Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
It’s definitely not age appropriate behavior for a 4 year old. I wouldn’t buy anything expensive and I would visit the grandkids in their own home so they weren’t destructive in mine. It sounds like the parents are too permissive.
Are these really appropriate toys for a 4 year old? Perhaps she can't draw or read well enough to use these things correctly, and that's frustrating. If she likes breaking crayons, I would get her play dough for a more tactile experience. I would try to give her toys she's more likely to be able to play with, or bring out things like crayons only when you're there with her to help show.
Exactly. We have a very destructive grandchild with adhd. He loves taking things apart and so we went to goodwill and bought an old vcr he could dismantle. All tools ,knives, are locked away otherwise. Legos and playdo were wonderful too.
Yes, when it came to crayons they were kept out of reach until supervised use.
We can’t control how the parents want to parent but we can control how we interact our grandchildren, and choose presents wisely based on age, personality and indifference of parents regarding their children respecting property/toys.
Good grief the child is only 4 if you don’t want them to behave that way in your home you model how you wish her behave . I’ve got 5 grandchildren and yes they can be rambunctious. How their parents choose to do things in their home is their business. In my home or presence I quietly and gently remove things they are not being gentle with and say let’s not destroy this, let’s play with this. Tearing up paper is lots of fun, make a game of it, then collect the pieces to create art with at a table. If she can’t sit at a table , then no using the art supplies. Way too young to leave books lying around unattended, they don’t have the dexterity to handle delicate books.
And boo for going after the daughter in law.
Hold up, Spuggy, and anyone else who jumps to judge Rothbear. She has a legit point. I am a kindergarten and early childhood teacher and children ABSOLUTELY can be taught to take care of their things. It sounds like her GK's might not be well-supervised and I agree with Apolona1721 that letting go of how your GK's are being parented is excruciatingly difficult but there is not much you can do if you want to preserve your relationship with them and the parents...you DO sound like an awesome grandmother who WILL ultimately influence them positively. I feel for you, Rothbear. I am observing everything you mentioned. My daughter has 5 kids (the two youngest are only 15 months old and know no better yet), and they have a playroom full of toys and (though they have gotten a bit better about caring for their stuff) it used to be that if you bought them anything at ALL you could expect it to be broken or lost within a week. I can't count how many remote control cars the parents have bought over the past year but they all got man-handled and exist no more. Hey, save your money for now. Sit down and draw/color with them, that's what I do. While you're doing art together you can gently guide them, to "let's put the caps back on the markers so they don't dry out," etc. They have drawing boards with a magnetic stylus which are mess-free and pretty durable. But really, all you can do is be a positive force and model best practices and responses and that is what will ultimately influence them the most. Hang in there! Learning to grandmother successfully is extremely difficult, but you can do it, one visit at a time!
Thanks for all your replies. We just got back from 4 days over Christmas at their house. So many things. Here are a few notes.
First, this is my daughter, not daughter-in-law. Just an FYI, so I know how she was raised. We went over to SIL's mother's house Christmas PM and I can see where there was a lot more "permissiveness", plus the fact that they constantly seem to ignore the parents wishes on behavior and allowed her to do a lot of things they shouldn't have and parents were trying to stop her. But that's a whole other subject.
One thing that bothers me is the excuses....She's only 2, she's only 3, she's only 4, etc. When does it stop?? She doesn't listen and apparently that's one of the things the pre-k teacher brought out at their PT meeting several weeks ago. So it's just not me. The problem being as a first child, they pandered to her in everything. Now she is older they are expecting her to start behaving properly and they are now finding themselves having to yell to get her to behave, or even listen. She will just sit there and continue doing what she is doing and totally ignore them. After telling her to do something 3 times they finally yell and then she, of course, wrinkles up her face, bawls, and starts to scream "NO" and then parents apologize for yelling at her and tell how much they "love" her and hug her. So she knows there will be no punishment for ignoring them Or else a "time out" is sitting on the couch with them and watching TV. IMO a time out should be to deter the behavior and not give her something she wants to do.
As far as the destructive, still happening. Mother got her a train set that actually moves with battery power (Really???). Of course she wouldn't allow anyone to help her (my hubby was trying) and when frustrated would throw the cars and started using sections of the track to hit things. When daughter sat down on the floor and showed her how to make it work properly she kept smashing things around or jumping over it as it was moving. Once she fell and knocked it around. Mother told her that if she broke it she coldn't fix it, but that didn't stop her. Am I hateful in sitting there hoping she would fall on it and break it so MAYBE she would learn a lesson??? Then she started in on the younger girls presents that didn't get opened.and had to be pulled away from opening them. My hubby said that once she was sitting there pulling the papers off all the crayons and throwing it on the floor. He told her to please throw it in the trash and she said "I don't have to, Mommy has people come in and clean up for us.". Daughter was mortified when he told her what kid had said. Yes they have a cleaning person come in once every 2 weeks, but just for general housework, not to clean up after bratty kids.
Hubby took little one outside to play and it took older one about 20 minutes to decide what was good enough to wear, so she went out to meet up with them. But instead of doing that she decided to try and go next door to play with the kid there even thought she wasn't asked. Hubby stopped her and she screamed at him, then decided to go across the road to see the dog that was out. As she was running over there hubby ran and grabbed her to stop her from running into the road without looking because she wouldn't stop when he told her to, where immediately she went inside and screamed to her mother that Pop-Pop pushed her.
Frustrating visit. Definitely not coming here for awhile.
It’s definitely not age appropriate behavior for a 4 year old. I wouldn’t buy anything expensive and I would visit the grandkids in their own home so they weren’t destructive in mine. It sounds like the parents are too permissive.
I know I will get blowback from my post, so apologies in advance. The current generation of millennial parents (and this is JUST an observation, NOT a critical judgement), are concurrently helicopter/hands-off (not sure how you do that, but the resultant behaviors are telling), very permissive but grizzly-bear protective and defensive if you try to intervene, suggest, etc. They are often very distracted by their screens, relationships, TikTok, financial pressures, and it appears to me that very few (if any at all) have picked up a practical parenting book or gone to any parenting lectures (I recommend Love and Logic, as well as Conscious Discipline, and the old favorite book: How to Talk so Kids Will Listen, and Listen so Kids Will Talk). I don't want to say they are lazy about learning more, but it seems that they can't be bothered to invest some learning time into raising socially-conscious, caring, responsible, kids, or it just does not occur to them-- first letting them have a real childhood out in nature (not in front of one-eyed babysitters, and I mean SCREENS)...just my two cents' worth, the world has changed and the old methods (no, not spanking or berating) such as logical consequences for this or that behavior, and delivering experiences that teach how the world really works, and person-to-person actual relationships WITH EYE CONTACT...are very valuable.
Gawd I hope when/if my kids have kids I'm not this overbearing and critical.
If your grandkids scream at you, frequently tell you "No," and destroy your house and possessions, yep you'll probably sound just like us. It's really, really hard to be around bratty, undisciplined children, even when you love them with all your heart.
As grandparents, obviously we want our grandkids to grow to be well-adjusted, do well in school, be a good human being, and maintain healthy relationships with others. We worry about them when they are basically selfish and out of control.
Love and Logic is an excellent book on practical ways to teach your kids that the world provides consequences for their actions. You can start it by age 2 and use it throughout the teen years. If I’m remembering correctly it’s written by a teacher and a psychologist. It came about because the teacher lost his cool with a student and slapped him across the face. He knew he needed a better way to discipline his students and keep control of his classroom.
I don’t have grandchildren as only one of my sons is married and they chose not to have kids. Personally I can’t stand to be around bratty kids. My Dil is from Poland and what I noticed on my 3 trips there is that the kids are well behaved. They have a different approach than Americans to raising kids.
It will be interesting when she starts grade school. Obviously we have no way of knowing if the girl is attention deficit, somewhat autistic, or just ill mannered. I don't like the idea of automatically giving children drugs if they are attention deficit, but maybe it will eventually be necessary. It would be awful to have something like that misdiagnosed just because she hasn't learned appropriate behavior. But perhaps the screening process can weed that out.
Obviously the parents should be putting more effort into teaching her good behavior. I suspect the OP is right about the parents being too permissive. I wonder if she has play dates with other children. I can't see her being someone other parents will want playing with their kids if she is destructive.
How does she behave in stores, playgrounds, or at the zoo, etc?
Hold up, Spuggy, and anyone else who jumps to judge Rothbear. She has a legit point. I am a kindergarten and early childhood teacher and children ABSOLUTELY can be taught to take care of their things. It sounds like her GK's might not be well-supervised and I agree with Apolona1721 that letting go of how your GK's are being parented is excruciatingly difficult but there is not much you can do if you want to preserve your relationship with them and the parents...you DO sound like an awesome grandmother who WILL ultimately influence them positively. I feel for you, Rothbear. I am observing everything you mentioned. My daughter has 5 kids (the two youngest are only 15 months old and know no better yet), and they have a playroom full of toys and (though they have gotten a bit better about caring for their stuff) it used to be that if you bought them anything at ALL you could expect it to be broken or lost within a week. I can't count how many remote control cars the parents have bought over the past year but they all got man-handled and exist no more. Hey, save your money for now. Sit down and draw/color with them, that's what I do. While you're doing art together you can gently guide them, to "let's put the caps back on the markers so they don't dry out," etc. They have drawing boards with a magnetic stylus which are mess-free and pretty durable. But really, all you can do is be a positive force and model best practices and responses and that is what will ultimately influence them the most. Hang in there! Learning to grandmother successfully is extremely difficult, but you can do it, one visit at a time!
Of course they can. You are just repeating what I already said.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Exactly. We have a very destructive grandchild with adhd. He loves taking things apart and so we went to goodwill and bought an old vcr he could dismantle. All tools ,knives, are locked away otherwise. Legos and playdo were wonderful too. 
if you don’t want them to behave that way in your home you model how you wish her behave . I’ve got 5 grandchildren and yes they can be rambunctious. How their parents choose to do things in their home is their business. In my home or presence I quietly and gently remove things they are not being gentle with and say let’s not destroy this, let’s play with this. Tearing up paper is lots of fun, make a game of it, then collect the pieces to create art with at a table. If she can’t sit at a table , then no using the art supplies. Way too young to leave books lying around unattended, they don’t have the dexterity to handle delicate books.
I agree 100%
