Now here’s a topic we don’t talk about much in this blog. Randy and I don’t have kids, so it follows, logically, that we’re completely devoid of and inexperienced with grandkids.
My mom once had a T-shirt that said, “If I’d known grandkids were so much fun, I would have had them first.” To hear our friends talk, that must be true. In fact, some of them think that the only reason to have kids in the first place is that it’s the best path to grandkids.
Last week, I got a text from my brother, Denny. It said, “You would not believe the week I’m having with my grandchildren.” I know Denny well, so my text back to him said, “Is that a good week or a bad week, your text doesn’t give any indication. 😉”
I knew that Denny and his wife, Marlene, were at their daughter’s house, watching their 5-year-old granddaughter and 2.5-year-old grandson. We spent a few days with these kids last fall when we visited them during our New England trip. They are adorable! Their daughter, Katrina (who is our goddaughter), and her husband went to Hawaii so Aaron could run in the Big Island International Marathon (he came in 19th overall). For the last 20 years or so, he’s been working on his goal to complete the 50 States Marathon Challenge. Big Island was his 49th marathon toward the effort. His home state will be last where he plans to run the Boston Marathon, achieving his goal in 2026.
Denny and Marlene live in Wisconsin and their grandkids live near Boston. There’s plenty of visiting back and forth so the grandparents are certainly not strangers to the kids, but neither are they part of their day-to-day lives. They’re the typical fun, indulgent, conspiratorial grandparents most of the time. But they’re also responsible and respectful of their daughter and her husband, so they knew they had to be more parent-like for the time they agreed to watch the kids while mom and dad were in Hawaii.
On one of the first nights there, Jordy (2 ½ years old) was very fussy at bedtime. Stevie (almost 6 years old) insisted that she be allowed to be in the bedroom with him until he fell asleep. Grandma insisted right back that she could handle it and told Stevie to stay downstairs with Grandpa. Stevie is quite outspoken. After Grandpa had to rein her in several times from rushing to her brother’s bedside, she looked him right in the eye and said, “You and Grandma have no idea what you’re doing!” She also told Grandpa that she was way smarter than he was.
Some time later, Stevie asked Grandpa if she could have ice cream. Grandpa said, “Well, I think we’d better ask the administrator.”
“Who’s the administrator?” Stevie wanted to know.
“Who do you think?”
“Grandma?”
“That’s right,” replied Grandpa.
“Well,” observed Stevie, “You can make decisions.”
“Really?” Denny shot right back. “Someone recently told me that I didn’t have a clue what we were doing.”
Stevie had the grace to look a bit sheepish and asked, “Was it me?”
“Yup.”
And that was the end of the ice cream discussion. Have I mentioned that Stevie’s pretty darn smart for an almost 6-year-old? She obviously knew when her goose was cooked.
I’ve always admired the way Katrina and her brother, Dillon, were raised. Denny and Marlene were active, involved parents who taught their kids that the family who plays together must first work together to make the good life happen. And those two kids sure did learn to work hard and not shirk their responsibilities. In writing Thinking 2 Steps Ahead, I relate several stories about how they taught the kids lessons in consequences and allowed them to learn valuable life skills from consequential experiences. Denny and Marlene are understandably extremely proud of their well-adjusted, educated, and successful adult millennial children.
But parenting skills are, in many ways, subject to generational differences. Parenting gurus like Dr Spock come and go. My parents (the Silent Generation) parented differently than my generation (Baby Boomers). And these Millennials parent differently than their own parents. This was apparent when, at one time in the past, Katrina told her mother that she understood that they did the best with what they knew. But that her generation is smarter now and knows more about effective parenting so they have different (editorial comment: presumably better) ways to raise their own kids.
This was evident to Denny when, one day last week, after Jordy had been told repeatedly not to do something, he looked at his grandpa, and asked, “what are my options?”
Denny wasn’t feeling well (in fact, he told me he can’t ever remember being sicker) the week he and Marlene were watching the kids. No matter how bad he felt, it was hard for me not to laugh at the stories he was telling me. Can you imagine a 2 ½ year old smart enough to ask what his options are? It seems that one of the generally accepted, smarter, parenting techniques used today is negotiating with very young children. I can see where there are situations where negotiating with kids can teach a lot of useful life skills. I don’t think Denny thought that particular moment was one of them.
But Denny was right in his original text to me. He and Marlene had a week with their grandchildren that was kind of hard to believe. I’ve never known Denny to lie. He’s even so good at telling an interesting and impactful story that he doesn’t embellish the truth. That leads me to believe that everything I’ve related here actually happened the way it’s described.
What Denny and Marlene learned conclusively, I think, during this retrospective parenting adventure is that grandparenting is, indeed, better. All of the fun, very little of the responsibility.
A grandparent can spoil the kids and just walk away. Parents have to deal with the aftereffects of the kids spoiled by their grandparents.
Every day with a grandparent can be an adventure. Daily life with parents can be drudgery.
Grandparents break rules. Parents make rules.
So grandparenting is way better, no? Let the grandkids rule…and then hand them back to their parents. There’s a certain sense of karmic consequence in that, isn’t there?
It was, indeed, a week to remember. And, as an added bonus, a fun topic for Aunt Laurie to write about.
P.S. It’s a really quiet week around here. I need a bit of excitement to break the monotony. Any ideas? And no, we’re not gonna borrow any grandkids.
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