Our grandparents are great, and here is why:
Admit It.
Have you ever had a parent ask you to do something and rolled your eyes, but at another time have a grandparent ask you to do the very same thing and jump up to help them? Sure, it may not have been intentional, but that fact alone emphasizes the question: Why? Both our parents and our grandparents just want the best for us, right? They both want us to be happy and they both love us, right? We love them both, right? So then, why is it, that special treatment seems to go both ways between us and our grandparents? In psychology and development classes, we learn a good deal about the relationships between children and their parents, but very little to none about the relationship between children and their grandparents.
What exactly is the difference?
Take me for example: I don’t know about you, but I aim to please. The more I respect a person, the more I want to please them. My grandparents are wise and kind, which ranks them pretty high in my book. Of course I want to be like them in the ways that I admire, so maybe I do things for them, because those are the things that have made them into the people I know and love. Plus, it always seems to make them happy, and when my grandparents are happy with me, they feed me! It seems surprising that having them fulfill such a basic need would mean so much to me, but it never fails to. My parents obviously fed me too, but that was every day instead of a special occasion.
Every time I see my grandparents, no matter how often, it feels like a special occasion. There are things I would do for them, and vise-versa that I would not do for very many other people. Even my wedding started late because one of my grandpas decided his suit was not good enough to be present. In any other wedding, he probably would have just worn that suit, and he has. There are not many other people I would have put my wedding on hold for. So, this is a perfect example of what we are talking about.
They're old and frail?
Perhaps on a subconscious level we view our grandparents as ancient and feeble, regardless of whether it's true or not. That we would then grasp for opportunities to do things for our grandparents because we know they have less of an ability to do it on their own only makes sense. In this day and age, a study done by the UK’s BPS has shown that grandparents (grandmothers in particular) are typically viewed very differently than they were when our own grandparents were growing up. Back then, grandmas were commonly both younger and stricter. They probably were a lot physically closer to their grandchildren as well. As we humans have the habit of comparing ourselves to what we know, not only as a child do we see our grandparents as quite very old, but our grandparents themselves might feel older in comparison to the grandparents they had. Then, by accidental default, grandparents might ask us to do simpler tasks more often than our parents just the same as we might more often ask them if they need help.
Responsibility possibility.
A more likely cause stems from our grandparents and is entirely out of our control. In most situations, parents have to put up with a lot of stress because of their offspring. Think about how much financial anxiety alone comes from raising children. Parents have a lot of pressure to guide us to make good decisions and grow up in a desirable fashion. It seems almost unfair that their parents are the ones that get to have all the blameless fun when the grandparents are the ones who have had lots of practice raising a family. Which brings up the factor that no, our grandparents do not have to provide all the hard child-rearing, teenager irritating, hormonally impacted criticisms and repercussions that our parents do. So naturally, there is much less tension and strain on our relationship. As a friend put it, grandparents don’t necessarily have the right or the need to discipline their grandchildren. She, herself, is a grandmother, so she would know! She’s totally right, though. It’s not usually their place to tell our parents how to manage their household. As a grand-parent, they’ve already had their chance, so to speak. That’s not to say that grandparents don’t try to advise our parents, but the arrow isn’t going to point at them if something goes wrong with us.
Might it be different for different types of families?
Maybe, maybe not. Families that in general aren’t as close probably don’t have quite the same connections, but according to a study by the Australian Institute of Families, about 85 percent of parents say the relationship between their kids and their parents is “close.”
Take a look at my aforementioned friend, Dotty. She actually has a grandchild that was not naturally born from her daughter and her daughter’s husband. She says that if anything, all the work they put into having their daughter only makes Kim even more special to her. On the flip side, I had a friend in high school that had been adopted at a very young age. She was close to both her biological grandparents and her adoptive grandparents. Sets from both parties attended school events and birthdays alike. She never referred to them any differently from one another and when we were really young she didn’t even know which grandparents were biological and which ones were not. I suppose, all in all, grandparent-grandchild relations are the epitome of the saying, “Love knows no bounds.”
