Grandparents Don’t Have to Have All the Answers
Sometimes the greatest gift is simply being there.
The world our grandchildren are growing up in can sometimes feel very different from the one we knew.
Technology changes almost daily. Social media has transformed friendships and communication. Young people face pressures that many grandparents never experienced at the same age. They are making decisions about relationships, education, money, careers and their future in a world that can feel complicated and uncertain.
As grandparents, it is easy to wonder:
What advice can I possibly give? Perhaps we do not need to have all the answers. Perhaps one of the greatest gifts we can give our grandchildren is much simpler.
We can be there.
They may not be looking for an answer
When a grandchild tells us about a problem, our natural instinct is often to solve it. We have lived longer. We have made mistakes. We have learned lessons. Surely we should save them from making the same mistakes we made?
But sometimes a young person is not asking us to fix anything. They may simply need someone to listen. Someone who will allow them to finish the story before offering advice. Someone who will not immediately judge the friend, criticise the decision or tell them what they should have done.
Someone who can say: “Tell me what happened.” “How do you feel about it?” “What do you think you should do?”
Those simple questions communicate something very powerful: I am listening. What you think matters.
Wisdom is different from having all the answers
Grandparents have something valuable that cannot be found through an internet search.
We have perspective. We know that one disappointment does not define a life. We know that friendships sometimes change. We know that mistakes can be repaired. We know that money runs out if we spend everything we have. We know that some decisions have consequences we cannot immediately see.
Most importantly, we know that life rarely goes exactly according to plan.
That does not mean our grandchildren must make the same choices we made. Our role is not necessarily to give them a map and insist that they follow our route. Sometimes our role is simply to help them look carefully at the road ahead.
Listening without lecturing
There is a significant difference between sharing wisdom and delivering a lecture.
Most of us probably remember being young enough to recognise the moment when a conversation became a lecture. We stopped listening long before the adult stopped talking!
Our grandchildren are no different.
A conversation leaves room for both people. We can share something from our own experience and then ask: “What do you think?” We can disagree without making them feel foolish. We can warn without frightening. We can advise without controlling. We can allow silence.
And sometimes we can admit: “I don’t know.”
Those three words do not make us less valuable as grandparents. They make us human.
The conversations change as they grow
With a young child, being there may mean helping them understand why they cannot always have what they want. A few years later, it may mean listening when a friendship has gone wrong.
During the early teenage years, the conversations may become more complicated. There may be questions about belonging, peer pressure, responsibility, money and relationships. By sixteen, seventeen or eighteen, our grandchildren are beginning to make decisions that genuinely belong to them.
We cannot make every decision for them. Nor should we. But we can remain a safe place where they can think aloud.
A different kind of relationship
Perhaps one of the privileges of being a grandparent is that our relationship with a grandchild can be different from the relationship they have with their parents.
Parents carry the daily responsibility of raising a child. There are rules to enforce, homework to check, schedules to manage and consequences to apply. Grandparents often have a little more space simply to be with them.
That space can become very precious as children grow older.
A cup of tea at the kitchen table. A drive into town. A quiet conversation on the veranda. A message that says, “How did it go?” A phone call after a disappointment.
None of these things seems particularly extraordinary. But together they say:
You matter to me. I have time for you. You can talk to me.
The heart behind Our Time Together
This is one of the ideas at the heart of our five-book series, Our Time Together: A Grandparent’s Guide to Life’s Big Lessons.
The books grow with children from ages 3 to 18 because the conversations naturally change as children grow.
The early lessons are simple. Sharing. Trying again. Understanding feelings. Making choices. Later come friendship, responsibility, empathy and resilience. Then the conversations deepen further into independence, relationships, money, difficult decisions, work and the future.
The grandparent does not need to stand at the front of the room as the expert. Grandma or Grandpa simply needs to sit beside them.
To listen. To ask. To share. To encourage.
And, when necessary, to say: “I don’t have all the answers, but we can talk about it.”
Perhaps years from now, our grandchildren will not remember every piece of advice we gave them. But they may remember something even more important.
They knew they could come to us.
And that may be one of the greatest gifts we ever give them.
Tinie & Lynne Terblanche