A Gentle Teacher of Your Grandchildren

My three youngsters seemed to turn into monsters after visiting with their grandpa and grandma. They whined about family chores and routines, and it was a day or two before they shaped up and behaved normally. "Who needs grandparents?" I sometimes wondered.

Now that I'm the grandfather of eight grand kids my perspective has changed. I agree with family psychologist and author John Rosemond who said, "Grandparents should be gentle teachers of the way life was and the way it always should be."

But it doesn't work that way if the boundaries between parents and grandparents are unclear. An angry mother wrote the following note to Cathleen Brown, a San Jose mercury News columnist. "My parents live an hour's drive away and visit us and our two sons frequently. the problem is my mother takes it upon herself to give the boys orders, as if she were the parent, even when I'm in the same room. No matter what the boys do, she seems to find something to correct. . . . I feel she overlooks the fact that I am their mother, and is indirectly criticizing me. Am I wrong to feel upset?"

Instead of a gentle teacher of her grandchildren, she overstepped her bounds by disciplining her grandsons and criticizing her daughter. Because she misunderstood the role of grandparents, her grandchildren missed their most valuable resource.

Here are some ways to assure that you become a gentle teacher of your grandchilldren.

Pay Attention to Family Rules and Discipline

A good discipline pact allows grandparents to handle minor discipline problems while the parents take care of any serious breach of rules. Otherwise a grandparent's attempt to smooth things over may end up undermining family discipline.

Update Your Parenting Skills

To avoid clashes over discipline ask your grandchild's parents to explain how they correct unacceptable behavior. Practical questions like, What should I do if my two-year-old granddaughter pitches a tantrum in the supermarket? Does ignoring the tantrum work better than a swat on the behind?

Review Specifics

Ask for a review of family rules governing television viewing, use of the family PC, completing homework and inviting friends over. As an unsuspecting grandparent you may believe your grandchild is in her room with a classmate researching a homework assignment on the Web. When instead they are watching forbidden TV or exploring banned Internet sites.

Talk About Problems

When the grandparents of my children visited, the eating habits of my daughter often dominated the table talk. She was a picky-eater. And it didn't matter whether her tummy was full or she simply wasn't hungry, grandma would comment on her untouched food.

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