Parenting vs Grandparenting

This is a subject near and dear to my heart - Grandparenting that is. You just have to do the parenting to get to it. I'm having a lot of fun watching young mothers (my daughters included) parenting and seeing myself about 20 or so years ago. I do remember my Mom telling me - just wait, payback will come. And although I do enjoy some of their "paybacks", my perspective on it is wobbling from "you deserve that" to "oh, I wish I had done that better."

Being a granny is very different from being a mommy. I want the same end result for my babies that their mommies do, but I now want to get there a different way. Not that the mommies are not "mommying" correctly - just that I see things a bit differently from this side of it.

For example, both my girls wanted to sleep with us when they were little. But I was determined they needed to sleep in their own beds - they would grow up to be axe murderers or something horrendous if they didn't. So I got up and put them back to bed night after night, spanked, bribed, begged, and anything else to get them to sleep the majority of the night in their own beds. (I must confess that after Landra got about 5 or 6 I gave up and just moved over when she came to get in our bed. She finally stopped at about age 12).

But it is totally different now with my sweet babies. When they were too young to get out of the baby beds, when I kept them overnight, I did get up with them during the night, change diapers, feed them a bottle and put them back in the bed. But once they were out of that baby bed and able to walk from their room to Granny's bed - I couldn't wait to move over and let them crawl into bed with me. I snuggled close and wanted to be no place else in the world. The hardest part is having more than two in the bed at once and being able to touch all of them. I'm still learning how to do that, but I'm getting there! But of course, Grandaddy doesn't feel the same way and instead of kicking him out of the bed, I now just go to bed when my babies do and sleep with them all night. That way we all get sleep and I get to cuddle all night.

You might say that if I had to keep them every night I would think about it differently. And that's true - I do want to sleep sometimes with my husband alone. But what I think about when I'm in the bed with those babies is how time flies -- before too long they will be so big they won't want their Granny to lay beside them, touching their hair and telling silly stories - kissing them goodnight ten times in one minute and saying "I love you guys - I'm glad you're at my house" and hear them say "Granny, you always say that." Before too long, they'll be too big to want to come stay at Granny's house and I'll miss that so much.

That's what I remember about my girls. Before I blinked, they were grown. The time for "mommying" is gone and I'm now a Mom or Mother. It's different. So when I cuddle their babies, I see them again. I re-live some of the joy I had with them when they were little and soak up the hugs and smiles and kisses that I had forgotten and yet had missed so much.

Part of the joy of being a Granny is that I almost get to be a "parent" all over again. I get to treat my grandkids the ways I wish I'd treated my girls more but couldn't because besides enjoying them, I was given the responsibility of training them up as well. Having that responsibility overwhelms a young mother and I think it must be only on this side of parenting you realize that there can also be great joy. There is such a desire to have the kids "turn out" well that we can miss the joy for worrying if we're doing things right.

I remember reading about Mary and how she "pondered" in her heart all the things about her Son. I think I was too busy to "ponder" when my girls were growing up, but God's given me another chance with more babies. When I have them with me, I really look at them. I look into their eyes and focus on them as people and my heart is full.

I hope all of you young mothers who read this will understand me when I say, slow down, enjoy your babies, don't be so intense that you miss the joy of looking into the eyes of those little people and knowing them better. Someday real soon, you'll be looking into the eyes of your babies' babies and wish you had.