Grandkids

Read books to them instead. Leave the homework to mom and dad. Once I have my own grandkids, it's going to be fun fun fun, and when it's not, they are going back to mom and dad.

K., you are a grandparent, not a parent raising the kids. Leave the homework to mom and dad. Weekends with grandparents should be fun time, not homework battle time. If the kids are speaking disrespectfully to you then don't have them come for the weekend, you shouldn't put up with that kind of treatment. But really I'd stay out of parenting issues and just let your visits be for fun time. Leave the parenting to the parent(s). DIL may feel that you are interfering by deciding to take over the homework, and may feel that you are judging her (such as your comment about her not picking up his work while he was sick . I agree that she should have, but she is the parent and the homework shouldn't really concern you.

I think you are trying to do too much. You are trying to parent some grandchildren whose mother you dislike and disrespect. You criticize her for not picking up his homework, but he was sick for 4 days and, honestly, homework is not the most important thing. Your grandson might not have been feeling up to snuff after 4 days of being sick. He certainly didn't want to spend the weekend doing homework. You say she is brainwashing them, so obviously there is a lot more going on here than meets the eye.

That said, it's not your job to get the homework done. I don't understand why you have the kids every weekend. It's an awful lot of work, you don't seem to feel they appreciate you, so call a halt to the weekends for a while. Let the kids miss you for a while and they'll be more likely to want to come back. Let the parents handle the homework and don't try to be the disciplinarian. You can't control the way the kids are parented, you can only control how you react to it and how often you put yourself in the middle. I wouldn't be inviting them to visit again for a while - let them spend the weekends with their parents and at their own home. Take a break from their mom, whom you don't respect all that much.

This is your first post here so we don't really know you or the rest of the story, so I apologize if I'm not seeing the rest of the situation. But no one can take advantage of you without your permission - so just say something very non-committal like "I'm sorry, Matilda, but I won't be able to babysit the kids for a while. I think they really need their mom and their regular structure, not the disruption of coming here every weekend when they have so much on their plates. I'm sure you understand. Hope we can get together at ______ ."(Thanksgiving, Christmas, fill in the blank)

Well if kind of sounds like you aren't that fond of the mother either so while she's conveying her feelings onto the kids you might just be doing the same thing. She didn't pick up work for him every single day while he was out sick. When my kids were in school I didn't do that either.

It looks like no one asked you to help with the missed work. You took it upon yourself to help him so he could catch up. Helping isn't reviewing and saying 'you did this wrong' its reviewing with the child and working together to help him understand why the answer isn't correct. Then you pressed the issue and he because defensive and argumentative.

I have my grandkids all the time. I'm there to add value to their lives giving them my time and attention while their parents are running around worried about putting a roof over their heads and food in their mouths. You need to figure out what part you want to play in your grandchildren's lives so that they will look back and have memories of being loved by someone important in their lives.

Trust me on this one. If you continue to think ill of their mom it won't end well for you.

Don't do homework with your grandkids unless they ask you for help. It is not your job. When you have your grandkids, play games with them, bake cookies, make ginger bread houses together. Keep it fun and enjoy them. It is their parents job to make sure homework is completed. (Fyi...when my kids are sick, I don't get their assignments either. I let them rest so they get well).

Your grandchildren's education is the responsibility of their parents, not you. If you don't like the way their mother handles things, talk to your son - their father - about your concerns or butt out. Making up missing work is the job of his primary caregiver, which isn't you. If he gets in trouble at school, school can deal with his parents.

Unless your son is deceased, where is he? Why isn't he raising his children and if he is, why isn't he doing a better job of it? Is he not a part of his children's lives, and the mother does everything? If so, whose fault is that? Who raised him to be that way?

At the end of the day, the kids have parents and you're not one of them. If the parents are incompetent, you raised one of them so look in the mirror before you go criticizing someone else. Be a grandmother. If the visits are too much for you, or you can respect normal boundaries, then cut back on the weekend visits.

Why are the children with you on the weekends and not with their parents? While it is nice to go and visit grandma and spend a weekend now and then, getting dumped at grandma's every weekend may not be quite as nice for the kids. Especially if mom and grandma don't like each other very much. Maybe they feel abandoned by mom and dad and are acting out. I mean I can't imagine shipping my kids off to someone every weekend.

Please clarify so others can give you clearer advice: when you say you "get" the grandkids on weekends, do you mean they voluntarily come over and have a weekend at grandma's house while mom and/or dad have time to themselves, or do you mean that your grandkids must spend the weekend at your house due to parents' work schedules, or is this some kind of custody arrangement?

If they're just visiting you for fun and have all this missed work and poor attitudes, then a nice weekend at grandma's doesn't sound appropriate. They should be home, without electronics, and finishing their work with their parents' supervision. A visit with you should be relaxing and enjoyable, when the responsibilities are done.

If you are required to care for them every weekend, then you should have more say over their homework. If you know the child is out of school, follow up on the homework that gets sent home, especially if you know the mom won't do that. And the situation between their home and yours needs structure, stability and organization.

It sounds like this is a very fragmented situation. You have the kids every weekend but the mother doesn't like you and the kids are torn. The adults need to get together on this or the kids are going to suffer. If you're babysitting out of necessity, set out some rules between the parents, or stop doing it. If this supposed to be a fun visit for you, let the kids have an occasional treat with you when their work is done.

Well K., first of all I appreciate your trying to get him to do his school work. I think I'd have simply left it at mom's and told her he could work on it when he got back, that I didn't want to chance it getting misplaced or messed up.

Also, mom should have been working on it with him. She sent it with you because she didn't want the hassle.

I don't like "homework" and don't stress about it. So far the teachers the kids have had agree with this philosophy. if the kids miss several days of class they stay inside at recess and work on it but the teachers don't send home a bunch of stuff. They want the kids to learn it the way the teacher teaches it. If they don't understand it at home and mom or dad helps then they may learn it incorrectly. So our teachers manage to get the kids to do the work at school during the next few days when they return.

AND our kids school is the only one in this part of Oklahoma that got an A+ on their report card from the state.

These kids that are NOT doing homework are some of highest test scores for their age groups too.

So I would have had no problem telling mom that the homework was staying at her house. If she had said he can't come if his make up work didn't come too then he'd have stayed at home to do it.

She set you up to be the bad guy telling him to do his homework and she gets to be the good guy by saying "Poor kiddo, did grandma gripe at you about your school work, too bad".

Next time if he has school work with him let him do it if he wants to but if he doesn't then let it go and send him home with it unfinished. She should be helping him and no one else.

I am also a grandmother to eight grandchildren and I will say that it doesn't matter WHAT the mother thinks of me or what she says to the kids. When they come to MY house, they show ME respect or they will be sent home. Period. I won't tolerate disrespect and I don't NEED to have my grandkids, but I WANT to have them. I don't want to have them if it is not going to be pleasant and that's what I would tell them.

When they show up next weekend, sit them down and tell them that if they are disrespectful, they will be taken home immediately. And then, very FIRST time they are disrespectful, do just that. Pack them up and take them home.

I know it's hard to believe, and that your heart will be aching, but they will WANT/NEED to come back to you before you can't stand the pain of not seeing them. Believe me - I've been there and done that. Right now they think they have you wrapped around their little fingers - WRONG. And mom is getting the break of a lifetime with you taking the kids every weekend. They will need you before you need them.

Stick to your guns or nothing will change. People can only treat you the way you allow them to treat you!

It sounds like the kids are unhappy and are taking it out on you. You are unhappy and taking it out on your DIL.

Get rid of the unhappy, "blame it on the DIL" attitude and start figuring out why you are so unhappy. Then start complimenting your DIL, find things she does well. Compliment her to her kids so they see that you like her (even if you have to fake it for a while). Start developing a relationship with your DIL. You will be miserable for the rest of your life if you don't.

Then find out why the kids are so unhappy. Is it because they don't get to have fun time with mom and dad on the weekends and are shipped off to grandma's every week? Grandma's house every once in a while would be fun but when do they get to have fun, relaxing adventures with their parents?

Skip the homework. Plan fun adventures with them. Find out what they like to do and do it. Baking, building, working with tools (repairs), exploring, etc.