Grandparenting: The Exhilaration, the Responsibility and the Tricky Parts

The author and her grandchildren at the Seattle Space Needle. Photo courtesy of the author.

The author and her husband Steve with their granddaughters after a shopping spree. Photo courtesy of the author.

With Grandparents’ Day 2024 on Sunday, September 8, I’ve been mulling over the dynamics of grandparenting –a phenomenon I’ve been lucky to have in my life for over seven years now.

My three grandchildren—two girls, age 7 and one boy, age 4—transport me into a  special mindset. They lift me out of my busy brain’s habit of reviewing, often agonizing over, the past and worrying about the future. When I am with those kids, most of the time, I am all in—enveloped by the present moment I’m sharing with them. Sometimes I am marveling at the things they say, sometimes I’m in awe of how much they know; other times I am filled with curiosity about how they know what they know or why they are feeling a particular way. Often I am soaring at their spontaneous expression of love for me.  It’s all pretty terrific.

But there is one particular thing I find challenging about being a grandparent: providing pure unconditional love—at least as I am accustomed to defining it. I have always thought of unconditional love as love given with no judgment, no critiques and no expectations. Or as Healthline succinctly offers, “Unconditional love, simply put, is love without strings attached.” Expressed another way by PsychCentral, unconditional love is “the selfless act of loving someone with full acceptance and without expecting anything in return.”

On the one hand, I want to be one of those grandparents who gives their grandchildren unconditional love. I want to boost their self-esteem and make them feel special. My grandmother, who lived until I was 16 years old, did that.

In 1983, I wrote an essay about my grandmother’s love for a magazine called Sunshine (no I did not remember the date; I have saved a collection of my writings through the years and looked it up). In that piece, I recalled how every time she visited us when I was a child, she would ask me for a piano recital. As I wrote in the essay, “I would frown and protest. I, the modest 10-year-old, didn’t want to appear eager to perform.”

But my grandmother would keep coaxing me to play until I acquiesced. When I finished playing my little sonata, she would always turn to my mother and say, “She will play in Carnegie Hall someday!” I’m sure, at that young age, I didn’t really understand the significance of such an achievement, but I could tell it was something special and her comment made me feel terrific!

I always remember my grandmother as someone who helped to shape my self-confidence. I can’t recall a single time she ever said anything negative to me.

Can I summon my grandmother and internalize the unconditional cheerleader that she was? I don’t think so. For me, unconditional love is tricky. Of course, I love my grandchildren, no matter how they behave. It’s easy for me to “catch them” doing something right and compliment them for it. In fact, I’ve been complimented for giving great compliments!

But I also feel the need to tell them when they are behaving inappropriately—when I catch them doing something wrong. Can I—should I–critique my grandchildren? Do I want to have no expectations of them? Would I want to avoid calling them out when they are not behaving decently? Bottom line: Though I want to help build their self-confidence, I also want to help them to be better people. I know my daughters and sons-in-law take this responsibility very seriously. But I think I need to back them up—to be a reinforcer.

And so I do criticize my grandchildren when they are rude, insensitive, overly demanding or exhausting in their refusal to accept limitations. But I worry that they can’t distinguish criticism of a particular behavior from a withdrawal of love. Often, I will tell them, “I still love you higher than the sky,” but this behavior is just not okay.”

But can they internalize the distinction? Or do they feel they’ve lost some love and that maybe the next time they do something I deem inappropriate, they will lose my love altogether?  So what do I do? I can’t let go of my role as a teacher of values.

In searching Jewish texts so see what our sages have had to say about a grandparent’s role, I found that “the Talmud is very specific. Not only do parents have the duty to teach Torah (and the skills to earn a living) to their children; grandparents do too.” The Talmud bases this mandate on Deuteronomy 4:9, which commands the Jewish people, in referring to the laws of God, to “take utmost care and watch yourselves scrupulously, so that you do not forget the things that you saw with your own eyes and so that they do not fade from your mind as long as you live. And make them known to your children and to your children’s children.”

Judaism sees the job of educator as being our most important role as grandparents and, at the top of the list, it seems, is the mandate to teach faith in and loyalty to God and the Torah. I have given myself permission to “interpret” that mandate to teach my grandchildren values–to be decent, compassionate and empathetic; to take the advice of renowned sage and scholar Hillel, when asked to explain the Torah on one foot: “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow.”

I sometimes ask my grandkids to imagine how it feels to be the recipient of their hurtful behavior. Then I impress upon them that I still love them with all my heart and always will, no matter what.

There is some wisdom about grandparenting, however, that I had not thought of before I began my recent search through Jewish commentary. It comes from the late Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks of United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth. He advises, “Give your children and your grandchildren the space to give to you. Let them become your teachers and let them be your inspiration. In doing so you will help them become the people that they were destined to be, and you will help create the blessings God wants them to become.”

Great advice, right?

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