation bet you'd run out in less than ten minutes!

I think you feel like this right now, but if things change you will adjust to the situation. That's life !

Just thought I'd advocate another view on this topic. There are many people whose ONLY source of conversation does seem to about their children or grandchildren. They seem to live their lives through that single viewpoint. So that even if other topics are introduced or questions asked about themselves and what they are doing they always manage to link it back to their offspring or GC.
I can see how this could be irritating as a couple we know do exactly this regardless of what the conversation is about whether it be news, world events, hobbies, holidays politics things we've been doing since we last saw them ... whatever.
(Rather than not seeing this couple we treat it as an ongoing challenge to find a topic where children and grandchildren aren't relevant but haven't managed yet over many many years!)
So in the case of Jane10's holiday companion perhaps she couldn't face a holiday in the confined area of a canal boat if that was possibly going to be the case.
We don't know why she said she wasn't interested in children or GC and it could be a source of a lot of pain/upset for her. I agree that it sounds like she could have been far more tactful in how she raised the topic though.

I love my little granddaughter. I don't waffle for hrs about her but she has enriched our lives. You don't know what the deep love n relationship is like. OK ur not bothered n do sound very bitter. Very sad. It would be even sadder to have a nanny with ur attitude though

It is of course your grown children decision whether they have children and therefore making a grandparent. However it then becomes your decision on the input you put into that relationship. I expect many people didn't particularly see themselves in such a role and have taken a 'back seat ' .
Personally I would like a closer relationship with mine but I live 300 miles away so don't see them nearly enough (sadly).