Communicating with Your Adult Children About Grandparenting
See also: Managing Family Conflict for GrandparentsCommunication skills are always important within families—but perhaps this comes into even sharper focus when grandchildren arrive.
Assumptions that seemed negligible tend to be magnified once there are alternative parenting styles in play. Behaviour that is easily tolerated when it only affects adults is harder to accept once children are involved. Old resentments tend to surface, and emotions run high because things matter. There are also more people in the mix, with the partners of adult children often having different expectations of how parents and grandparents should behave.
It is therefore essential to develop the skills to communicate effectively with your adult children about their children, and about your role as grandparents. This page explains more about how you can do that, and particularly how you can express your views without causing conflict.
The Importance of Communication
As a grandparent, there will always be times when your views clash with those of your child and their partner about your grandchildren. The question is whether, and how, you should say anything about it.
One piece of advice that is often given to grandparents is just to ‘button your lip’ and say nothing. You are not the parent here, and this is a case of ‘not your monkeys, not your circus’. You may not like doing it, but it is a strategy that will certainly avoid conflict.
Unfortunately, as our page of Top Tips for Grandparents explains, that is not always positive.
The problem is that you start to be afraid of saying anything about the grandchildren, your child and their partner, or anything else related to family dynamics. You can also start to worry about other potential areas of conflict or differences of opinion, however minor. This can mean that your relationship dwindles to an exchange of platitudes, without anything meaningful ever being discussed.
It can also mean that you stop feeling able to express your own needs or wants in relation to your grandchildren. Over time, you may therefore come to feel taken for granted, distanced, or overwhelmed—and not feel able to say so.
It is therefore important to learn to communicate effectively, respectfully and healthily about differences of opinion and boundaries—on both sides.
Healthy communication allows you to exchange views, express opinions, and understand each other. It means asking questions with genuine interest and curiosity about the answers, and appreciating that different opinions and views may be perfectly valid. It also means being able to express your own boundaries, and understanding and respecting those of others.
Ways to Communicate Effectively
There are many ways in which you can start to communicate more effectively with your child and their partner.
Use the rule of ‘It’s about me, not you’
Our page on Giving Feedback to Partners notes that there are many courses and resources dedicated to explaining how to give feedback at work. However, there is far less out there about doing so within family-based relationships.
This is a pity, because the same rules can be applied—and they really work.
One of the most important is “It’s about me, not you”. You do not know the intention behind behaviour or words, only how it made you feel. Try to structure your communication to use ‘I’ statements. For example:
“When you ask me for help at short notice, I feel like I need to cancel my plans or risk you never asking again. Is there any way that we could plan ahead a bit more, because I want to be able to help you out?”
In practice, this means describing the effect on you and your feelings, as a way to express your needs. It requires you to be clear about what is happening to you, and your emotions, which may take a bit of time to understand.
Top Tip! Take your time
When you start to feel concerned or upset, don’t rush into communication or immediate reaction. Instead, think consciously about how to express yourself effectively.
Start with a positive
If you ever wish to give advice, or express a concern, start with a positive.
In fact, if possible, focus on the positives throughout (and our page of Top Tips for Grandparents provides more information about how to do this).
For example:
“I love how well you manage the children’s routine, and I can see that it really helps them to feel safe and confident. I do wonder though if sometimes it gets a bit stifling for you?”
This helps you to show that you appreciate what your child or their partner are doing, and also that you think they are doing a good job. However, it gives you room to suggest an alternative, or express a concern. Interestingly, it also helps you to be less critical, because you have to identify a positive—and there will be many—before speaking.
Ask questions
Questions are an extremely powerful—and underrated—form of communication.
Coaches use them all the time as a way to help people work through their own problems (and for more about this, see our pages on Coaching Skills and What is Coaching?). As a grandparent, you can do a lot worse than use this approach.
Instead of expressing concerns, ask for more information about why your child and their partner have chosen a particular approach, or why they hold this view.
Aim to explore their choices openly, and understand more about them. It is entirely possible that things have moved on since you were bringing up your children, or that they know more about the topic than you ever did.
WARNING!
It is important that you approach questions in a spirit of genuine curiosity.
It is not helpful to ask a question that has a subtext of “Don’t you think you’re wrong?”
Beware of closed questions (those that require an answer of ‘yes’ or ‘no’) and ensure that you are seeking information rather than validation of your own thinking.
Offer to share your views or experience—don’t just state them
Offering to provide, rather than simply stating, your views or experience, can make all the difference.
There is a world between saying “I had a similar experience, would you like me to talk about it?” and simply launching into a description or giving your views.
Your child and their partner will be quick to perceive that your experience is available to them, but that you are not forcing it on them—and they will appreciate that.
Listen to your child and their partner
When you ask questions, it is essential to listen to the answer—and listen fully and completely.
Giving someone your full attention is a real gift. Use it wisely and well to show your child and their partner that you value their opinions and views, and are interested to understand more about their parenting style and choices. This will help to build trust, and strengthen your relationship with them.
There is more about how to listen actively in our pages on Listening Skills, including Active Listening.
Navigating disagreements
It is, of course, all very well to talk about open and healthy communication.
However, what happens when something goes wrong, and you have a disagreement with your child and their partner about your grandchildren?
At this point, the most important thing to remember is that nobody—and especially not your grandchildren—wins if you are fighting with their parents.
Our page on Conflict Resolution points out that the best time to mend a disagreement is early on, before it has had time to escalate into conflict. This means that you need to be quick to recognise disagreement and react. You might, for example:
Apologise quickly when you become aware that you have stepped over a line, or said something tactless (and for more about this, see our page on Tact and Diplomacy);
Recognise and name emotions to surface them. Remember that your child and their partner may—especially early on in their parenting lives—feel very vulnerable and also be short on sleep. They may react emotionally and not logically. Just as with young children, you need to be responsive and adult, and not react emotionally yourself. Say things like “I can see this has made you angry/upset, and I’m sorry about that. What can we do to put it right?”
Use the ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ approach to discuss the disagreement in a more neutral way. Express your feelings and allow your child and their partner to express theirs openly. Support each other, and try to understand the situation clearly so that you can see what’s really wrong. It is important to understand that a disagreement may at root be about something far removed from the surface issue. Your child and their partner may be objecting to you giving the children sweets—but underneath may be a concern that you are trying to take over, or are undermining their parenting.
Our page on Conflict Resolution also explains that the best way to resolve conflict is through collaboration, where you build something together that ensures that you all win.
Compromise is a second-best, where both parties give up something, but neither is fully happy with the outcome. Perhaps the worst way to deal with it is smoothing everything over, because here the conflict is never addressed and resolved, and can fester.
To achieve a collaborative outcome, it is essential to communicate clearly about your own feelings—and listen to what your child and their partner are saying in return about theirs.
You then need to look actively for a solution that addresses everyone’s concerns, rather than one where either of you gives something up.
This is not easy, but it is worth the time and effort. Think of it as an investment in your shared relationship, and in your grandchildren.
A Final Thought
Clear, transparent, and respectful communication is fundamental between you and your adult child and their partner, especially when it comes to grandchildren.
This will allow you to explore expectations, boundaries, rules and areas of disagreement before anything can escalate into a problem.
There is, however, one very fundamental rule that you need to remember:
You are not your grandchild’s parents.
You do not have ‘equal rights’ with your child and their partner. If they set a rule, you need to respect it, even if you don’t agree with it. You agreeing to abide by their rules is NOT compromise—it is grandparenting.