Grandparents - Supporting Your Children by Not Assuming Responsibility for Your Grandchildren

Grandparents, after raising their own families, often find themselves in the role of rearing their grandchildren too. Economics, lack of other supports and guilt sometimes 'force' grandparents into being nurturers indefinitely.

Understanding Your Role as Parent

The natural order of things is for children to move on and become independent of their parents. A parent's job is to empower children with the skills they need to carve out their own path. Your children are responsible for their children. Too much involvement from grandparents, which may come from a place of love, is not necessarily the gift it appears to be.

Impact of Being Very Involved in Raising your Grandchildren

When grandparents take a significant role in minding grandchildren it does have consequences for the new family.

• Too much involvement can interfere with the couple's relationship. Young couples need space for their relationship away from their parents. This is a very important part of the process of coming into their own power as parents and establishing their own rhythm and values.
• When grandparents participate in the day to day provision for their grandchildren the subtle message children hear is that they can't manage alone. However, it is in the very process of taking on new responsibilities that we discover our resources and abilities to deal with situations.
• Over-involvement often results in resentment on both sides as children really want to be independent of parents and parents desire to be free of responsibility of their children.

In this situation everybody's growth is thwarted.

Supporting your Family

Loving your children includes handing over the reins so that they can live their own lives. You can do it. They can do it. And in the long run, it will prove to be powerful contribution to them, to their relationship and to your grandchildren.

Deirdre Morris would like to invite you to visit http://www.magicalbeginningsforbaby.com for inspiration around creating magical beginnings for baby and the whole family.