Grand/Parenting: What Do Our Families Need From Us?

Parenting By Our Strengths is a lovely, appropriate title for this blog. I'd like to add another dimension to the discussion because I am both a parent and a grandparent. My husband and I are grandparents to several young children, including a special needs child.

What I have learned (to my surprise!) at this stage of life is that we never stop being parents--although the challenge is to learn how to be good parents to our children as they mature--and that when they in turn become parents, this adds a layer of complexity as well as richness to family life. The optimal outcome between us and our adult children, I believe, is to create a relationship where we enjoy and support and respect each other as adults. That seems clear to me.

But I have been less clear about our optimal relationship to our children as grandparents. In my professional work with parents I often hear feelings of disappointment when grandparents are not very involved or apparently interested in their grandchildren. I hear more of those complaints, interestingly, than complaints that grandparents are intrusive. When I speak with people of my own generation--the grandfolks--I hear delight in having grandkids, coupled with great energy for their own lives. These days many grandparents work well past retirement age for economic or personal reasons, or they travel frequently and split their time between retirement homes. Often they do help their children out financially or by babysitting. Sometimes everyone is happy with the family structure as it evolves. Other times old tensions reappear, or new ones come into play. I see this particularly with families where the adult children are undergoing a lot of stress, sometimes because of financial problems, sometimes because of marital conflict, sometimes because of the demands of caring for their special needs children.

Recently my husband and I joined a support group in Manhattan for grandparents of children on the autistic spectrum. It's a relief to find such a community partly because we want to keep up the newest research on autism. But I have another reason too: I have become aware, through working with young parents of autistic children, of how hurt they often feel because they see their parents interacting less or inappropriately, with the autistic child compared to its siblings. They say that when they try to address the problem, they feel defensive and are met with defensiveness. The grandparents are truly unaware of any difference and certainly do not love this grandchild any less.

As I see how easy it is for misunderstanding and hurt to develop on both sides and for these to damage a good family relationship, I want us to be more aware of our own blind spots as grandparents and find out how other grandparents deal with these issues. What I have discovered so far is that a chronic condition like autism can have hidden effects on everyone's morale. What I want is to find new ways to do more than just cope but actually thrive as a family. I am coming to think that this is a central role grandparents can play. I would love to hear from people with ideas that I can bring to this group of grandparents, who are dedicated and sometimes stretched beyond their limits by their wish to help their families. From my study of positive psychology, with its emphasis on strengths, I believe we have a whole repertoire of possibilities we've scarcely tapped for families like ours.
I look forward to your responses.