Grandma spoils my kids!

From Dr. P's Message Board

Dr. P: "My mother totally spoils my little girl. What should I do about it?"

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This parent's dilemma is common and, in some ways, a nice one to have. Her daughter is blessed with doting grandparents, people whose sacred job in life is to spoil her rotten. Most of us adults wish we had someone like that in our lives, someone who, as the author Marcy DeMaree put it: "always made you feel that she had been waiting to see just you all day and now the day was complete."

Still, her question is a fair one: What to do about grandparents who treat their grandchildren differently than the parents? Put another way, do parents and grandparents need to be on the same wavelength with regard to the management and discipline of the children?

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For the majority of kids, I say "No!" Here's why.

Children (all people, really) are very adept at 'code switching.' That means we realize different settings and different people require different behaviors. We modify our behavior accordingly, showing restraint in one setting, letting loose in another. (Most of us, for example, act and feel quite differently around our parents than we do with our friends.) Our behavior is, to a large extent, appropriate and dependent on the context in which it occurs.

Your kids are plenty smart and learned this a long time ago. They know that grandma treats them a lot differently than you do, and that they can get away with certain behaviors with her that they never could at home. I suspect that when this little girl returns home, after a brief adjustment period she changes from 'spoiled-rotten, life-is-butter, I've-got-the-world-wrapped-around-my-adorable-little-finger' grandparent mode back into 'I'm-at-home, life-is-vegetables, and I-have-to-show-some-restraint" parent mode. Like the rest of us, she code switches.

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This description applies to most children - but not all - so I have two caveats:

1. There are some children - usually those with difficult behaviors and/or difficult temperaments - who do need consistency in the way they are treated by the important people in their lives. For such high-maintenance children, it is confusing and counterproductive for them to experience conflicting caretaking styles. In that case it's important to try to get everyone (school, grandparents, baby sitter, etc.) on the same page with regard to discipline.


2. You need to decide just how important these areas of conflict are to you. Whenever possible, I'd advise you not to sweat the small stuff. But only you can decide what the small stuff is. If, for example, you feel that eating junk food or not taking naps is truly injurious to your child, then by all means assert your parental privilege and insist that grandma comply with your wishes (of course, whether any grandparent ever listens to their grown child's opinions about how to rear their grandchildren is another question altogether!).
   

Or, better still, in the words of Gore Vidal: "Never have children, only grandchildren."

Related Topics:

• Diplomatic Guide for Grandparents
• Grand Parenting?