How Important Are Grandparents in a Child’s Life?
If I say the role and the involvement of the grandparents in a child’s life is as important as the involvement of parents, at least half of the world would agree with me. Due to the various social and economic factors relationships are being distanced and it is time to refresh them and give the required value.
So, How important are grandparents in a child’s life? Grandparents are very important in a child’s life and they can be beneficial for them in many ways. Their unconditional love makes them exceptional from other relatives and they are the best to provide a safe and loved environment for the children other than the parents. They are the best to enrich a child with positive life lessons.
This is one of the most important contemporary topics of the era and it encouraged me to write this article. In this article I have covered; how grandparents play a major role in a child’s growth, how often grandparents should see their grandchildren, building the grandparent-grandchildren relationship, what grandparents should not do and the evolving role of grandparents.
Let’s get started and discuss the importance of the grandparents’ role in detail.
How Grandparents play a major role in a child’s growth?
When observing “how important are grandparents in a child’s life”, it is witnessed that grandparents play a major role in a child’s growth. Grandparents are the best alternative to fill your role when you are busy with work.
Rather than leaving your child in a daycare center or with a babysitter, it is better to leave them with grandparents since they take care of your child as they raised you with love and care.
Children also prefer to stay with grandparents since they love each other a lot. Grandparents played a major role in our growth since our childhood and therefore no doubts about how important grandparents are in a child’s life and their growth.
Let’s consider 5 major facts on the important role of grandparents in a child’s growth.
1. Spending time effectively with your child
We all are trapped in a busy lifestyle, and we don’t have much time to spend with our children. The best solution for this is grandparents. Since they are free, they can spend time effectively with children.
They give your child love and affection since they consider them as part of their life. They can teach new things and enhance the skills of your child as they raised you. It will be a sufficient time rather than making your child stay with technology or in a daycare.
This gives a very good answer to the question, “how important are grandparents in a child’s life.”
2. Share numerous experiences
Since grandparents lived longer lives than us, they are rich with numerous experiences, knowledge, and stories. They are a good source for children to learn about things they have never heard.
Children can understand their roots and family history from grandparents and understand religious and cultural beliefs as well. Children love to talk with grandparents and listen to their stories.
3. Reduce household stress
Grandparents provide parents the best physical as well as emotional support in parenting and household activities. They are good supporters of reducing your child’s stress on several occasions in their lives where they cannot endure.
Leaving children with grandparents is such a relief for parents since it is secured and assured. It will support reducing household stress in parents, children, and grandparents since they love to be with grandchildren.
It will support your child to stay away from psychological traumas, depression, and anxiety.
4. Make children happier and provide unconditional love
According to studies, grandparents play a significant role in a child’s life, and it is proven that children who are closer to grandparents are happier than other kids. Both parties love to stay with each other. Grandparents give children unconditional love.
Most of the grandparents believe their only satisfaction is staying with grandchildren. Therefore, children are happier with their relationship with grandparents.
5. Improve life skills of children and break them from excessive use of technology
Grandparents teach children life skills such as politeness, etiquette, respect for others, and good manners. They teach them with love and children listen to grandparents more than their parents.
And in today’s digital world, children are almost in excessive use of technology, and it harms children with their eyes and mental development. Therefore, making them closer to grandparents will help to reduce their use of technology and be active in social activities.
How often should grandparents see their grandchildren?
“When grandparents are denied contact with grandchildren, they may feel an injustice has been done. The grandparents may have heard they have a legal right to see their grandchildren, and, if the family rift appears to be permanent, they may consider litigation.”
Andrea Bathani, Innocent Sorrow: A Grandmother’s Fight to See Her Grandchildren
When considering “how important are grandparents in a child’s life,” their times together are significant. It is necessary to let grandparents and grandchildren spend time with each other.
When I was a child, my grandparents visited at least two-three times per week. They are keen to stay with me, while my mother sometimes had some dislikes regarding their behaviors.
They visited unexpectedly, and my parents saw that as a bit of a burden. But since my parents did not want to hurt my grandparents, they did not impose boundaries or limitations for their visits.
With that experience, now as an adult, I believe that there should be some boundaries. In my view, it is better to let grandparents see their grandchildren once a week. It is more fruitful to let grandchildren spend their weekends with grandparents.
It will be suitable for both parties since they relish the time they spend with each other. However, this fact does not apply to multigenerational families.
Building the Grandchild-Grandparent Relationship
It is good to build the grandchild- grandparent relationship since the birth of children. It will be beneficial for all the parties as grandparents are happy with kids, and it will affect their health while children are happier with grandparents and it will impact them to stay away from mental stresses.
On the other hand, it will be a relief for parents since they have enough time to pay attention to their work.
Since it is clear how important grandparents are in a child’s life, to build the relationship among them, you can organize family trips, vacations, movies, family dinners, and many other activities to give them a chance to interconnect.
However, when building up the relationship between them, it is necessary to make them follow their parents’ rules. Because of their unconditional love, sometimes grandparents might encourage children to disobey the rules of their parents, and it will make it difficult to control them.
Moreover, uninformed activities of grandparents too should be controlled since they will negatively affect the child-parent relationships of both generations. Therefore, parents should monitor the grandchild-grandparent relationship to make it more effective.
What should grandparents not do?
Even though grandparents are supportive and play a significant role in a child’s life, sometimes they can mess up by spoiling their grandchildren too much and going against parent’s favors.
Therefore, parents must state some boundaries as well grandparents must follow them in their relationship with grandchildren. To minimize messing behaviors, grandparents must understand what they should never do.
Paying attention to these facts is also important to know about “how important are grandparents in a child’s life.”
1. Do not request more grandchildren
The generation has changed, and nowadays families do not have a desire for multiple children due to economic conditions and busy schedules.
Just be happy to be a grandparent in the first place and do not request more grandchildren from your children, and it will strain your relationship.
2. Handoff grandkids to others for holding
Do not let strangers that baby’s parents don’t know hold the kid. Parents don’t like to let everyone have their child.
So never hand them off to anyone, and it will make parents unhappy. Further, it’s not good for the health and protection of the child.
3. Do not try to raise them as you raised your kids
Time, generation, and attitudes are different from when you were a parent of young kids. Your children may have different parenting styles and ways of raising kids.
So, do not try to interfere with their parenting by mentioning the way you raised your kids.
4. Do not let kids break and disregard the rules and instructions of parents
Make sure to let kids adhere to their bedtime rules and follow instructions about discipline imposed by their parents. Do not encourage kids to break those rules even though they seem silly to you.
5. Do not criticize your kids in front of your grandkids
Children need to see their parents as role models for their lives and do not criticize their parenting styles, food choices, or health practices in front of their grandchildren.
Kids will store those things in their profound minds, and it will affect the parent-children relationship.
The Evolving Role of Grandparents
Earlier, there were multigenerational households in many countries, and as time passed, they changed into nuclear families. In the contemporary scenario, most young people leave their hometowns and flock into metropolitan cities seeking jobs and education.
Then the living with parents concept is diminishing, and a rise of nuclear families can be seen. With that, the children gradually lose the chance to stay with their grandparents, who genuinely love and care for them.
In this era, the topic of how important are grandparents in a child’s life was not something that should pay particular attention as they already had a very close relationship with their grandchildren.
Within the context of demographic changes, the world has a bulk aging population. In the United States, there are more than 56 million grandparents, while the United Kingdom has approximately 14 million grandparents.
Among them, it is recorded that most of the grandparents take childcare responsibilities while some live far away from grandchildren.
However, it is noted that due to technology, being far away does not affect the relationship between grandparents and grandchildren since they prefer to call or video chat often.
Within the current context, one of every three adults is lucky to be a grandparent. And also, older adults are living longer than previous generations now. In addition, both parents of most of the families are doing jobs and busy with their careers.
Due to this, the role of grandparents is evolving within the contemporary scenario, and it proves how vital are grandparents in a child’s life further.
Conclusion – How Important Are Grandparents in a Child’s Life?
When concerning the importance of the grandparents in a child’s life, it is better understood with their role in a child’s growth. Then, when building up a grandparent-grandchildren relationship, it is good to define how often they should see each other and what grandparents should never do.
Therefore, with the evolving role of grandparents in the current context, parents must identify the benefits they can obtain by enhancing the grandparent-grandchildren relationship and its positive impact on both the kids and grandparents.
Grandparents too must understand their role and their limitations as a grandparent and always should try to stay on the positive side of their adult children. Therefore, it is witnessed how important grandparents are in a child’s life and their impact on all the parties of grandparents, grandchildren as well as their parents.
Thank you for reading. Stay tuned with BestFamilyLife for more good content.
