One feature and advantage of being grandparents is the ability to look back over the years as if standing on a mountain top, viewing our years in a panorama—seeing the larger picture.
However, living through those parenting years was like hacking our way through the Amazon Jungle. There was no big-picture view. There wasn’t a convenient trail. There wasn’t much of a map to tell us where we were in the parenting journey, and so we were left to blaze a trail—unsure of where it would end up except at a vague destination known as parents of adult children.
Somehow, our kid would make it to adulthood and hopefully be well-balanced. In other words, she would make it through the early childhood years, the fierce and stormy teens, and the finding-yourself-twenties to emerge mentally and emotionally intact and prepared to deal with life as a grown-up.
Parents naturally want the best for their children. We know by experience the fear parents commonly have when their children enter their teenage years. In their late teens, kids are about to launch into stark individualism. Before this time, they have been guided (regulated, controlled, restrained, and disciplined) by us. What is disconcerting is that they might become our judge and jury.
The Parenthood Jungle
Lost in the jungle of parenthood, we did our best with what we had. Our own messed-up childhoods with unresolved issues, along with our mistakes and poor choices as teenagers and twenty-somethings, all of that factored into the way we did parenting.
How much credit or blame we should accept for the way our kids turn out is probably a pointless question. As a grandparent, I realize, much more than when a parent, that much depends upon the child him/herself. What I’ve realized so late in the game is (parenting skill aside) that much of how kids turn out is hardwired; it’s part of their individual personalities.
One common assumption and mistake I had was that it’s the parents’ job to shape their children into acceptable molds, much as a sculptor shapes a piece of art. Certainly, we must guide them and train them, and part of that guidance entails combating the nastier sides of children—the almost incorrigible selfishness in early childhood, the fits of anger, rage, and meltdowns, the chronic endemic issues of wanting their own way, of testing boundaries, and of seeking to wrest control from parents.
Control
Wanting control is a big issue. It comes to a head in the teenage years—those painful and awkward transition years when self-determination collides head-on with the unpleasant reality that they are still dependent upon their parents for so much, particularly and most importantly, for protection and not yet being able to make it on their own. It can be a frustrating time for all.
As a grandparent (and hopefully wiser), I now see the job of parenting as more like that of an observer, an admirer, watching our children blossom into what they naturally are. We guide and trim the plant here and there. We hope not to impede their natural growth, which will no doubt be a different brand of maturity than ours. As grandparents, we have the delight of watching and nurturing them with a more “hands-off” approach. Plus, we can send them back to mom and dad when they become too much! How great is that!
As parents, the goal and hope of our kids turning out “good” makes us apply pressure and force (like staking a sapling) when sometimes only a little nurturing, like fertilizer or watering, is needed. Then, again, there are those instances when staking is needed. Wisdom, as the Serenity Prayer says, is in knowing the difference. Unfortunately, wisdom commonly comes after the fact. And that’s why, as parents, we lean on our elders for wisdom.
Don’t Be Too Hard on Yourself
One bit of encouragement I would give to all parents is not to be too hard on yourselves. You are doing the best you know how (assuming you are not modeling and enabling destructive behaviors). And, although you might not think so, your “best” is very good.
Grandparents (most often) are a boon to parents. Looking back, how I wish I could have, even in my forties, leaned upon my parents and in-laws for information and guidance for the road ahead. Seeking wisdom, as with seeking humility, is ageless; it’s never out of date.
And that’s another thing about being a grandparent: I’m never too old to learn—even from our four-year-old grandson. I learn serious life lessons from that little scalawag sitting on my lap holding his ragged, beloved stuffed animal. One time, for example, when he was clearly doing something out of bounds, I told him to stop. He looked at me with a bewildered expression and replied, “But I want to.” And I thought, “Out of the mouth of babes.” How un-self-consciously spoken. Children, as we know, speak simple truth without learned insincerity. And how unlike, as when we get older, we learn to say, “It was my parents’ fault; the kids in school didn’t like me; I can’t help it, I was born this way,” when the simple truth is, “But I want to.”
The rewards of parenting and grandparenting are many, such as when our daughter related how her son made it through his first day of preschool without going potty.
His way of exuberantly explaining it: “Mommy, I held my butt!”
Wisdom, an attribute of old age, often entails seeing things through the eyes of children.
Photo Credit: Unsplash
