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Family Friday Newsletter - 4 min read by: Finley Robinson

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A Single Sentence from a Season Ahead

Between Generations

Trips, Vacations, and Visits…

When I was young, my family traveled across the state every summer to visit my parents hometown in the Delta. My parents were high school sweethearts and so I had two sets of grandparents in the same small Arkansas town.

Every visit required that we alternated where we stayed. One set of grandparents was always left disappointed if we didn't stay with them. At times there was even a dueling competition between them to see who could show the grandkids a better time. It was complicated to say the least.

One of the most complicated relationships we have as parents is the one with our own parents. It doesn't matter if you have a good relationship with them or are estranged, your parents are a part of your parenting story.

• I have friends who've lost a parent and they mourn the fact that their mom won't ever meet their kids.
• I have friends whose parents watch their kids five days a week so they can both work full time.
• I live next door to my parents but haven't talked to my wife's dad in several years. They are both still a part of our lives but in different ways.

During your season of parenting, the various interactions with your parents can cover a wide range of possibilities.

• They love their grandkids and want to see them often.
• They don't come around often enough because they are too busy.
• They live far away and therefore each visit has high expectations.
• They have physically declined and can't play or keep up as well.
• They were controlling parents themselves and have lot of opinions now.

Grandparent Relationships

I don't know the in's and out's of your particular family dynamic but I do know that your in-between generation is tough sledding.

Having principles to help guide the process is necessary. Here are the four my wife and I gathered from the community of friends we were a part of.

• Feedback loops pay off
• Control only what you can
• Communicate most with your kids
• Find a way to honor your parents

With summer vacations and travel happening, grandparents are likely involved. Here's how to apply some good principles to your time together.

1. Feedback loops pay off.

Anyone who's ever been a parent loves giving advice. It doesn't matter if it's your parents, older parents, peer parents, or neighborhood parents.

When it comes to your parents though, they care about their grandkids and feel a level of responsibility for them. Creating an early feedback loop with your parents about their input helps establish open dialogue that you can build on.

It helps to give them vision on how you see their role and voice in the lives of your kids. Teach them how your kids think and about their personalities. Equip them to be better grandparents. After all they do want to know them!

You will likely have to train your parents on what works and doesn't with each individual grandchild.

2. Control only what you can.

Everyone who becomes a parent will have issues with their parents and their spouse's parents too. Some parents require more distance than others. As the parent, you do have a say on how much time you spend with your parents.

You can't control a grandparents words, timing or tone. You can't control how your 3 year old acts around them. You can't control that your 13 year old lives on their phone while your parents roll their eyes.

You can only control your response.

Acknowledging your own baggage is necessary as a mom or dad. Give up on situational perfection. Pursue healthy family relationships.

3. Communicate most with your kids.

When our kids were little they spent a lot of time with my parents. Living in the same town, they were our go-to babysitters when we went out.

One of the things we learned was that we needed to talk with our kids about their grandparents.

Your kids need to understand:

• grandparents love them by saying yes and no.
• grandparents can be fun and older at the same time.
• grandparents who live far away think time together is special.
• grandparents care about strange things kids don't understand.
• grandparents love you but express it in strange ways.

Teaching your kids how to interact with your parents will go a long way.

Have conversations before, during and after you spend time with your parents. It's another way to build that feedback loop with your kids.

4. Find some way to honor your parents.

For some families, this will be easy. No parents are perfect, but they have lived lives worthy of honor. For others, there is great damage that has been done and pain associated with the decisions their parents have made.

Choosing to find a way to honor your parents will make you a better parent. Teaching your kids what you learned, good and bad, from your parents will go a long way towards honoring them.

Honor is not the same as celebration. Honor is closer to recognition. Honoring your parents, whatever it is and whatever it looks like will make you a better parent and your kids better adults someday.

See you next Friday,
Finley

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