My heart explodes with love and joy as I spend time with my adult children and my grandchildren. Having all my beloved family members in one place is my favorite. I look around and take a mental snapshot of this exquisite time together.
We live in an age-segregated culture. Adolescents hang out with adolescents, preschool moms connect with preschool moms, and on it goes. There is no age diversity. We are missing something essential and valuable… the generational transfer of wisdom and life skills. Grandparenting falls into this segregation of generational constructs.
Before the United States became such a mobile society, moving from state to state for jobs, schooling, life advancement, or even lifestyle choices, Sunday dinners at Grandma’s were a fixture in the rhythm of American life. Now, we don’t even experience Sunday dinners as a special event.
There is an increase in households headed by grandparents raising their grandchildren. These grandparents are burdened by primary parental care, discipline, and essential duties of child-rearing. Other grandparents are a source of occasional babysitting, which is a delight for many.
The quintessential beauty of the role of grandparents is to augment, enhance, amplify, and explode the love, connection, attachment, bonding, spoiling, adoring, and hugging of their grandchildren. Grandparents provide a link and legacy to a family’s past, accomplishments, trials, and the skills needed to overcome obstacles. Children need to know their roots and their cultural heritage. Parents are often too busy to reflect and discuss these things.
Grandparents have more time and are less stressed by the daily pressures of life. Many are retired and do not feel responsible for raising the next generation. When surveyed, grandparents love spoiling their grandchildren, being light-hearted with them, playing games, reading books, taking them to events, attending their sporting events, and attending school award assemblies.
Grandparents are important because they provide:
a historical perspective on life
a mechanism for imparting valuable insights and essential life skills
time-tested generational truths
wisdom, time, love
modeling for successful living
a blueprint for building family traditions and legacy
stability, connection, and belonging through linkages to the past.
My grandparents, who graduated from 6th grade, instilled in me a passion for education, positivity, hope, thrift, and service. I stopped by their house on the way home from high school as my mom was working. When I walked in, my grandparents were thrilled to see me, offered me a piece of fresh fruit already peeled, and allowed me to help them with fun chores like making pasta, hanging the wet clothes on the clothesline in the backyard, cooking, sewing, taking the dogs for a walk, or just playing cards in the kitchen. Their constant admonition to stay in school, be kind, and make the world a better place developed my character and my resolve to honor them.
My husband, who longs to spend more time with our hectic high school grandchildren, created a brilliant way to connect, even if you do not live nearby. Every day of the week, he texts each one with Mackenzie Monday (snippets about their Scottish Heritage), Travel Tuesday (pithy geography facts), Wisdom Wednesday (famous historical truths), and so on. They respond with an electronic thumbs-up or a heart emoji.
Our children’s last grandparent went to be with the angels a little over two years ago. She left a remarkable legacy of love, care, and family connections for her children and grandchildren. We grandparents need to explore ways to connect beyond the Sunday dinner at Grandma’s or meeting up for a few days around Christmas or Hanukkah. We need to become intentional and creative about how we will leave a legacy of life skills and wisdom for our children and grandchildren. It is our sacred duty. joneen@narme.org