‘Spare the rod and spoil the child’ is a phrase often attached with grandparents when they shower excessive love and affection to their grandkids. Today, grandparents have taken the role of primary caregivers from just an extra parent. While this increased indulgence is mostly a plus point, things can be rough if grandparents are over pampering and spoiling your child in the process. If you, too, resonate with similar issues and are desperately searching for ways to tackle this without hurting the sentiments of your parents, these might be your ways to respond to such situations.
1. Discuss Your Expectations
Since parents and grandparents belong to two different generations, having different upbringing styles is quite common. In such situations, having conflicts is common if you don’t express your expectations. If you have certain guidelines regarding when to reward a child so that they don’t get spoilt, a certain amount of discipline, or anything, then let grandparents know about them and request them to comply with the same. This way, they will be clear regarding the boundaries that you wish to establish, and they will bring out constructive pampering from their side.
2. Gentle Reminders
No one likes to get nudged now and then, and grandparents are no different. Even after being clear about the pre-determined boundaries, they might go overboard with their love. But this time, instead of starting from scratch, you will only remind them politely regarding the same.
3. Talk About the Consequences
Grandparents pampering your child might not even understand the severity of their actions until they start seeing the results. The best possible way to justify your point here is to make them realize the long-term repercussions. They know that childhood is the time to inculcate certain lifelong habits, and thus the right intensity of discipline and pampering is important. They will agree if you tell them that fulfilling a child’s demand can make them take things for granted or that they might develop destructive tendencies if their desires are not fulfilled in the future.
4. Understand Their Point Of View
This can be one of the most overlooked reasons why grandparents are over pampering your child. Old age is when grandparents desire to make only good and fond memories with little ones, thinking they have limited time to spend with grandkids. And because of this, unintentionally, they tend to overlook certain things. These could include little things like allowing them to have junk one more time, having playtime that exceeds the usual time, being overly protective and covering their flaws, etc. As a parent, this might make you worried, but sometimes compromising on these things turns out to be more beneficial. Yes, if the frequency goes high, you must talk to them politely about your concerns, but if it’s occasional, try to let it go.
5. Talk To Your Partner
Include your partner regarding this issue and work as a team. Find a subtle way to make grandparents understand the healthy boundaries they need to establish. Discuss and find common ground for what can be negotiable and what cannot. Have a pre-determined amount of flexibility. This is important as it is often seen that the child starts assuming parents as villains who are strict, while the grandparents who protect them and fulfil all their demands as heroes, which might not be the scenario.
6. Communicate
Of all the other things, communication is the mother of all. Don’t wait for that tipping point. Instead, communicate as early as possible so that you can curb the over pampering before it develops into a habit, for both children and grandparents. When you feel that grandparents are over pampering your child, finding the middle ground is a key parameter here. Understand that neither of you can be completing wrong. What’s wrong is a lack of balance between when to be strict and when to be lenient and that can be worked upon.
Recommended reading: When Grandparents Are Manipulative, Controlling and Self-serving
To Conclude,
As a parent, you need to understand that grandparents love kids with the purest of emotions, and in no way do they wish to spoil the child. It’s just that they often lose control of their love. So, never think of creating distance between them; just remind them that they need to revise their pampering habit.
