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OK, have written about 3 replies to this thread and deleted them as I didn't want to offend (or actually put some things on here about my opinnion about certain people I know, a public forum isn't a fair place to post about them behind their back and you never know who reads what etc etc) but hey, lets give it a go. Tried to do multiquote but it doesn't seem to be working properly so can't do that either 
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Anyway, there's no right and wrong here as it always depends on circumstances. Nobody has the right to expect anything, they have to earn it. If you have the right relationship with your son and daughter then you'll almost certainly have a good one with your grandchildren. You don't have the right to see them and the parents don't have the right to dump their kids on their (often aged) parents and use them as free childminders (I've seen this happen a lot, it's totally unreasonable and in one case resulted in depression). One of the reasons we've chosen not to have kids is that we wouln't be willing to make the changes to our lives to do it properly (or what we believe is properly). I'd want any kids to have a good relationship with their grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins etc but it would have been me and OH's decision to bring them into the world and I know that both our mothers (both in their 70s) would be exhausted looking after the kids on their own for a lenghty period of time. They brought up their own children willingly when considerably younger and quite honestly don't deserve to be put upon. I do however see that to never see them could also be very unfair but it has to be done in a way that suits both parties and hoepfully a compromise can be reached. This isn't to say that what anybody on here is doing is wrong (if it works for your family then great
) but it's important that nobody is being taken advantage of or unfairly ignored.
Back to the original post, the fact that he doesn't feel able to babysit for a week isn't at all unreasonable but it's rather a shame he didn't say this earlier.
.Anyway, there's no right and wrong here as it always depends on circumstances. Nobody has the right to expect anything, they have to earn it. If you have the right relationship with your son and daughter then you'll almost certainly have a good one with your grandchildren. You don't have the right to see them and the parents don't have the right to dump their kids on their (often aged) parents and use them as free childminders (I've seen this happen a lot, it's totally unreasonable and in one case resulted in depression). One of the reasons we've chosen not to have kids is that we wouln't be willing to make the changes to our lives to do it properly (or what we believe is properly). I'd want any kids to have a good relationship with their grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins etc but it would have been me and OH's decision to bring them into the world and I know that both our mothers (both in their 70s) would be exhausted looking after the kids on their own for a lenghty period of time. They brought up their own children willingly when considerably younger and quite honestly don't deserve to be put upon. I do however see that to never see them could also be very unfair but it has to be done in a way that suits both parties and hoepfully a compromise can be reached. This isn't to say that what anybody on here is doing is wrong (if it works for your family then great
) but it's important that nobody is being taken advantage of or unfairly ignored.Back to the original post, the fact that he doesn't feel able to babysit for a week isn't at all unreasonable but it's rather a shame he didn't say this earlier.
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