Growing Grandparents

Written by Tim Kimmel

This article is courtesy of ParentLife.

The first wave of the Baby Boomer generation is becoming grandparents! Often these grandparents are relatively young, robust, and active. Gone are the days when retirees will sell the family home to buy a condo hundreds of miles from their grandchildren. Hopefully, that means many children will have grandparents who want to be a positive force in their lives, whether or not they live nearby.

Children Bring Families Together
If you enjoy a loving, warm relationship with your parents, rejoice! If your growing-up years were less than blissful, or your relationship with your parents has simply grown stale, your child can be the glue that brings you together again, rekindling your attachment in a unique, almost miraculous way. 

If you allow them to do so, grandparents can be valuable assets to you as you work to build a solid sense of security, significance, and strength in your child’s heart.

New Generation Grandparents
Perspective helps when it comes to how you view your parents as grandparents: they are not the same people who raised you. Those parents were young, naive, anxious, and unsure of themselves – much, perhaps, like you. While they were raising you, they were desperately trying to carve their niche in an economic world that showed little mercy. They made mistakes, just as you will with your child.

Despite any regrets grandparents may have about their own parenting years, their life experiences have made them mellow and maybe even wise. Perhaps their greatest asset is the God-made affinity to your child as well as your child to them. It is wise to make the most of something as precious as this.

The Best Years
Many grown children find that some of the best years they will ever experience with their parents are the ones during the time they are raising their own children. If you open your home and your heart to grandparents, something amazing will happen! Grandparents and grandchildren love to:

• talk together on the phone.
• send e-mails back and forth.
• talk about Grandma and Grandpa’s “good old days.”
• travel together.
• attend sporting events together.
• do hobbies together.
• look at family photographs and home videos.

Crooked Sticks and Straight Lines
This is real life, and some parents will have to accept that their children may never benefit from a close relationship with their grandparents. In some cases, grandparents may live a lifestyle that simply does not allow for prolonged exposure to your child (i.e. alcoholism, cohabitation, gambling, verbal abuse, and so forth). If this is the reality in your family, you must filter the kind of influence your parents will have on your child. But in the midst of careful parenting, you must avoid the urge to write them out of your child’s life completely.

There is a saying, “God uses crooked sticks to draw straight lines.” In spite of your parents’ ongoing flaws, there may still be a great role they can play in your child’s life. Or God may want to use your child to gain access to the hearts of his grandparents. He has been doing it since the beginning of time.

Let Hearts Grow Close
Grandparenthood offers a tailor-made opportunity to grow hearts closer, take mercy deeper, and make grace sweeter. Grandparents who are given the encouragement to be blessings, leave positive legacies, hold the torch of truth high, and set a standard of moral living could be the perfect finishing touch to your parenting strategy.

Dr. Tim Kimmel is the Executive Director of Family Matters (familymatters.net), a nonprofit ministry that equips families for every age and stage of life. He is also a well-known national speaker and best-selling author of books including “Little House on the Freeway,” “Grace-Based Parenting,” “Why Christian Kids Rebel,” and the video study “Grandparenthood: More Than Rocking Chairs.”

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