Do you feel as if your grandchild’s parents make it hard for you to be the grandparent you want to be? Do you have a rocky relationship with your daughter-in-law? Do you wonder why your son is so short with you on the phone?

What’s going on with these parents?

Grandparent groups are full of complaints about parents. Parents who have too many rules. Parents who never want grandparents to visit. Parents who expect grandparents to babysit. But are parents solely to blame?

It’s hard to admit that we might be part of the problem, but the evidence is out there. Every day, we hear about grandparents who make life harder on parents or feel they deserve to be treated a certain way because of their role. Most of these grandparents have no idea that they are straining their relationships with their family.

Here are three of the mistakes we regularly see grandparents make.

1. You love being a grandparent so much you’ve stopped being a parent

Have you ever had a friend who started a new romantic relationship and suddenly had no time for her friends? Her entire life now revolved around her beau, and if you were lucky enough to catch her for a chat, she couldn’t talk about anything but her new love. It’s annoying—and hurtful. You begin to wonder if you were ever important to her, and it seems clear that you aren’t important any more.

That’s what it feels like to parents when grandparents shift all their attention to the new baby.

Just because your child is now an adult and a parent doesn’t mean they don’t still need your love and attention. Read 4 Ways to Show New Parents You Care for more about how to make sure parents don’t think you’ve forgotten about them.

2. You believe you have a right to spoil your grandkids

Grandmother groups, retailers, and social media all share the same message: it’s a grandparent’s right to spoil their grandchild. Let’s stop for a minute and look closely at what that message says, and why it’s such a bad message.

When a grandparent believes that part of their job is to overindulge grandchildren, they focus on what they can give the child, not the relationship itself. Instead of working towards connection, they rely on providing things and experiences that bring temporary joy to the child. Parents are left trying to deal with the impact of excess: too many toys everywhere, children who constantly expect to be indulged, and kids dysregulated by sweets, screen time and not enough sleep.

But what children really want is your time and attention. A study out of the University of Hertfordshire on the importance of grandchildren found that “Overall, the children appreciated time and engagement from their grandparents more than material gifts or expensive treats.”

Spoiling your grandchildren doesn’t improve your relationship with them, and it is most likely harming your relationship with their parents. Instead of overindulging your grandkids, just be there for them. That’s what they—and their parents—really want from you.

3. You think parents are setting ridiculous rules and boundaries

Today’s parents are working hard to make sure their children grow up safely and with a clear sense of self. They are increasingly setting rules around things like food, screen time, and body autonomy. This can be baffling to those of us who grew up in a different time.

Rules like:

• No kissing the baby

• Ask before you hug the toddler

• Don’t tell the preschooler they have to eat three bites, or try everything, or finish dinner before dessert

• Bedtime is 7pm sharp no matter what

• Child can only watch approved shows

If these rules aren’t followed, parents may limit the time or circumstances that grandparents can be with the grandchild. That’s where the boundaries come in: basically, if you don’t willingly follow the rules, parents will help you by making it harder to break them.

A boundary is different than a rule. While “no kissing the baby” is a rule, a boundary is “if you keep trying to kiss the baby, we are leaving.”

In most cases, parents’ rules are based on what they believe to be best for their child’s safety and development. Learning more about what the current recommendations are can go a long way towards helping you support parents’ choices.

If you want to be a part of your grandchild’s life, you need to show parents that you can be trusted. Just as in any other part of life, if you don’t follow the rules, you’ll lose the trust of those in charge. You wouldn’t tell your boss that you don’t have to follow company policy because that’s not the way you did it in your last job, would you? If you did, you’d likely not be in that job for very long.

Like it or not, parents are the boss of their baby. Respect them and their requests, even if you believe there is a better way.  

Improving relationships between parents and grandparents

Acknowledging that we may have room for improvement is an important first step. If you want to really work on healing relationships and supporting your family, check out the books on improving relationships in our Amazon shop. We recommend a wide variety of titles that can help you communicate better and learn to support one another.

Because no matter who is creating the problem, you can be the one to start solving it.