3 Grandparents can provide children with quiet times, new experiences, fewer electronics and more play.
4 Grandparents can help introduce children to healthier food; we have the time to prepare it and present it.
5 Children need to hear perspectives from someone other than peers and parents. They need our guidance and insight.
It comes down to a need to establish the extended family again, the new nuclear family of the twenty-first century. As grandparents, we must take it upon ourselves to lead the charge. Even if we live a long distance from a grandchild we can still connect through creative presents, maximizing visits, and old fashioned ‘snail’ mail such as postcards.
That’s not to say we should take on the role of mother and father. Instead our place is to supplement a child’s parents, to help them wherever our help is wanted and needed. Let’s use the time we have with our grandchildren to instill them with important values, to teach them about the world around them and to help shape them into better people.
A Word from Mike Link
In an age when “Soccer Mom” and “Soccer Dad” are used as normal terms to describe parenting, our roles and relationships can be confusing. Parents are scheduling rather than parenting, channeling rather than nurturing, coaching rather than modeling. This may not be the parents’ choice, but in the driven world we have created, the demands to make a living are great.
Do not despair; there is a solution that is ancient in its lineage. As the Washington Post’s Abigail Trafford writes, the next two decades will become the transition from baby boomers to grand baby boomers. Good parenting means extending the safety net of support, love, learning and connection through the extended roles of grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.
As a child, I spent all of my “non-school” time living with my grandparents in a small town in Wisconsin. My father worked evenings and weekends, trying to get us out of the poverty that surrounded us. It was not a desertion of responsibility on his part but rather a sharing of it. Ultimately, I grew up an “only child” with six parents (my mom and dad, my father’s parents, my Uncle Clarence and Aunt Agatha) and with my cousins Elaine and Lois, who became my “sisters.”
I think of my childhood, and it is filled with memories of picking black-berries with Grandma and playing catch with Grandpa. I was never a visitor; I felt that their home was my home. This is also what we want for our grandchildren. Our home, our land, our love is theirs, and the wonderful thing is they are ready to give their love in return!
Today’s grandparents live longer, have the potential for better health and have more opportunities than ever before to share stories, read books, look at old photo albums, talk about the good old days and enjoy their grandchildren.
Talking, reading and reminiscing are all great, but the stories are wonderful for us because we lived them; the photographs have meaning because we experienced them. If you want to build memories rather than dwell on them, get out there, get going, take your grandchildren and experience the world again through their smiles, their curiosity, their wonder and their energy.
Many times you can include the parents in the activities you share with your grandchild. A multi-generational event can be truly wonderful, but choose a leader beforehand. Is the parent in charge of the activity or is it the grandparent? If there’s ever any doubt, step aside. A multi-generational squabble does nothing positive for the child and may be more damaging than good.
The intergenerational escape is a unique adventure. This is the time when we truly share. No one is ever more honest in their emotions than when they are smiling or laughing. No one is less guarded and more accepting of new knowledge than when they are engaged in new and positive experiences.
Grandparents are reflecting pools that have gathered the wisdom of their age and the knowledge specific to their own families. Children need the chance to delve into the pool for consolation and contemplation. It is not the role of the grandparent to solve the grandchild’s problems but rather to provide the means by which the child can solve his own questions of value, right and wrong. The grandparent is in the neutral role and needs to hold this position. We are advocates for the parents and for the children.
In a 1996 book, Contemporary Grandparenting, Arthur Kornhaber shows the evolution of the individual from his own childhood to grandparenting. The list is worth considering as we work to find the special activities that grandparents should share with their grandchildren:
from receiving as a child to giving as an elder,
from being nurtured as a child to nurturing the young,
from learning to teaching,
from listening to stories to telling them,
from being directed to directing,
from simply reacting to one’s environment to becoming able to influence the world and
from identifying with others to becoming an object of identification for the young.
We are the elders; we are a starting point for more generations—how exciting and how challenging. Don’t dwell on it. Just be yourself. Be honest, be fun, and be open. Grandchildren are gifts from the future. The love they have for us, if we are willing to involve ourselves in their lives, is beyond description. Our greatest gift to them is our love and attention, and they are the greatest gift we could ever receive. Through them we can see the decades ahead. They connect us to their world, and we in turn owe them a connection to ours.
A Word from Kate Crowley
If you’re lucky, you grew up knowing your grandparents. If you’re even luckier those grandparents lived nearby and enriched your life by their interest and enthusiastic involvement. Unfortunately, the Industrial Revolution, while it has brought us lives of relative ease and abundance, has also brought about the gradual decline and demise of the close-knit, extended family.
Much of the knowledge that our elders, the grandparents, carried was tied to life on the land. We can recall the easy, simple times spent with these adults who indulged us and shared their memories of a time that today seems as remote and as removed as the Middle Ages. Yet, since we carry the memories and experiences with us, we have the opportunity to share them with a new generation, being born into a century with untold opportunities and far too many dangers.
As we age, we reflect on our childhoods. Even though the mists of time tend to spray a cloud of gold over those days, we know that there were experiences that gave us great pleasure and cemented the bonds with the elders who shared themselves with us.
When I was born, I had two living grandmothers. One lived in California, and I have very fuzzy memories of her. She only visited us a handful of times, and I don’t recall her as particularly warm or even interested in interacting with my siblings or me.
My other grandmother lived just a block away from us, and I had more than twenty years of close acquaintance with her. I even lived with her for four years during and after high school. She didn’t have the time or personality to get down on the floor and play with us, but her house was always open to us and we wore a path through our neighbor’s back yards to get there. She had a few old toys and books for us to play with and a big, old piano that we made noise on, but mostly we simply came over to visit. If we were lucky, she’d make us root beer floats.
This is what I believe about our most firmly held memories of time with our grandparents: They are tied to our senses, all of which were much keener for us as children. Smell, sight, sound, touch and taste—these are the things that will stay with a child as they grow to adulthood, recalling times shared with grandparents.
One of the most mouth-watering, sensual memories I have with my grandmother is from a summer day, when we went out into the country to pick tomatoes. It was a hot day and even though we got there early, the sun was beating down on us as we moved through the pungent rows of tomato plants. What I remember most about the day