Grandparents and rules

I keep seeing cute little plaques in my mail order catalogs with pithy sayings like “If I had known grandchildren were so much fun, I would have had them first!” and “Grandma’s house: Let the spoiling begin.” But I thought that my parents would never be THOSE kind of grandparents. They were really fun parents, with really fun personalities and ways of teaching me unique life lessons, but they had rules. Boundaries. Sugar limitations. Enforced manners. Enforce bedtimes.

Seems that they have morphed into the grandparents that sneak their grandchild candy and cookies, let him stay up until 10pm, let him interrupt conversations, allow him to climb on furniture, and other not-how-I-remember-being-raised leniencies.  And I’m left spending the next week trying to get my kid back to normal through timeouts, spankings, and "no TV" punishments.

 I get that it’s a grandparent thing to do, so I'm not mad about it. And I chatted with a sweet 71-year-old grandmother of 4 on an airplane recently who informed me not to try to get my parents to follow any rules because it is their god-given right as grandparents to allow their grandchildren to run all over them.

So fine, I’m cool with that. 

My biggest fear is that my parents will start telling other people that my child is poorly behaved, the way I hear them talk about other people's children. My mother has already suggested that my child might have ADD - note to my mom: he is a 4-year-old boy. But when I took a peek in the pantry after their most recent stay with my son, I discovered a treasure trove of cookies and other snacks that I never let him have! And she baked him a gorgeous cake for his birthday, too. And I witnessed my mom allowing my son to interrupt her conversation on multiple occasions without making him wait his turn. And his daycare teacher reported that he was in more timeouts because he was tired and whiney and not behaving like himself on the mornings after he stayed up until 10pm. And a friend who saw my kid with parents asked if they were feeding him crack because he wouldn't stop bouncing the entire time.

So I would like to officially report to my parents that my child is not poorly behaved (most of the time), I do not let him interrupt conversations without punishment, he does go to bed at 8pm (most of the time), he does not get to have cookies and candy on a regular basis, and does not normally bounce around on all of the furniture.

Okay, that last one may not be ENTIRELY true… he *is* Spider-Man, after all.