if You’re a Grandparent Raising Grandkids
Wouldn't it be great if you had total recall and you could remember every detail of bringing up your own kids. We all seem to remember the rough times with our kids but no matter who you are there were some really poignant or fun or tender times you spent with them also. If you were to ask your kids what they remember about growing up, you'd probably be surprised by what had such an effect on them that they haven't forgotten. It wouldn’t be when you gave her money for a down payment on her first car or when he couldn't find his cleats for baseball and you raced to the store to get new ones. No, it would probably be when you used to make cookies with her or when you taught him to make a boat out of popsicle sticks.
If you could just rattle that old brain of yours and remember some of those important moments with your own kids or (and I know this is asking a lot) remember some of those times from your own childhood when your heart swells just thinking about them, then you might be able to pass them on to this new generation..
My own grandmother was born in 1892 so she had seen the invention of everything from the telegraph, to the first airplane, to the first TV, to the landing on the moon, not to mention two World Wars and a stock market crash. Those were all fascinating to me as a child when I would grill her about major happenings. However, I remember to this day some really mundane things that for some reason stuck with me. Like when she would come in from playing rounders https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rounders#Comparison_with_softball_and_baseball
and her father would be sitting in the darkened library smoking a pipe. He would not say a word to her or acknowledge her presence even when she stood in the doorway.
My own memories of childhood would be as simple as the fact that I was the designated remote. Long before there were actual remotes for TVs, you had to change channels by hand so I was chosen to be the channel changer. I thought this was a big deal so I quickly hopped to it when it was time to change channels. However, it wasn't long until I realized I was the human remote only so none of the grown ups in the room would have to get up and do the honors. I was a quick study even back then.
There are five things I feel are important to keep in mind when raising the little ones. Your grandchildren will probably not remember any of them until they are grown and are parents themselves, but they will serve you well as you face each day.
1. Keep the Faith
No matter your belief system -- whether you believe in a higher power, a Creator, a deity or just meditate for peace -- it would be good to practice your faith with a renewed intensity. Praying at bedtime or at dinner (if you still gather around a dinner table) with the kids is certainly important. But I'm talking here about you and your well-being. I was brought up an only child so I was used to being alone or left to fend for myself. To this day I value my alone time. The hardest thing for me to adjust to when these little ones became part of our lives, was that I had no alone time. In fact I spent a little over a year dealing with anxiety and depression, some of which could easily be traced to this dramatic change to the new normal that I was experiencing.
I cannot emphasize enough the importance of finding some quiet time for yourself. And I don't mean just a nap (heaven knows I do that enough), but finding time to recharge and direct your prayers or your meditation or your search for harmony, inward with a real intent to find the peace that "passes all understanding". Fortunately I have Maggie as a partner in this journey and we tend to have each others back when it comes to finding time to make for each of our needs. If her time alone was constantly interrupted by a child yelling, "Ma, Ma, where are you?" it certainly could not be considered a time of rest and peace.
For that reason your quiet time, by definition, has to be in a place that's quiet and uninterrupted. For me early on it was my car. I knew that the time I spent in my car was to be cherished and I would often find excuses for getting out of the house so I could drive somewhere -- whether it was a store, to a meeting or to meet a friend. My wife to this day wonders why it takes me three hours just to go to the store.
2. Reach Out
No doubt most of you who identify with this blog have given up a great deal in order to give yourself to the demanding task of raising your kinship offspring. Many friends, though they admire what you are doing, have drifted away simply because they don't see you as often. Those gatherings that you spent investing your time in such as garden clubs or book clubs or bridge clubs have now become few and far between. I gave up golf for seven years early on in our journey with the little ones.
A couple years ago, after hearing it from everyone about needing a hobby, I made contact with some old golfing buddies. Though I struggled initially trying to make this old body swing the club, I now look forward to playing. I even took up acrylic pour painting so I'd have something to do during the winter months.
The common denominator in all this was I had to initiate the contact. The initial efforts necessary to be a caregiver are rife with time-filling activities. Concentration on doing things "the way we did it as parents" can fill each and every day. Suddenly you wake up one day and realize how isolated you are from the rest of the world. You take your child to preschool for the first time and you suddenly realize you have to interact with people . But even as you rub shoulders with other parents, you can easily remain separated from other people and activities you once cherished.
The good news is that grandkids keep you young. Myweekly.co.uk says that "Grandparents over 70 who regularly look after their grandchildren are 37% more likely to enjoy a longer life. The bad news is that they may wear you out before you reach 70. The daily grind of making sure you are on top of your child-raising game takes a toll on you mentally and physically. If you are going to "do it right" like you tell yourself and your spouse you are going to do, then you need to "do it right" for your health and well being. The old saying that "it takes a village to raise a child" is never more true than with grandfamilies. The first thing you need to do when you realize you might be approaching burnout, is to reach out into that village.
On the "Resources" page of this blog you will find a list of online places where you can find help for particular needs. All it takes is a little initiative to do some old fashioned research. But it might take a little more effort to connect with the world you have withdrawn from. Reach out to friends you've become separated from and see about a lunch or tea or just a walk. I'm sure they'd love to hear from you. And those activities you once enjoyed so much and are now telling yourself are behind you, don't have to be. You can still go to the bridge club once a month instead of every week or make cookies for the Garden club now and then.
And what about that sewing room that's going to waste in the space over your garage? Before you turn it into another playroom, consider inviting a friend over and having a catch up sewing session. Or that little workspace where you used to regrip golf clubs -- turn on a light in there once in a while and regrip some clubs for a friend. As expensive as golf equipment is these days someone would welcome that kind of gesture.
The bottom line is that you don't have to assume your life outside caring for kids is over. You and only you have the power to change that and it's well worth the effort if you just realize that working even a portion of your former life, back into your present life, can make a huge difference in your day to day. And don't hesitate to reach out to kin -- uncles, cousins, great aunts twice removed. They all realize that could never do what you are doing, but they might consider watching the kids for an afternoon while you recharge your batteries. There is immediate and long term help out there if you just reach out.
3. Stay Up to Date
This is going to be the most challenging of the five things to work on while maintaining the Grandfamily. A few months ago I got a new iPhone and so I was settling in with the Apple instructions to get the thing set up. My 11 year old showed up and ask me what I was doing. "I'm setting up my new phone. Now where do I find settings?" "Let me have that Pa," he said. There was a flurry of thumbs and fingers, boop, bop, bopity boop. "There you go Pa, now have you seen my ball glove?" I just stared at my newly set up phone in disbelief as he walked away. All I could say was, "You know if you would put your glove back where it belongs you could find it."
If you have even a 6 or 7 year old in your home, they are already more tech savvy than you are. I swear they were born with an electronic umbilical cord and they just plug it in when they want to get up to speed on new technology. This gap between what we know and what is happening in the world of communication is soon to become a chasm.
When you and I were growing up, technological knowledge was doubling about every twenty years. Today it will double in five. What this means is that we will never catch up with the knowledge our grandkids have. To them it's just a part of growing up. To us it's a headache inducing challenge just to program Alexa.
Most of my career was spent in Advertising and Marketing. When I first got into the business, ads were created by pasting visuals and type on a board and then having that photographed onto a metal plate for printing. When I left, computers could create beautiful visuals and special effects in no time at all. Today, Artificial Intelligence can create an ad for print or TV just by speaking a few explanatory sentences into a computer. Along the way it became harder and harder for me to adapt. For kids today, none of this is groundbreaking stuff. It's just how things are.
What all these gaps in tech knowledge mean is that the worrisome reality of kids immersed in electronics without our control is bound to become a reality. You can set up boundaries for time spent on electronics. You can contact Apple or Android to find out how to set up parental controls on various devices. You can ask for help online for keeping kids limited in their use of Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat. All these activities are worth while to attempt to limit their immersion in cyberspace, but the bottom line is your kids will eventually get access to all the web has to offer.
The best you can do is make sure your kids are connected to you. From the very moment you become the chief caregiver you must do your utmost to be sure your kids trust you and believe in you. I would highly recommend a book titled "Hold on to Your Kids". You'll find information on this groundbreaking book in the "Resources" section of this blog site. The premise of this book is that parents need to mean more to kids than do their peers. If peers are the main source of information, belonging and caring then you could lose them to the world of cyberspace.
Do your best to stay up to date on all you can of electronic communication. But even more important is to stay in tune with your kids so they will come to you first for what is important to them.
4. Maintain Perspective
"Perspective" means looking at things from a different angle. My wife has to remind me all the time when I come down especially hard on Charly or Reese that I was a kid once and kids see things, well, like kids. Though they have very limited experience, they are sure they have it all figured out . So they hall off and do things that infuriate you and then say "oops, my bad" or something to that effect. But when you stop to think about how you approached different situations when you were their age it can sometimes temper your reaction.
If you've ever found yourself looking at a piece of sculpture or maybe a new car, you tend to walk around the item and notice what it looks from different angles. Chances are it will look completely different whether it is coming or going. Have you ever loved the looks of a particular new car then found out it drove like a lumber wagon. Any of us who are over fifty have a certain way of doing things. And when kids want to do them a different way we are quick to correct them. But sometimes it wouldn't hurt (well at least not much) to let them do it their way. If they do it well they are so proud. And if they do it wrong it's usually a good learning experience. We sometimes have to clench our twitching fingers and let them falter if necessary to learn something valuable.
I was born out of wedlock at the end of World War 2 so I never met my father. I liken it to a fore pilot. Most commercial airlines rely on pilots who have already gone in the direction they are going (fore pilots) to radio back any weather or turbulence information to those behind. I never really had anyone radioing information back to me so I was kind of flying blind. This never really dawned on me till I was older and watched fathers teaching kids how to hook bait on a fishing line or how to hit the curveball.
You have grown up with experiences that have formed your opinion of how things should be done. For better or worse these experiences have formed your approach to a lot of your grown up decisions. All the more reason to step back and look at the bigger picture and see if now might be the time to take a different approach. Sometimes it can be exciting to see a different outcome because you took a whole new direction.
5. Remember, You Raised One Generation
You've been there and done that. And undoubtedly you know where you went wrong and when you took the right course of action. However, your experience in bringing up your own kids (the good and the bad) can serve you very well in bringing up these little ones. My wife grew up with an alcoholic father who would hit his kids whenever they strayed from the strict rules. So she was determined when she became a mother to never take punishment too far.
However, when her daughter was diagnosed with leukemia at 5 years old she began to second guess everything she had done as a mother. Was her smoking weed a contributing factor, was the dietary approach she took with her child way off the mark, did she fail to see signs that could have caught the disease earlier? We are quick to blame ourselves when things go off the rails and assume our actions caused the disaster. The truth is God doesn't work like that. If He did we'd all be under constant punishment for our actions. We need to step back and gain some perspective (where have I heard that before?).
If we look back at the years we raised our kids, of course we can find things we did wrong and we need to revise our approach now that we are doing it again. But on the other hand there is plenty that we did right and it's good to remember what was the approach at that time. If we all had to turn in a resume for the job of raising grandchildren, chances are our experiences would be well received. Experience trumps education almost every time.
We all need to take the right steps that apply to anyone raising kids -- establishing clear boundaries and being consistent with discipline, fostering open communication, spending quality time with them, and nurturing curiosity -- these are all to be found in parenting 101. But taking steps to improve your own well being is equally important and will be increasingly significant as the little ones begin to grow.
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