The Poignant Love of Grandchildren

How do you explain a love so strong that you want to live for them, make sacrifices for them, stay healthy for them throughout their young lives - and yet this happens at a time of life when you feel yourself fading in both energy and time, looking to a future when you will be without them and they will be without you?

This is reminiscent of the love I felt for their mother at an earlier age – now the parent of my grandchildren – a love I will feel for her until the end of time. But my daughter having her own children also changes the dynamic between the two of us. I love her, she loves her children, I love the children through her. My daughter’s primary bond is now with her own children and their father, not with her parents. This is a hidden loss in grandparenting, the rightful shifting of alliances that starts with a child’s sexual life, moves into marriage and grows into parenting. And, as ever, it is the older person’s job to do the work of letting go. The children are theirs, not mine, even whilst I hold them as close to my heart as I dare.

In circumstances where we live miles apart, my absence from the children’s everyday life means that I am often loving them through hearing about them or watching videos of them, instead of being in direct contact. If life’s circumstances were to change into greater proximity, I’d have more opportunity for a one-to-one bond with the children. But I see in those of my contemporaries living ‘round the corner’ that there is still that poignancy about children coming and going, even if the intervals between visits are shorter. Poignancy is built into this love.

The much-anticipated arrivals that come with living thousands of miles apart can bring immense joy. The excitement of little bodies hurtling towards me, grabbing legs and yelling my name brings unearned delight. That first day, holding hands whenever possible, I am there to gasp over new games, favourite toys, everything to show me. Later we are in a more familiar zone, their routine reasserting itself, more able to leave me alone a bit. I note their language development, capacity to dress themselves, small bodies more their own and I try not to say “How you’ve grown”, but it is in my head all the time. They are happy to let me read to them or be with them.

Ahh but it doesn’t take long – day five of my visit perhaps – before I have become part of the adult wallpaper. I am no longer the longed-for guest but have become sufficiently part of adults-in-general that I can be complained about. We have a battle for control over something and I am met with stone hard defiance. I fasten a shoe too tightly or put too much of myself into their game and they ask for Mummy or Daddy when I am non-compliant with their wishes. At these times, wry amusement gives way to defeat – the 73-year-old battles with her internal 3-year-old’s sulky resentment: after all, didn’t I spend an hour playing your game this morning? If I didn’t find the right pair of shoes, how was I to know? Children teach us never, ever, to think we have reached the age of maturity.

I have learned not to react too quickly when I see a child bullying its parent into submission, asking again and again for an indulgence, but I am protective of the young parents’ time and space, remembering only too clearly the long-term tiredness that is at the core of parenting. I long to save them from the onslaught, to remove a little body from a napping parent or divert a querulous six-year-old from demanding more TV time. Mostly, I have found it is better to distract the child than to tackle anything head on, but I know I sometimes make things worse by intervening in what is, after all, the fabric of the parent-child relationship. As my daughter says, they have enough adults telling them what to do.

I think she is talking about herself too when she rebukes me for this kind of interference… I well remember how, as a young parent, a visit from my mother would feel like The Super-Ego descending. I sometimes think my presence alone is enough to trigger a kind of wariness in her parenting. She is both grateful for my being there and anxious about being seen in the depths of her own meltdowns. So sometimes this relationship is turned on its head and she becomes my critic, the power of her position as the children’s parent giving her a licence that hadn’t been there before. At our best, we are simply two adults – three with her husband – who muddle along bringing up the children together. At our worst, it feels like a battle of three generations – mine, the parents’, the children’s tussling for some kind of supremacy that will resolve the endless fight of the parent-child relationship.

I have had the pleasure of looking after the children on my own and my relationship with the children takes on a different hue. Food preparation is compared to a norm I’m unfamiliar with: Oh you want ketchup with that? Ahh we’re watching Bluey at the same time as eating, are we? They blindside me with a confident assertion of what they’re allowed to do, even whilst I’m guessing at being manipulated. I enjoy this game we’re playing at my expense, whilst preparing my tell-tale stories for the returning parents at their expense. I am both friend and enemy, cursed for being a responsible adult, loved for being different from their parents.

And sometimes we just play. A football game with a six-year old, shoving each other out of the way and yelling our goals and our saves. (A bit of concern that I am about to fall over and break a bone makes this slightly different from being a young parent). And then ‘shop-keepers’ with the 3-year old in which we buy and sell sweets, repeating Can I have this, please? How much is that? Here's your change…Goodbye…. And now you do it Granny - until I am desperate for an excuse to stop but don’t want to hurt her feelings. These games feed my heart but numb my brain, until I am abject with desire to be released.

They tell me I am old and therefore can’t help being unknowledgeable about gadgets. They get hold of a walking stick and parody my slow walking. They run off with their friends, delighted that I can’t run as fast as them, leaving me calling anxiously behind. If I’m lucky they introduce me to their friends, proud of a Granny who can be shown off to the gang.

Friends of mine have very different arrangements in their grandchildren’s lives – a day or two a week with babies and toddlers whilst parents work, or after-school care several days a week. Others are doing just weekends and holiday times, appropriate for their location and size of house. Friends like me with grandchildren at a distance do a few weeks at a time and many more weeks apart. Virtual interactions via screens always help: everything from watching over a small baby, to reading stories to a 4 year old, to hearing about a school child’s latest triumph.

I hear from the parents who have had sons rather than daughters that things are similar but sometimes different. These grandparents are aware that the grandchildren’s Mum is not their own flesh and blood, and they work hard at overcoming any distance this might create. Their son puts his children and the mother of his children centre stage, quite rightly. “You can feel like a visitor in another culture, not sure if it’s OK to pick up the vacuum cleaner.” There’s more room for competition and envy, less of a sense of entitlement to be at the forefront of everyone’s lives. But it’s also just the same: a younger generation less hidebound by their parents’ influence, the relationship with the children the central focus.

All of this takes considerable trust, something to be worked at all the time. The young adults don’t want their own parents inflicting child-care mistakes, and the older adults don’t want their generosity taken for granted. Grandparents are actually fine being cheap childcare and domestic slaves, as long as they are sometimes honoured guests. Parents don’t mind having an older head in the household as long as their own autonomy is protected. I come away from visits to the grandchildren with the thought: They’ve got my back and I’ve got theirs.

Just as it should be.