As early as possible, think about what you want your role as a grandparent to be. What are you willing and able to do? What do your grandchildren’s parents expect or hope you can do?
Take a look at your own situation. When Minnesota grandmother Mary Freng-Gunderson’s daughter was expecting her first child, she knew she wanted to support her daughter and be involved in her grandchild’s life. She also knew that as a retired teacher, that support was unlikely to be financial. “I didn’t have money to throw around. But because I was retired, I could give them the gift of my time,” she said.
When reading Lesley Stahl’s book “Becoming Grandma,” she first encountered the term Granny Nanny — a grandparent who took care of their grandchildren one or more days a week. “That just resonated with me. It fit what I was thinking about,” she said.
Her health was good and she still had energy and stamina. Soshe took over the care of her granddaughter four days a week for a year and a half. Then as the granddaughter got a little bigger, Mary “tweaked” her back. That was when her daughter and son-in-law suggested that perhaps she should scale back a little. It was time for some preschool, and Mary still had regular times with her granddaughter.
Few bonds in life are stronger than those between a grandparent and grandchild, and reading together creates lifelong, shared memories. Research has found that reading to youngsters has a number of benefits, including exposure to communication skills along with different types of people and situations.
If you don’t live close to your grandchildren, see if you can set up a FaceTime or Zoom call to do read-aloud. During the COVID pandemic, grandparents found that they looked forward to these regular reading times as much as their grandchildren did, and have continued the tradition even now that they can see each other in person.
One grandmother checks books out of her library and reads them aloud. If the children like them, she will buy one or two for birthday gifts. Another grandmother orders two copies of books, one for herself and one for her grandchild. That way, she can read one page and her grandchild can read the next.
But don’t be surprised if reading a favorite book turns into rereading it. And then rereading again.
It has been more than 40 years since I last read Dr. Seuss’s “The Foot Book” aloud, but I can still recite it nearly word for word:
“Left foot, left foot
Right foot, right.
Feet in the morning
Feet at night.”
That’s because I read that book about a bazillion times during my daughter’s earliest years. When kids fall in love with a book, they want to hear it again and again. And my daughter loved that book.
It’s good to know that these seemingly unending repetitions are supported by the research in how children learn language. Hearing the same text over and over helps children become familiar with the words, moving from “I never heard this before” to “Sounds familiar” to “Hey, I know that!”
Amundson’s latest book, “The Grandparent Effect: Helping Children Thrive Through Love, Support, and Connection,” is published by Bloomsbury.
