The Grandkids are Coming: Remember To Enjoy Them
Friday, July 10, 2009 at 12:00AM Kids is kids. Your house will be messier, noisier, and livelier than you can prepare yourself for so enjoy the moment, it will pass all too quickly. If you have to have a place for everything and everything in its place, meet the kids at a resort or pop for a family cruise and spare everyone the angst you will cause if you can’t be flexible. Your grandkids will be way louder, sassier, less helpful than you remember your well trained, well disciplined children being. If they don’t want to eat something, who cares. If the teens sleep to noon, let them, enjoy the quite because I assure you they may well be up till 2am hopefully quietly but up. Plan quite times for you and the grandkids. They won’t need them as much as you will.
Establishing some ground rules before the kids arrive can be helpful.
But keep in mind that ice cream for breakfast is a good thing and cereal for dinner is allowed. Teens like fast food and junk food accept this reality with a Zen attitude and plan accordingly.
Teens get antsy if out of contact with their friends too long. Allow them friend contact time. A couple of hours a day on Facebook or other socila network sites is normal forteens. If you have a cell phone with unlimited minute after 7 and texting hand it to the teen at say 9 and let them talk until the battery runs out. Recharge over night and repeat as needed. Live in hope; my 21 year old now calls his grandparents every other week! Teens text. If you have to pay per text do not, DO NOT hand you cell to your teenage grandchild unsupervised. They will spend their inheritance in text massages.
You don’t have to accept swearing, disrespect, criminal behavior or nastiness and an early return home might be best for all concerned if this is an ongoing problem. Anticipate times of grumpiness, tiredness and a tad of surliness and try to set a good example for the kids. They might get grumpy, tired or surly from time to time also. You can say I’m sorry too if need be.
Enjoy them.....in the end (your end) all they will have of you is the memories ......enjoy the journey....
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Reader Comments (5)
You said it so well! I find it really difficult to deal with the disruption of kids nowadays. As we get old(er) we seem to be more selfish. And hey we've earned it! But it makes us less flexible also. Thanks for your words of advice.
Pretty good ideas for the little tykes. Keep up the great work.
Very good post. Some very good advice for us old grandparents.
Being with grand kids is very rewarding.
My mom hosted my college age son for the weekend, and they both had a grand time! They BOTH called me to tell me how much fun they had.