👵🏼🚁 How To Deal With Overbearing Grandparents

Dadpack Digest, V11 ☠️

Crossing the Halloween and Christmas streams is always a precarious pursuit. But when Jim Burns' horror-themed ornament company "Horrornaments" was struggling to sell Michael Meyers figures, evil pickles, and miniature bloody chainsaws this season, his 24-year-old daughter did what most dads fear more than a slasher flick: She posted about him on TikTok

Fortunately, her public plea and shameless Gen-Z sensibilities saved the family business, and within three days her viral video landed upwards of 5,000 orders and counting.

This Week From Dadpack

• 👵🏻🚁 How to deal with helicopter grandparents: Merry Christmas Nana and Poppa, now if you could kindly shut up.

• 📰🗞 In case you missed it: All the news you didn't have time to scroll for because you wanted to throw your phone in a river.

• 🎅🏻 🎶 Great recommendations: The most underrated and arguably inappropriate Christmas song is about Santa losing something crucial, and it's not his keys.

• 🎁👀 When Christmas gets canceled: Sometimes the holiday season is a learning experience for everyone.

Shutting Down Grandma And Grandpa

One of the best parts of the holidays is the part where you get to sit back, relax and let a relative take care of your kid for a little while. After all, they say parenting takes a village.

The only problem is when some villagers want to feed your child sugary soda, plop them in front of the TV all day, or smack them on the back of the head when they misbehave.

According to the Mott Poll Report from the C.S. Mott Children's Hospital in Michigan of over 2,000 parents with children under 18, 89 percent of them saw at least one grandparent semi-regularly. Of these, 37 percent of them had minor parenting disagreements with grandparents, and 6 percent had major ones.

The most common disagreements were over discipline, meals and snacks, and screen time. Manners, health and safety, favoriting some grandchildren over others, bedtime, and sharing photos on social media were also notable points of contention.

As for how to deal with conflict, anticipating which of the above might come up with your parents or in-laws and presenting a united front with your spouse, is a great place to start.

“It is totally normal to have a different parenting style to your own parents,” therapist Siobhan Butt (hold the name jokes, fellas) told The Huffington Post. “You are different people, living at a different time and have a different set of life experiences that inform how you decide to parent.”

In other words, just because your parents' generation tended to be more overbearing, harsh, and hovering helicopter parents, doesn’t mean that you have to be. And in order to be a part of your family unit, Grandma and Grandpa have to play by your rules – most of the time, anyways.

“Be open, tell them how you are feeling, make it known that you respect them and appreciate that they have lots of life experience and wisdom to bring, but if you would like advice about a particular situation you will ask them for it,” Butt said.

Data indicates that, much like with your kids, you might have to say your piece more than once. The Mott Poll found that 43 percent of parents asked grandparents to change their behavior to align with their own, and 47 percent of those grandparents made that change. That said, 36 percent of grandparents agreed to change and didn’t, whereas 17 percent of grandparents refused to change.

Whatever happens, don’t lose your temper. “If you respond to their actions with hostility the situation could escalate and conflict can arise,” Butt warned.

Barring any egregious oversteps, psychotherapist Roslyn Hunter recommends working with Grandma and Grandpa to make sure they’re still a part of your kids' lives.

“Grandparent love and knowledge is essential to a child’s self-esteem and self-identity,” Hunter told the New York Times. “They need to see themselves as part of something larger than their parents. They need to find their place and feel part of a family that has a history.”

You might not be able to change them entirely, but they won't be around forever.

Good News, Dad News

• 🌰💃 The Nutcracker: In an effort to increase men's interest in ballet and overall diversity in the audience, the Philadelphia ballet is offering discounted tickets for “The Nutcracker” to dads and their children to jeté them into the holiday spirit.

• 🏠👩‍👩‍👦‍👦 Living With Parents: Men are more likely than women to think that young adults living with their parents is bad for society, the Pew Research Center reported. Since young men are also more likely to be living in their parents' basements compared to young women, perhaps they're trying to tell us something.

• ✌️😡 Estranged Dads: Dads are about 20 percent more likely to be estranged from their adult children compared to moms, new research from Ohio State University reveals. But given the previous story, maybe they’re just having roommate drama.

• 🏈 💔 Mourning A Legend: Football fans mourned the loss of coach Mike Leach, a two-time national coach of the year, and the brains behind the NCAA air-raid offense, who died of complications of a heart condition following a bout of pneumonia at 61-years-old.

• 🦁🌟 Bad Kitty: A semi-famous wild mountain lion named P-22, who became a bit of a local celebrity from hanging out near the Hollywood sign like a basic tourist, died this week as well. Following reports of P-22 killing a pet and getting hit by a car, the 12-year-old animal was captured, and due to a variety of medical issues, wildlife officials euthanized the no-so-cowardly lion.

Santa Lost A Ho

As they put it, The Christmas Jug Band was a "momentary lapse of sanity that became an annual holiday tradition spanning over 40 years."

Back in 1977 when the now-closed Old Mill Tavern needed a last minute host for their open mic night, a group of regulars stepped in and jammed out with holiday parody songs billed as, "The Three Wise Men +4 -1 Jug Band." The owner of the bar was so impressed they turned the joke into a holiday tradition, and the rest was history.

Over the past four decades, the group of impressive musicians who’ve played alongside the likes of Etta James and Elvis Costello, has released a number of catchy Christmas songs that are perfect for dads who are sick of the same old carols.

Few of these tunes have been as catchy and playful perennial-hit for parents with kids who are too young to repeat words: "Santa Lost A Ho." This silly song designed for singing along tells a story of Santa losing one of his three hos. “Now he’s only going HO HO. (Uh Oh Where’d the other Ho go?)”

The innuendo may be obvious to grownups, but explaining all that to a kid might be tricky. For a family-friendly alternative, we recommend “Rudolph The Bald-Headed Reindeer'' a parody of a classic about how Rudoph’s shiny bald head guides Santa’s sleigh. And when your kid inevitably roasts their uncle with the song, you'll be beaming with pride brighter than a red-nosed reindeer.

Parting Paternalism: It's OK If Christmas Is Cancelled

Whether it’s someone coming down with Covid-19 or getting stranded at the airport à la “Planes Trains and Automobiles,” sometimes holiday plans don’t materialize the way you wanted them to, and occasionally everything goes wrong.

Such was the case for one sad dad on Reddit, who posted in the Daddit community about how his 7-year-old twin sons found their hidden presents and unwrapped them weeks ahead of schedule.

In true dad fashion, he wasn’t mad. He was disappointed.

​​Other understanding parents chimed in to offer support and suggestions for how to deal with it.

“Leave them opened under the tree or just, the punishment is they don’t get to open them or be surprised for that matter on Christmas morning,” tenaciousdewolfe said. “That alone should be enough.”

Other commenters advised him to not buy more presents and let the kids have a less exciting Christmas. “That's show business kids,” eyeoftruthzzz wrote.

And cloudcreeek agreed, making the point that, “Even if they know what they're gifts are, they're still gonna have to wait two weeks to be able to do anything with them. That's even more punishment (and also a lesson in delayed gratification).”

Finally, starbellbabybena assured the distraught dad that next year will be better. “It’s how I learned. Snuck and peeked one year. Never again. Ruined the surprise.”

In this economy, there is only so much room for hiding Christmas presents your home. But like jello, there’s always room for a lesson.

Polling Your Leg