mother and baby magazine

It's rubbish fillygumbo of course! How do they get away with printing that? I can certainly communicate better with my young grandchildren than a busy nursery nurse who can't respond every time to questions or general chit-chat, or initiate conversations between children when they have a large group of mixed ages to attend to.

What a load of cobblers. Makes me wonder where they did their research for the article

Also of course because we adore our little poppets so very much , we only have their very best interests at heart which however good the nursery may be , the staff have to be slightly detached

My eldest two grandsons where both talking before they where 1 yr old,the eldest at 10mths to the shock of a lady in the supermarket when she said to him on passing "oh what a lovely chap you are what is your name" where he responded with "my name is John* what a load of rubbish to publish this in a magazine do they think we are all past our sell by date ?

I think a good nursery would be better than grandparents. We are older now and don't have so much energy. Young children need younger people to look after them.

And we would spoil them.

And a good nursery is likely to make them more independant.

I am jingl btw.

independent with an 'e' (googled it hmm])

The Telegraph thinks differently:

www.telegraph.co.uk/family/9156424/Grandparents-better-than-nurseries-for-young-childrens-development.html

A lot of content in magazines is concocted to fill the pages I'm sure , one good reason why I don't bother with them plus they cost a fortune.

As with all things to do with people, there should be no hard and fast rules, no generalizations. I am both a Grandparent and an ex Pre-School leader. I have cared for my Grandson and we have filled our day with all sorts of Play based learning activities. Everything from cooking and icing cakes to simple Maths and then horticulture and nature studies with Grandad. I am fully aware that some Grandparents, just as some parents are unable or unwilling to cope, but please don't tar us all with the same brush. The only thing that I would say is that, just as any child who stayed at home all day with a parent and had little social contact outside the family suffers, then so would a child being looked after solely by a Grandparent. This was the reason Parent/Carer and Toddler groups were invented.

I agree HildaW - it of course depends on the grand-parents, how active they are, and how prepared they are to do activities, reading, trips to the park, etc, etc. But meeting other kids and socialisation is so important for that age group too, and makes integration into school so much easier. Not hard and fast rules- and of course come grand-parents are very young!

My youngest is 37 and a step grand-mother as her partner is a bit younger than her.

Several friends of mine look after their grandchildren for 1 or 2 days per week, and the other days they go to nursery. This seems a good compromise if it works for the family, as the children get the best of both worlds. and its fantastic for both if they can have some time together without Mum and Dad.

It all depends on individuals. I think the magazine was making too much of a generalisation personally - I rarely buy magazines now, as they seem to repeat the same old articles.

Like most things, there's no hard and fast rule, surely? I adore dgd and love to look after her. I am not some elderly old dear who has long forgotten how to look after a small child or do a full range of activities with one. However, I also think it is important for dgd to socialise with other children and would suggest that the best possible child care compromise is a combination of nursery and grandparents.

This sort of article always reminds me why I don't buy magazines though! They aren't balanced but are aimed at the demographic which, in the case of Mother & Baby is not grandparents.

True Pandemonia, and the cynic in me makes me think that magazines etc love making broad generalizations just to raise hackels and get talked about...as we are doing here - so I shall stop.

My GD's nursery seems to be quite good but DIL informed me today that they are closing in the summer, for good. I started to get palpitations, they are a 45 minute drive from us and the thought of leaving at the crack of dawn for a full day's childminding filled me with concern. DIL said not to worry she had found a good childminder in the village who had a vacancy. DIL and GD visited said lady this afternoon for an interview and GD promptly wet on the nice lady's floor. DIL has spent a week's holiday trying to get her potty trained but GD is resisting. I said just to put her in knickers and she will hate being wet and ask for the potty, fat chance

Hi fillygumbo

I think if I'd have read the article I would have contacted the magazine to let them know how you and many of us other Grandparents would be feeling over the discussion and to inform them that it may not just be parents picking up their magazine. I agree with Pandemonia, a combination of one to one family time and socialisation in a group are both very important to a young child and It sounds as though the article is very biased towards nursery care. I have a one year old Grandson who is learning to talk at the moment and watches my lips very carefully when I'm talking, I spend lots of time demonstrating verbally whilst looking at him so that he can pick up on the sounds and his little face beams, I wonder how much of this precious time a little one would get from being in a nursery setting? I can't imagine a nursery worker would have this much time to spend one to one - I've worked in a nursery and not seen that intense personal interraction with such a young one for any length of time - no offence to nursery staff, they do a very worthwhile job whilst having to do loads of tireless paperwork and not earning a well deserved wage for all of their hard work.

fillygumbo couldn't figure out what you meant about gps - I thought you meant the SatNav thing that is sometimes called gps. Really confused me for awhile. As for nursery being a better learning place for children then with their grandparents is a lot of rubbish. I do think going to nursery does help childen later on when they have to go to school. My GD goes 3 mornings a week and loves it. I do go up and help out out from time to time. But there is no way that at 67 years old I could care for them full time. [also a 6 month GD btw]. After a weeks holday with the family I am totally exhausted and glad to be back in my quiet tidy flat. Hopefully, my spending time with the 3 year old and giving a lot of attention with songs, books, art work is beneficial.