GRANDPARENTS’ HAPPILY EVER AFTER

By Ryhaan Shah

It doesn’t need research to tell us how vital a role grandparents play in their grandchildren’s lives. Nevertheless, there are studies that confirm this, showing that grandparents’ relationships with their grandchildren result in such benefits as providing unconditional love, emotional security, and cultural continuity by handing down important traditions to the new generation.
Far from being redundant or useless to family life, having grandparents actively participate in your children’s upbringing provides the children with the kind of support that helps to build their confidence, self-worth, and emotional resilience.
Grandparents also act as historians, passing down family stories, cultural values, and personal histories that come from their lived experience, all of which anchor their grandchildren to their family and community identity.
While it may seem like just playing and amusement, this kind of storytelling, playing, and knowledge-sharing helps to build their grandchildren’s vocabulary, language skills, and development and also aids in their ability to solve problems.
The studies did find that having grandparents involved in their grandchildren’s lives actually results in better mental health and development for those children. They have lower rates of depression and anxiety and often exhibit better social skills and less anti-social behaviour.
Because grandparents have a different kind of bond than parents, a bond that is a mix of friendship and wisdom, they can become confidants and mentors for children and teenagers, especially if the family is going through rough patches with financial problems or a divorce.
In these circumstances, grandparents can often become a safe haven and offer a stable and loving environment to help the children through difficulties that they often cannot understand.
For some families, grandparents also provide critical childcare support, which helps to lower the stress level of the family as a whole.
Having built a close relationship with their grandchildren, grandparents can often become central to advising them on important life decisions like career choices or their choice of marital partners.
Taking on the grandparent role is a transition from that of being a parent and often comes in our middle years, which is when grandparents most often welcome the arrival of grandchildren. They most often, also, do not mind sharing the parenting responsibilities with their grown children.
Co-parenting between parents and grandparents, when it goes well, has considerable benefits for everyone involved. Grandparents feel useful and important, and their help can help reduce the stress that comes with parental responsibilities.
When parents are less stressed and feel more assured, they tend to have more positive attitudes about parenting and can better contribute to their children’s overall development. And if they have to be away from home all day or for longer periods, they can feel less guilt knowing their children are safe with their grandparents.
Grandparents, in turn, benefit from increased socialisation as they engage with their grandchildren’s friends, teachers, and other parents. This serves as an antidote to loneliness and isolation, which can be a frequent occurrence among older people.
It is true that they can find themselves becoming physically exhausted and mentally fatigued because of the demands of caring for young children at a time when they were expecting to live more quietly and independently.
However, the sentiment that is most often expressed about grandparents’ attitudes towards their grandchildren is that they “spoil” them with all sorts of indulgences. And children raised by their grandparents most often remember feeling deeply cherished and safe.
They appreciate that their grandparents were there for them if their parents were absent and provided a stable home when they needed it most.
A child who was brought up by her grandmother said that she taught her the value of food and how precious it is. She taught her to be considerate and to think of others. She taught her that family was one of the most important things in life. She taught her manners and to be as gracious as possible, no matter the circumstances.
Grandparents are a child’s link to the past, and their relationship with their grandchildren is one of the special joys of growing older. One grandparent said of the experience, “Being a grandparent is my happily ever after.”
Here in Guyana, it is not uncommon to find grandparents, especially grandmothers, taking on the parenting role completely because of circumstances such as absent fathers and mothers working full-time to provide for the home.
On this Mother’s Day, it is most fitting that we honour these grandmothers for taking on that mothering role and for providing the unconditional love and care their grandchildren need.
Happy Mother’s Day to you all.