Are Grandparents Important? By Dr. Joshua Coleman

Not having a relationship with a grandchild can be a source of enormous torment for most grandparents. This is because our relations with our grandchildren are based often on a relationship of innocence, shared need, and vulnerability. In most cases, the grandchild/grandparent relationship is a casualty of the parent-adult child battleground, not a choice of the grandchild. In other cases, the grandchild can join the parents in their criticism of the grandparent, creating an even more treacherous minefield for them to walk through.

This is unfortunate because studies show that the relationship between grandparents and grandchildren is not only good for the well-being of the grandparent, it's good for children's development. This isn't terribly surprising. Grandparents serve a number of important roles:

They -
* Provide the grandchild with another opinion about who they are. That is, if the parents of the grandchild are critical or rejecting or simply too overwhelmed to give positive input to the grandchild, the grandparent can give them a different experience of themselves in relation to others
* Grandparents can keep an eye on problematic or dysfunctional family behavior, and in some cases, intervene on behalf of the grandchild. Obviously, I qualify it by saying in some cases because many parents are disinterested in the grandparents' input. But, the grandparent, nonetheless, can serve as a corrective to the dysfunctional aspects of the parents.

* Grandparents may have a greater investment in perpetuating the family lineage and therefore serve as a rich resource of identity, history, and stories of family members.

* Finally, grandparents can provide a different role model of behavior for the child to identify with.

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