Illustration by Rayna Goransson
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Web Exclusive…
Opportunities to Inspire Grandchildren Lurk Within Everyday Activities
By Gwen Gibson, July 2003
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The cardinal rules for grandparents have always been: don't ask, don't offer, don't advise. But we can maneuver around these roadblocks and establish strong bonds with our grandchildren with a little ingenuity. The trick is to involve the youngsters in creative projects that are fun, educational, and challenging enough to stir their imaginations.
Child rearing experts from T. Berry Brazelton, M.D., to Benjamin Spock, M.D., agree that this is the ideal way for grandparents to play a helpful yet non-intrusive role. In his book Touchpoints: The Essential Reference for the Early Years, Brazelton writes that a family's culture and values "are often more easily handed on by grandparents than by parents, whose role is so charged as day-to-day disciplinarians."
"Grandparents," he adds, "show children the mountaintops."
So where do you begin? Many innovative grandparents simply transform everyday activities—cooking, reading, writing, painting, walking, gardening—into ongoing games that both grandparent and grandchild enjoy and learn from.
Carolyn Graham of Denver, Colorado, grandmother of six, says when cooking with her grandchildren "we dream up new recipes and plan colorful sumptuous meals for the family and friends and sometimes for school events. It's fun, and the kids learn about measures, weights, nutrition, the metric system and—because they help to serve the finished products—they also learn some social skills."
Jerome Brazda of Alexandria, Virginia, grandfather of nine, says when his grandchildren visit he takes them to a museum, a concert, or the theater, making sure the treat is also a learning experience. "If we go to the theater, we first read about the play and the playwright. And I check to see if the theater is offering study guides or pre-performance tours of the stage and costumes. After the show, we critique the performance and the sets from our respective viewpoints."
Not every collaborative venture can be a bell ringer. Nancy Dooley of Savannah, Georgia, grandmother of eight, tried to teach one 8-year-old granddaughter the lost art of knitting. "But she is left-handed, so this was a fiasco, but we had a lot of laughs." Dooley also jokes about her frustrating attempts to read to her 4-year-old grandson, a regular quiz kid. "He constantly interrupts, asking 'What's that? What does that mean? How do you know?' And I know this is good, but he just wears me out!"
Dr. Fred C. Kazlow, a Savannah, Georgia, dentist, endears himself to his four grandchildren with elaborate birthday parties they talk about all year. He collaborates with his daughter, Susan of Alpharetta, Georgia, where the grandchildren live. They select a theme like a circus, The Wizard of Oz, or Huckleberry Finn, then create historically correct settings and costumes, which are worn by kids and adults alike. One birthday party really took the cake. Thrown when Kazlow's oldest grandson reached age 10, it was based on the movie Titanic. Kazlow fabricated a dozen ship models, complete with hull, two decks, a mast, and a smoke stack. The guests, all boys, got to assemble these in the basement as music from the movie's soundtrack was piped in. "We gave each one a little hammer, a paint brush, and a mini muffin tin filled with colored paint," Kazlow proudly recalls. "And every kid took his model home."
Building and maintaining a close companionship is a major challenge when your grandchildren live far away. I know. My only granddaughter, Rayna, lives in Austin, Texas, with her mother, my daughter. I live in Alexandria, Virginia. We keep in almost daily touch via e-mail, snail mail, and the telephone, and we get together five or six times a year at her place or mine. In the interim we keep our relationship from growing stale by exchanging jokes and puns and writing silly poems together. This year, on her ninth birthday, I talked Rayna into collaborating with me on a book of funny poems that she would illustrate.
Rayna, a creative artist, loves to draw cartoons. We decided the poems should deal with the life and often-trying times of a nine-year-old. We titled our book, accordingly, It's Not Easy Being Nine, a takeoff, of course, on Kermit the Frog's lament "It's Not Easy Being Green." [See a sample from the book.]
It's not easy, either, coming up with ideas that will both entertain and educate your grandkids. That's why you need to look to everyday activities—meal preparation, birthday parties, creative writing—for larger projects.
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