TALK TO THEM

Jane Brody, personal health columnist for The New York Times and a grandmother, wrote a really important article yesterday, September 29, headlined “From Birth, Engage Your Child with Talk.” This generation of mothers is different from ours in many ways – one being those ubiquitous cell phones. Yes, I know, we use them too – but when we’re with our grandkids? Rarely. In her column, Jane echoed a point I made in the introduction to SUPER GRANNY:

“I often see parents talking on their cell phones while they are out with their children—walking in the street, pushing them on playground swings, or riding a bus—being more involved with the phone conversation than with the child. But I never see a grandmother opting for cell phone over child. No matter how busy we are, when we take time out from our careers and our other activities to be with our grandchildren, we know that this is an event, a precious interlude, one that we want to experience as fully as we can. We know how fast children grow up.”

Jane quoted communication experts on the importance of talking, reading, and singing to young children right from infancy, and she gives a lot of good pointers on having the best conversations – pointers that we grannies can also use. Just a few of her good examples:
* Talk while doing things and going places and point out sights along the way.
* Use simple but grammatical speech – no baby talk.
* With a baby who’s not talking yet, guess what she or he wants, and then answer with words.

She doesn’t mention in this article teaching babies how to sign, which I described in SUPER GRANNY as another way to begin communication with preverbal children. I only wish I had an infant or toddler in the family that I could talk to these days!

WHAT GRANDMOTHERS ARE FOR

A few days ago I was interviewed by Bobbi Conner, host of the radio show “The Parent’s Journal,” which is carried by about 200 stations around the U.S., as well as the Armed Services Network. (I’ll post here when I find out when it will be aired.) Bobbi asked some really good questions – including a couple that focus on the value of grandparents spending time with grandkids, and some of the positive aspects of this for the child, the grandparent, and the parent.

As I was thinking about this, I remembered a wonderful interview I was once privileged to have with the amazing anthropologist Margaret Mead. I had been asking her about issues relating to child care. She told me, “The worst thing is just having the mother boxed up with the baby 24 hours a day, which nobody ever meant to have happen in the whole history of the human race. Babies are most likely to develop into well-adjusted human beings when they are cared for by many warm, friendly people – as long as most of these loved people remain in the infants’ lives.”

And who fills this bill the best? The grandmother, of course. We’re the next best thing to a parent. As another stable relationship in child’s life, we’re there. We can give parents a break, and they can relax knowing we'll take loving care of their offspring. And in some ways we’re even better than a parent – well, at least, different. Our role is different -- for one thing we don't have the responsibility of socializing the children so we are free of those pressures. Also, at this time in our lives we usually have more time than a busy parent does, more patience, and more of an understanding that so many of the things we worried about never materialize, so we can be more relaxed than the parents can be -- and than we were as parents.

Then too, sometimes a child needs to talk to someone who’s not a parent but who they know is just as concerned with their happiness and well-being as a parent is – here’s where grandparents come in, to offer a different perspective from the one they can get from their parents, friends, or siblings. We’ve been around the block a few times, and we can draw on a wealth of experiences.

Plus, we’re one more person in their lives they can have fun with.

VOLUNTEERING ACROSS THE GENERATIONS

“Why are these sharks biting each other?” Corey and Tyler wondered. When the two teenagers went to find a senior staff member of the Virginia Aquarium and Marine Science Center, they learned that serious biting (more than a nibble) is a typical aspect of shark mating behavior. This was one more piece of information that these volunteers, along with their siblings, Jordyn and Morgan, have learned during the hundreds of hours they have given to the center, usually with their Gram, Barbara Van Heest, who has logged 3,000 volunteer hours over the past ten years.

Barbara began taking her four grandchildren who live near her in Virginia Beach to the center when they were toddlers, and as soon as each turned eleven, the minimum age for volunteering, they all began to work along with her.

“I think it’s important that the children learn to give back. They’re fortunate in what they get in life, so it’s good to pass it on,” Barbara says. Also, she emphasizes that the volunteering is not just a question of giving -- the children get benefits from it themselves. “I see them becoming comfortable talking to the adult visitors, answering their questions, gaining self-esteem because of the knowledge they now have about marine life.” (One other plus for the older teens has been meeting young people they’ve gone on dates with – after some adult screening, of course.)

Now Corey and Morgan, both 16, have logged a total of about 680 volunteer hours over the past five years, and are docents at the center on the weekends. Their 13-year-old siblings, Jordyn and Tyler, have already volunteered for about 150 hours each. All the volunteers, young and old, attend classes regularly to learn about the animals and plant life at the center.

Barbara picks up the children at eight in the morning on volunteer days and takes them over to the center, where a day’s activities may include touching sting rays, turning over horseshoe crabs, or showing visitors how to tell whether a blue crab is male or female and which snakes are venomous.

Thanks to all the public service the family has given over the years, the Van Heest family received the Volunteer Hampton Roads Family of the Year Award from the Center, for Barbara’s establishing “a legacy of service through her grandchildren and instilling a commitment of conservation through education.” (Hampton Roads is a 2000+-square-mile area in Virginia including dozens of cities, towns, and counties.)

For other grandmothers who would like to instill a family tradition of volunteer service, Barbara has this advice: “Get involved yourself, show by example, and stay close to your grandchildren – even if they live at a distance, as do the two of mine up in New Jersey.”

BOOK REVIEW: “EYE OF MY HEART”

This lovely literary compendium, edited by Barbara Graham and subtitled: “27 Writers Reveal the Hidden Pleasures and Perils of Being a Grandmother,” was published last month by HarperCollins ($24.99). Its 27 essays provide windows into many different emotional faces and phases of grandparenting and what it can mean to be a grandmother.

Reading these grandmothers' stories, I sometimes feel that “ping!” of recognition: Yes, I’ve had that feeling too. And at other times I marvel at how very different their feelings are from mine. Who are these women who write so well from their hearts?

• Barbara Graham, the book’s editor, got my total attention when she described her “besotted state” of being a grandmother, her joy at the new grandbaby’s parents’ decision to move near her, and then her grief at hearing that they would be moving an ocean away, to Europe, with this precious little girl. I immediately felt again my own grief when my own children made that last decision (which I wrote about at the time, 21 years ago, and then posted to these pages).

Then there are the other grandmothers you come to know intimately in these pages, like:
• Lynne Sharon Schwartz, who likens a grandmother’s love to teen love: “the same giddy absorption, the same loss of all sense of proportion, the same transcendent idiocy.”
• Marcie Fitzgerald (a pseudonym), who adopted her grandson because of her daughter’s emotional illness and is experiencing parenthood all over again.
• Judith Viorst, who feels competitive toward the other grandmother for the children’s love and affection.
• India-born Bharati Mukherjee, who celebrates her family’s mix of cultures as she describes the naming ceremony in New York for her China-born granddaughter and who contrasts her own upbringing with those of her children and grandchildren.
• Anne Roiphe, who keeps telling herself that frank and open communication about grandchildren has its limits -- lest she offend her daughter.
• Lynn Lauber, who as an unmarried teenager gave her biological daughter up for adoption, found her as an adult, and now revels in being “Grandma” to her daughter’s daughter.
• Then there’s Abigail Thomas, the “lazy Nana” of twelve grandchildren who doesn’t sound lazy at all, but who wants, among other things, to “play with her grandchildren and then have their parents take them away.”

I liked reading these and the other stories in the book one at a time, savoring each individual tale, musing on each one’s insights, pondering on the many ways in which every grandmother and every grandparent-grandchild relationship is unique. “Eye of My Heart” offers a store of riches to help us grannies understand our roles a little better.

GRANNIES WHO CAN’T BE BOTHERED

Joanne Kaufman’s article in the March 5 issue of The New York Times is headlined “When Grandma Can’t Be Bothered,” and starts off with what seems to me like a clear exaggeration: “For every Marian Robinson, who retired from her job to take full-time care of her grandchildren, Malia and Sasha Obama… there is a Judy Connors, who loves her two grandchildren but has no interest in Candy Land, peekaboo or bedtime stories.” The piece goes on to talk about grandmothers who are adamantly uninvolved.

This article feels like a man-bites-dog story, in which a writer discusses something so unusual that it’s of special interest. Sure, there are hands-off grandmothers, and I’ve heard of a few, but from my reading, experience, and contacts, they’re far fewer in number than the Marian Robinsons of this world. Of course, many of today’s grandmothers cannot leave their jobs to raise grandchildren full-time, but in the process of writing my book, SUPER GRANNY: GREAT STUFF TO DO WITH YOUR GRANDKIDS, I have met many working grannies who offer part-time care, or who manage to find time to pitch in when needed at odd hours and days.

As I was researching my book, I signed up for a free service offered by Google, called “Google Alerts.” To bring me news about grandparents and grandchildren, the robots at Google comb newspapers around the U.S. and abroad for stories about “grand” doings, and send a daily report. Reading these reports, I was impressed by how involved today’s grandmothers are with this younger generation. Despite the fact that a great many of today’s grannies have important jobs themselves, perform valuable community services, pursue time-consuming hobbies, and often live far away, the great majority of them are there for their children and grandchildren, and find many ways to have fun with them.

One of the women quoted by Ms. Kaufman said, “I raised two children whom I love dearly . . . I was a stay-at-home mom. Then I discovered when I started my own career that there was a whole other world out there.” Hello??? This woman seems to frame the issue as an all-or-nothing affair, which seems to be an extremely rare way of looking at it. I don’t judge hands-off grandmothers for their choices, but I do think that those who have this kind of attitude are depriving themselves of some glorious experiences. To read the New York Times article, go to:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/05/fashion/05grandparents-1.html?_r=1&scp=4&sq=Joanne%20Kaufman&st=cse

The gift of being a grandmother

Earlier this month I came across a beautiful paean to grandmothering. It was posted on the online site of Mothering Magazine and written by author and grandmother Angela Rossmanith. To access the entire article, go to: http://www.mothering.com/articles/body_soul/inspiration/another-kind-of-gift.html. Meanwhile, though, here’s a little taste of a discovery that so many grandparents can relate to:
“I loved my children, and of course I still do and always will, but this love I have for my grandchild is a source of enormous wonder to me. From the moment I saw her, very new and tiny, this little girl has revealed to me a fresh dimension of life, a deepening and broadening of perspective. She has been a great and gracious gift.”
Then Rossmanith goes on to tell several lyrical stories about the gifts that grandmothers give to their grandchildren. Reading them makes me realize that some of the memories our grandchildren have of us are not the ones we would have thought made an impression, but here as in so much else in life we can’t predict what becomes important to someone else.
I plan to ask my grandchildren about some of their memories of me. I’m very curious to find out what they say. Fortunately, I’m still around to keep making memories. In my next posting I’ll talk about some of the most recent memories that I hope will stay with the grandchildren.