The grandest grandparent
by Mira and Charles on August 25th, 2009Being a grandparent can be the sweetest, most fun thing in the world. But it can sometimes be confusing and a source of conflict between parents and grandparents. So what IS the job description for being a grandparent anyway? It should be the easiest thing in the world. You have a kid, wait a couple or three decades, and then one day you wake up and you’re IT. No muss, no fuss. All the joys, none of scut work. But is that really all there is too it?
What grandparents need to understand is that they have a wonderful, all-important role, which is to be grandparents, not parenting consultants or role models. And that means, most of all, being there to take the pressure off your kids when they need a break and being there as a grandparent for the grandchild, which means being an alternative voice and personality that can enrich the child enormously without interfering with the way the new parents do things. You are an opportunity for your grandchild to feel loved in a different way and to see life through a new lens.
But you are not the parents any more. Your kids will parent their own way, and most often that means they will parent in a way different from the way you parented or from the way you think someone today should parent. Where you were strict, they might be lenient, or vice versa. Where you worried, they might be blasé, or vice versa. But here’s the thing: it’s their call. Because it’s their kids.
This can often be rough on grandparents. Unfortunately, many grandparents feel their kid’s parenting style is a referendum on the job they did as parents. Plus, they feel their current wisdom is not valued. It can feel like being moved to the back seat.
What these grandparents fail to realize is that your kids might have had wonderful childhoods and know it and be grateful for it but may still want to be parents according to current opinions and fads, not the opinions and fads in vogue when their parents were parenting.
Besides, it’s hard to resist wanting to “edit” the job your parents did by looking for what feel like better ways.
Also, as people have kids at older ages, they are more confident than the 22-year-old first-time mom of yesteryear.
So grandma and grandpa, please take this advice to heart. Let go of the need to parent. That’s over now. Show your kid the respect of trusting them to do an okay job of parenting, just the way you did an okay job. Don’t feel hurt if you’re not asked for advice, or if your advice is rejected. Instead be proud that you have a kid who is so self-confident.
Support your kid, help out in any way that’s needed or wanted, and then just be there for your grandchild. That’s what he or she needs from you anyway: not another parent, but something just as valuable: you as a grandparent.
For terrific parenting advice for older kids, teens, and adult children, the best book is the award-winning Parent/Teen Breakthrough. Check it out and see why it’s been the parenting bible for so many people.
