Your family is composed of more than just father, mother, pets, and children. As a parent, you have sisters, cousins, and parents as well. Your children have a grandmother and grandfather, in all likelihood. And those grandparents love to dote on your children.
This can be a great relief for you and your husband, fun for your elders, and fun for your kids—but there are some best practices to consider here. Following we’ll briefly examine five tips for your child’s sleepover at grandma’s house.
1. Prepare Them Beforehand
Your young ones need to know grandma and grandpa’s limitations. They likely shouldn’t be so energetic around your parents as they around you. That said, grandparents tend to be wiser than parents owing to experience, so in all likelihood grandma can handle herself—still, you want to plant seeds beforehand so everyone is prepared.
2. Help Them Pack Their Bags
Give them some toys, books, and tech to play with in the background should this be necessary. Also, give them a few changes of clothes and snacks—including a bathing suit—just in case. This will be necessary until the young ones are at least pre-teens or teenagers; at which point let them sink or swim on their own.
3. Technology Check-In Possibilities
You can check in with them whenever you need to, and they can know that you’re just a smart-device swipe away, with Say for Android. Be sure your young ones know how to use such communication options, and that they’re readily available.
4. Don’t Surprise Grandma If You Can Avoid It
Your mother—or the mother of your spouse—has lived a full life. Now, in all likelihood, grandma will be overjoyed to see her grandchildren. But she might just be worn out, too. You don’t want to spring a weekend sleepover on grandma if you can avoid it. This is something you’re likely going to have to do at least once in an emergency when children are young.
Don’t play the sleepover card if there’s no emergency. Plan these things out in advance, and be an adult about it. The children don’t understand scheduling, or anything like that. They’ll just see irritation and think they’re the reason for it, and that grandma is mad because they exist, if you don’t plan in advance. Enable everyone to succeed through planning.
5. Be A Bit More Disciplined Before And After For Contrast
If you do everything right, now it’s time to capitalize on the back end. Have you heard of “good cop, bad cop”? Well, grandma is always the good cop, as the parent, you’re always the “bad cop”. It’s not that you have to be a disciplinarian, but as a parent, it’s your job to be a leader and role model for your child, not their friend. Friendship comes when they’re adults.
So when they’re young, be a bit more authoritarian before dropping them off at grandma’s. This will give grandma influence, and you can use grandma to help change your child’s behavior through suggestion more than you’d be able to directly. Also, they’ll appreciate their time with grandma better, and be on better behavior so they can come back. It’s a win-win.
A Win-Win For Everyone
It’s the office of grandmas to “spoil” the children, and children love their grandmothers. Play into that through proper planning and preparation of yourself, your parents, and your children beforehand.
Provided you give them emergency contact measures, help them pack, let grandma know in advance, prepare them beforehand, and strategically maximize the opportunity, you, your parents, and your children will all benefit from a weekend at grandma’s.
About Jammie Morey
Speak Your Mind