@charity78777 I would just roll my eyes at them. When they are itty bitty it is about the relationship the person has with the parents. Baby doesn’t know or care. The grandparents are just trying to emotionally manipulate/guilt you into more access.
MIL does the same thing…but BIL & SIL don’t want to raise their own kids (had them primarily due to family pressure/expectations/church rather than actual interest and desire) so MIL has basically taken on being their third parent. She’s livid she doesn’t get the same access to ours but she lives around the block from BIL and very far (although not far enough) away from us. DH & I wanted to have kids and actively foster relationships but parent vs non-parent roles are very different and non-parent roles in a child’s life are only at parental discretion.
It’s also never going to be exactly the same between different sets of grandkids anyway for a variety of reasons. Gparent emotional needs also come last-because again, baby only realllly needs their parents and we aren’t going to take a newborn on an 8h drive. Baby comes first. Gparent emotions are their own responsibility and while it can be disappointing when their expectations don’t match reality that’s their own problem, don’t make it yours. You don’t need to see someone all the time to have a close relationship with them anyway. My extended family feel very close to baby (even if I haven’t seen them in person myself in over a decade) because we involve them from afar. They don’t need to be in person or always with baby as an alloparent. There is a lot of genuine affection and not resentment because we respect each other’s space while still putting in effort. We don’t feel deprived or separated and as I had the same growing up, my relationships with more distant relatives have really blossomed with age, especially once I became old enough to travel and spend time with them.
Unfettered or a high degree of access to infants
is not really appropriate, especially in cases where people are pressuring new parents. It’s not no boundaries or no relationship, although reddit can polarize things that way. I’d just set the expectations and they’ll get over it. It’s a lot of unnecessary stress to be going over what someone thinks their relationship should be with your child…while you’re juggling recovery, job/school/parenting, etc. They really just need to lay off because an actual relationship is what develops later when they are more than an immobile potato.
Fwiw, We see my local family a decent amt and it’s 100% about the adults atm. We’re not keeping baby totally isolated but are selective and they are just there while we do adult social things. They don’t press to visit or press to have alone time with baby (but do let me know their level of comfort holding or being willing to watch of we want a break). They also get plenty of pictures and phone time. We see other people with kids too that are part of our friend circle and at this stage they just blink at each other haha
I think preschool can be great depending on style and kid. We have an eye on a 2, 3, 5d nature and play-based 2yo program that’s 3h/day and I think that is about right for many 2yo I know
This is pretty long and rambling for an early morning comment but I hope what I’m trying to say makes sense