Grandparent care. . .

Is this anything to do with the media request on here this morning?

I ignored it had to go out so could not help.

And we could really do without Maureen Lipman’s fatuous comments(from the BBC website):

‘But actress Maureen Lipman said there was a big difference between grandparents who looked after their grandchildren everyday compared to those who see them at the weekends.
"If you're seeing them once a week you're going to overindulge but if you work with them every day, you're going to treat them as your own children," she said.
She keeps turkey dinosaurs in the freezer for her grandchildren Ava and Sacha and likes giving them ice cream with jelly.
"I try with the vegetables and fail," she said. "You can't train other people's children."
"The grandparents' job is kind of to be in cahoots with the grandchildren against the parents.”
She said being a mother could be "quite challenging", but being a grandmother was "just pure pleasure".
Ms Lipman said: "It's a walking miracle that you've brought something into the world that's brought something into the world."
She's also conscious of an "unspoken rivalry".
"There are two sets of grandparents - and you don't want to be the one that isn't giving them the nice piece of cake.”’

Speak for yourself, Maureen.

I particularly dislike the bit about rival grandparents.
I’m really glad she’s not one of my co- grandparents.

DH and I have never once been told/advised what to feed our DGC (11,9 and 7) by my DS or DDiL. They just trust us to use our own common sense with regards to treats.

Like paddyann said in an earlier post, we have a sweetie stash (a large Tupperware container) and now and again the children are allowed to help themselves to something from there.

Bbbface If you had read my post properly you would have seen they were family, not strangers.

I'm going to ask for the post to be deleted as it was meant in a fairly light hearted vein.

And to put it in your own words, 'Who are you to judge?'

I don’t think we should get het up about this. It was a standard systematic review which is an ordinary practice in research. It was for Cancer REsearch UK.
All it does is examine in some detail, the various studies from around the world (in this case 18 countries). It was looking at known risk factors only. It doesn’t seem to have been looking to “prove” anything predetermined.
All the media hype is off the point.

merlotgran

Mother of two young children here.
I know your heart was in the right place but
1. Children are encouraged not to take sweets from strangers
2. If they were all running around then giving them sugar is simply going to hype them up more
3. You have no idea of the back story. Perhaps the children are dreadful eaters and the sweets would have taken the edge off their appetite for the wedding breakfast
4. If that’s how the parents wish to raise their children, not to have sweets, who are you to judge?

This is about to be discussed on Jeremy Vine, Radio 2

Pamaga just shows how misleading the newspapers are. It was a mishmash of 56 past reports from 18 different countries - many of them from China, Japan, South Africa etc etc. where tobacco and cancer still don't seem to be linked in people's minds.

cherrytree - Glasgow Uni is mentioned in all the media reports, (well, obviously, the grannies of that city are known to reporters to eat a lot of sweets and smoke a lot of gaspers) but the survey had nothing whatever to do with Glasgow! and only a few of the bally reports that they studied were even done in the UK. The authors of it were a bunch of theoreticians sifting other people's work and coming up with a nice newsbite that they knew would be seized on by the uncritical papers. Very good for their CVs.

56 case studies in Glasgow is hardly the basis to make such a claim!

Load of rubbish...generalisation and grandparent bashing...we don't smoke...we take our dgd to lots of places in the fresh air national trust properties...bike rides...walks..and yes we treat her to a drink and cake sometimes at Costa....shoot us now...grr

So......we are ingulgent with the dgc, and spending time doing things with them is good for them. Surprise, surprise! This is hardly news is it!

Elegran lol Glasga grannies

As an expat Glaswegian grannie I think I'm allowed to say that in IMHO that the people doing the survey deliberately targeted Glasgow and already had an outcome in mind.
If Glasgow was the only city to be targeted then
1, The survey result can only be applied to Glasgow.
2 if the survey only targeted a certain area in Glasgow, then surely the results only apply to that demographic.

My Fathers Glasgow grannie looked after all the bairns,
she sent them oot we'a jelly piece to play in bomb wreckage.
Oh what a wicked woman.

It's not ok to just slam grandparents. I have witnessed first hand so-called 'good parents' slam a grandparent (not me) for daring to offer treats, yet serve the same children pure crap in the way of smiley faces and jam butties. Or worse still those fancy big name fruit pouches, which by the way I had the need to point out the very high sugar content of. DIL was horrified and in fairness to her, she said she had not checked the ingredients but had just presumed that this huge brand was the best for my GD. I have also come to recognise that some of the modern day parents feel the need to be in complete control unlike maybe our parents who relied on any advice given and accepted that it was just that 'advice'. However, grandparents do overcompensate and feel the need to have the grandchildren like them when all it takes is a simple 'is it ok'. Having dealt with 2 wonderful DIL's who are complete opposites and who were brought up very differently, I now go with the flow. 1 DIL would never dream of making a fuss if I gave the GK's a treat, she would see that as my role and entitlement, whereas the other DIL prefer's much more of a controlled situation and you know what that's fine. She has eased up a little bit since I casually pointed out that me and her mum was once modern-day mums and we've been there with the GP's thing.

If that’s true I will eat my hat (if I had one) what rubbish.

So reading back on my posts about the various accusations, my imprerssion is confirmed that only a small proportion of the studies thay have analysed are of children in the UK, most of them are from countries where smoking is still almost universal, and some from where mothers and grandmothers are still having to struggle so hard for a daily living that spoiling grandchildren before they too start on the daily grind doesn't seem a sin.

UK results are scattered over adverse, beneficial and no impact at all. Pretty middling, in fact, as you would expect, but hey! let's not hold back on blaming the oldies on something else.

I’m stricter on food than their parents! They give them things I would never give them!

Weight - of 17 studies, 3 were from the UK.
Two of them came to opposite conclusions - one that there was no difference in the weight of 13,000 3-year-olds cared for informally by grandparents or by a parent, the other that children born between Sept 2000 and Jan 2002 and looked after informally by GPS were more likely to be overweight that those looked after by a parent.
The third compared the weights of children looked after by maternal and paternal GPs. Ity concluded that where the maternal GM provides care, child is 20% more likely to be overweight. Insignificant for paternal GP but underpowered.
journals.plos.org/plosone/article/figure?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0185420.t001

Yes, another case of blame everything on the boomers. We all actively voted for sky high house prices, so we could boast about how much our houses are worth, we spend all our money on cruises, while telling younger people that if they didn't have iPhones they'd be able to afford a house....

Anyway, I can imagine that the odd little sweet or piece of chocolate is a last resort of grandparents valiantly doing their best to help with childcare that would otherwise cost a fortune, and knackering themselves in the process.

The other day - dd was staying over with Gdcs aged 1 and 2 - I admit that we did use TWO chocolate buttons in order get the elder in the bath - she was kicking off about it - and her teeth brushed.
I hadn't even bought the chocolate buttons for Gdcs, they were left over from Halloween. Dd was only too glad that I had them available - we were both pretty exhausted by then. In general they have very little in the way of anything remotely junky.

I'm sure there is the odd grandparent who allows endless junk and sugar, but I bet there are just as many parents who do the same.

We take our GS into to pubs!

I think this is another case of granny bashing. From my experience grandparents are very aware of too many sweets and cakes and will always encourage home cooking with real food to ready made junk. How many times lately have we heard negative comments about the 'ageing population' being a drain on society. Now according to the surveys in the 'popular press ' we can't even keep our GC safe. What rubbish, I hate to sound like my grandparents but where is this country heading?

Diet - of 27 reports studied, two were from the UK. One asked 300 chilldren aged 9-11 in three schools in Leeds whether their grandparents indulged them. They said they did, so that was counted as an adverse result. The other asked 50 parents and 50 grandparents of children between 2 and 8 about their feeding practices. "Impact mixed. GPs reported using more maladaptive food practices, eg using food to regulate emotions and restricting food, but also providing a healthy food environment. More hours parent spent with child, the more grandparents reflected parents'"

That last sentence is relevant - if they are only with grandparents for a short time, the influence (good or bad) is smaller, and they had already excluded reports about GPS who had sole charge of their grandchildren. They do seem to have ignored aspects tyhat didn't fit with what they wanted to prove.

My 14 yr old grandson 'grazes' all the time and now that he does a paper round and has his own money the parents can't do much about it. Last time they visited I baked some healthy cakes/biscuits which neither grandson or parents even tried - it was off to the shop to stock up on the favorite snacks. I am resigned to seeing them acquiring chronic illnesses although so far none of them are overweight.

I blame the “sound bite” for the rise in controversial stuff that isn’t accurate.

Grrrrrrr!!! Firstly, as an 'estranged grandparent' I'd give my eye teeth to be in a position to give my grandchildren sweets now and again...! Secondly, yes, a very biased report except for the fact that the person on the radio said 'but the survey didn't take into account how good it is for children to be cared for by loving grandparents' .... Exactly!!!!