Introduction
As I write these words, I’m anticipating the arrival of our five granddaughters, aged from nine to three, for a weekend without their parents. Little girls they may be, but they’ll descend on the house like a tidal wave, and everything will go down before them. For two days no jobs will be done, no rest will be taken. Perhaps I’ll manage to give the kitchen floor a hasty sweep at some point, and their granddad might possibly get the grass cut, but it’s a toss-up, and in any case they’ll be deeply involved in both chores.
We’ll probably take them for a long, long walk up the nearest hill, and eat apples and chocolate at the top. Or we might go to the zoo, and take a picnic. On Saturday tea-time we’re bound to have a family disco in the living room.
I expect too, that I’ll have to give them what they call a ‘spa day’ (really a spa hour), when five small sets of fingers and toes make their appearance on the kitchen table for me to paint with varnish. But first, they’ll spend at least twenty minutes making their colour selections from my supplies. I’ll have to paint samples onto paper…
In the intervals between all these activities, the girls will cover the back path, patio and garden with the bits and pieces of an elaborate, weekend-long piece of make-believe, and litter the interior of the house with the props of various other games. At some point they’ll no doubt put on a ‘show’ for us, and in the run-up to that they’ll disembowel the dressing-up box and parade around in an exotic collection of cast-offs, striking attitudes and poses, inventing stories about their costumes and concocting elaborate plots.
While they’re here, all semblance of ‘normal’ life will cease. We’ll loosen our stays and just enjoy whatever happens. On Sunday afternoon, when they’ve devoured whatever their favourite meal of the moment turns out to be, and gone home, we’ll leave the debris and have a lie-down. Then we’ll start the process of reclaiming the house, smiling at the things they’ve said and done, storing up the memories. That’s modern grandparenting. It’s fabulous.
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Chapter 3
Do grandparents know best?
This is the 64,000 dollar question. Parenthood is the biggest responsibility that most of us will undertake, yet we do it without qualifications – we come into it cold. There are plenty of books on how to be a parent but, essentially, it’s on-the-job training. We have to trust our instincts, fly by the seat of our pants. Of course we make mistakes – but we learn from them.
So by the time our children have grown up, most of us believe we’re pretty experienced – we’ve coped with their terrible twos, survived all the teenage angst and, eventually, watched them jump off the branch. If we’ve come this far and they’re still speaking to us, we’re battle-hardened veterans. But knowing best about our grandchildren? That’s something else again.
As a card-carrying member of the parental fraternity you might feel that you do – you’re a skilled professional; a powerhouse of knowledge; you’ve been there, done it, got the gold star. What’s more you’ve had a couple of decades to work out the kinks in what you did last time and develop a few choice theories of your own. You’re the biz.
Of course, you won’t be thinking of yourself in quite those terms, just that you have the background to help your children – to smooth their path – and you’re keen to do it.
But from your children’s point of view things might look a bit different.
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Saying your piece
Given that with the best will in the world we are going to stick our oar in from time to time, when do we do it? And how do we do it, without bringing about one of those unpleasant family arguments – or worse – creating some distance between our children and ourselves and becoming the subject of a private conversation between them beginning ‘I wish (your) mum/dad wouldn’t…’
Deciding when to pipe up
This depends on how strongly you feel. There are sure to be plenty of small issues you’d like to chip in over, but it’s probably better to let them pass. And because you’ve lived through it all before, you’re well placed to know which they are. You have the perspective to realise that many things, though they seem huge at the time, have no long-term effects, so they’re really not worth getting into. They’ll soon be totally irrelevant, and forgotten just as quickly. A row on the other hand, might not be.
The decision is yours, of course, but before you jump in with both feet, it’s worth stopping to think about whether what’s worrying you is only important in the short term. You want everything to be right for the grandchild you love, so it can be hard to hold back – especially if the child in question is still a baby.
But be careful. Babies are an especially emotive area – one that seems to generate issues spontaneously. In fact, some debates have been raging for generations and will create pitfalls in any family pathway – if you let them.
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Chapter 7
When families split up
Britain has a higher divorce rate than anywhere in Europe. Doom and gloom merchants regularly claim that marriage is dead, the family a moribund institution – and that no-one seems to care. Spouting on this state of affairs is the modern equivalent of saying ‘the country’s going to the dogs’ – it’s repeated so often that it’s become accepted as the norm. We hear of yet another divorce, shrug our shoulders and sigh philosophically at the inevitability of it, as though, like death and taxes, it’s a part of daily life we can do nothing about – unpleasant, but unalterable…
But, while the divorce statistics can’t be denied, the rest is far from true – marriage is still what most couples aspire to, and families do survive the effects of a break-up, often against incredible odds. For the ones that don’t, the cost in misery can be enormous. Divorce might have become an everyday thing, but there’s nothing everyday about the emotions it generates – no tsunami could leave behind more devastation.
Couples struggle to come to terms with falling out of love – the resentments, jealousies, insecurities; the anger and pain, the bitterness and acrimony that can bubble under the surface of even the most ‘civilised’ separation. The children, whatever their age, are left clinging for dear life to the wreckage like little castaways, feeling afraid, anxious, even guilty, as though all of this is somehow their fault.
Their parents might be doing everything they can to protect them from the worst of the fallout but then again, they might not. So lost in their own unhappiness, some couples aren’t strong enough to resist the urge for revenge; they take whatever tools are at hand to wreak it, and that can include their children – your grandchildren.
So where do you stand in all this? Watching your child’s marriage collapse is bad enough. It can be hard – sometimes impossible – to steer a middle road, to avoid taking sides, to be there for your own offspring, yet not dabble and make things worse. But when you’re a grandparent too, you can be torn several ways at once.
Your children need you, but so do your grandchildren. You’re their rock in the midst of all the chaos, as their world disintegrates around them. You’re someone they can trust, someone familiar who isn’t leaving them, a part of their lives that isn’t changing. You’re essential to their well-being and peace of mind.
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Keeping your balance
When your child’s relationship falls apart you’re bound to have an opinion about it – how could you not? You’ll probably have been watching the situation deteriorate – you may have been drawn into it by the couple themselves, or even be considered to be part of the problem. It’s painful to see your child suffering, whether they’re wronged, or in the wrong themselves. A parent’s instinct is to try to make everything all right again. But this is one instance where that’s unlikely, if not impossible.
Not only can’t you make it go away, you can’t risk saying what you think – if you do, the chances are terrifically high of it backfiring badly and making everything worse.
It can be hard to resist the temptation, but it’s the wisest thing to do for everyone concerned – including your grandchildren. The way you handle it right from the start can have enormous, and far-reaching, implications.
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Access – what the law says
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