Just like parenting, grandparenting requires skills—and you can’t necessarily assume that you acquired them all during the time that your children were small. Grandparents need soft skills like emotional intelligence—and our page on Emotional Intelligence for Grandparents explains more about this. However, they also need more practical skills and knowledge.

Grandparents may choose to emphasise that ‘children don’t change’—but parenting practice certainly does, and has, in the last 20 to 30 years. New knowledge has emerged requiring updated practice, including about safe sleeping and car safety. This has been accompanied by the rise of new issues and potential dangers such as technology, screen time and allergies.

This page explains more about the practical issues on which grandparents need to inform themselves, and some of the practical skills needed.

Safety in the Home: Child-Proofing

If you were to ask most parents about their top concern when visiting other people’s houses, it would probably be whether it is safe for their children.

In your own house, as a parent, you move things as your children grow. You see what your children are doing and investigating, and you move anything that might be dangerous. Breakable things migrate upwards over time—and then, as children get older and are less likely to grab and drop, back down again. Kitchen and bathroom chemicals are put into boxes or up into cabinets, or latches are placed on cupboard doors to ensure that small fingers cannot open them.

In other people’s houses where there are no young children, the same is not necessarily true.

The problem here is that an unsafe environment requires constant vigilance from visiting parents. They cannot relax because they are having to watch their children all the time. An unsafe house is therefore not a pleasant place to visit for parents of young children—even if on the face of it, it is welcoming, with toys and books to entertain the children.

Should grandparents child-proof their house?

Most parents would not ask this of their own parents or their in-laws.

However, there is no question that a bit of prior preparation and planning—and perhaps a small investment into a few safety features—can make a visit from grandchildren much pleasanter for everyone. This, in turn, means that your child or their partner is more likely to visit again, and more often, meaning that you see your grandchildren more often.

What should grandparents do to make their home safe for grandchildren?

There are a few basic and some more advanced things that you should consider doing to make your home safer and pleasanter for visiting. These include:

• Lift anything breakable out of reach. It is unlikely that your grandchildren will want to break anything—but moving things out of the way will mean a more relaxing time for everyone.

• Get a temporary stairgate. The best stairgates are fixed into place using screws or similar. However, some use clamps, and can be put up temporarily. Consider investing in one of these and putting it in place for visits.

• Move kitchen and bathroom chemicals—or get latches for cupboard doors. Kitchen cupboards are almost irresistible for small people, especially if they are not allowed access to them at home. Consider small plastic latches that can be used to hold cupboards shut, or take time to move any chemicals out of reach. That will include dishwasher tablets, washing-up liquid, and toilet cleaners. Alternatively, resign yourself to shutting the kitchen and bathroom doors at all times and keeping the children out unless they are accompanied by an adult.

• Walk around all the rooms and look for things that might be dangerous. Matches are an obvious example, but there may well be others like medications, tobacco, vapes or alcohol. Put them all well out of reach, and preferably out of sight too.

• Get fences or covers for all water. Ponds and pools are major safety issues, because children may drown in as little as two inches of water. If you have a pool or pond, put a safety fence around it. Indeed, in some countries, fences around swimming pools are required by law. Covers on swimming pools can be almost more dangerous than an open pool, because a child can step onto it and fall forwards, then be unable to get up or shout for help.

• Check that your furniture is secure. This is an issue that many people overlook. Furniture such as chests of drawers can be pulled over by a child trying to climb. Consider securing anything like that with a strap at the back fastened to the wall. It’s a quick, easy fix, and could save lives. In Europe and the UK, most furniture now comes with straps included.

It is worth asking your adult child and their partner if there is anything in particular that they would like you to do to make your home safer for your grandchildren. They will often have identified hazards that you might not notice, based on their children’s normal behaviour.

Other Safety Issues in the Home: Safe Sleep and Food Allergies

There are two other safety issues worth mentioning: food allergies and safe sleep.

What is the current guidance on safe sleeping practices for babies?

Current guidelines on safe sleep for babies recommend putting children to sleep on their backs, with a firm, flat mattress.

Babies should NOT be given pillows, or have anything like a bumper around their cots. They should also use baby sleeping bags—which their parents will probably supply anyway—and anything like a duvet should be avoided until the child is in a bed instead of a cot.

If you plan to buy a cot to have at your house, the best advice is to have a travel cot.

This can double as a playpen/safe space into which you can put a child if you need to leave them alone, even very briefly (for example, if you need to visit the bathroom).

What do grandparents need to know about food allergies?

It is important to understand that food allergies have become both more common and more serious in the last 50 years.

One in five people now has a food intolerance or allergy, and the figure is growing every year (and you can find out more about this in our page on Food Allergies and Intolerances). It is also important to understand that food allergies can be not only dangerous, but deadly. Giving someone a food to which they are allergic can result in anaphylactic shock and death.

The bottom line for grandparents, therefore, is that if your child and their partner say that one of your grandchildren has a food allergy or intolerance, this is NOT something to test.

Respect what they say about which foods must be avoided, and check labels before feeding anything to your grandchild. You should also educate yourself about how to treat food allergies and anaphylactic shock, and make sure that you know how to administer an adrenaline pen (often called an EpiPen) if necessary. If an allergic reaction occurs, use the EpiPen and get medical help as quickly as possible.

Should grandparents remove all allergens from the house?

There is no hard and fast rule about this.

It depends on factors like the seriousness of the allergy, and how easy it would be to remove the allergen from your house. It also depends on the allergen. Nuts, for example, tend to be accompanied by dust, which means that they spread in the air. Eggs are less likely to do so.

The best rule is to ask your child and their partner what they would like you to do, and what precautions you should take when preparing food for your grandchild.

Your child and their partner may also ask you to avoid certain activities or locations when with your grandchild, because of the level of risk. If so, you need to respect that request, even if it is inconvenient.

Safety Outside the Home: Car Seats and Other Travel

One area where parenting—and safety—practice has changed considerably in the last 20 to 30 years is travel, and specifically car seats.

Understanding has grown that children are safer in cars when secured by age-specific restraints, rather than seatbelts designed for adults. Many countries now have laws about the use of car seats, specified by age.

For example:

• A total of 76 countries around the world have no official child car seat laws and 62 have no front seat restrictions (others restrict the use of rear-facing seats if an airbag is present, for example, or say that children under a certain age cannot travel in the front seat).

• In Australia, children under seven years old must be secured in a car using a restraint that complies with Australian and New Zealand standards. Car seats from other countries do NOT meet these standards. There are specific requirements about children under six months old, and between six months and four years.

• In the USA, each state has its own child car seat laws, and these vary considerably between states. Anyone travelling between states needs to comply with the law in the state in which they are currently travelling.

• In the UK, children have to use an approved car seat until they are either 12 years old, or 135cm tall, whichever happens sooner. Only EU-approved car seats can be used, and the seat design varies with the child’s age.

What do grandparents need to know and do about car seats?

First, grandparents need to know what the law is about travelling with children in cars in their country. Government websites are a good place to start or, if travelling or visiting your child and their partner elsewhere, use a resource such as Skyscanner’s interactive map.

Second, if a car seat is required, grandparents have a choice when transporting grandchildren. They can either get their own car seats, or ask the child’s parents to supply them. Car seats are expensive, so it usually makes more sense for the seats to accompany the children.

Third, grandparents need to know how to secure car seats into their car, and then the children into the seats. It may be worth getting your adult child or their partner to secure the seat for you, to make sure it is done correctly. However, you also need to be confident that you can put the child in and secure them appropriately. This is not the time or place to be ‘winging it’.

Changes to Practice and Emerging Risks

There have been—as we have already said—many changes to parenting practices in the last 20 to 30 years, and possibly even more in the 20 or 30 years before that.

It is therefore almost certain that many of the practices you used with your children are now considered out-of-date or even dangerous. We mentioned car seats, sleeping and food allergies, but there are also others. New risks and issues have also emerged, including the ubiquity of technology.

What changes to parenting practice should grandparents know about?

The most important safety issues have already been mentioned: safe sleeping, car seats and food allergies.

However, grandparents should also be aware that there have been many changes to routine practice. For example, weaning is now ‘baby-led’, and involves more finger food that you may have used when your children were small. Disciplinary practices have also changed. The evidence now favours the use of ‘positive reinforcement’, where you praise and encourage the behaviour you want to see, and ignore the behaviour that you do not want.

What new issues and risks should grandparents consider?

One of the biggest new issues that has emerged recently is the ubiquity of technology.

Smartphones are now everywhere, and screens are often treated as a ‘super-babysitter’. However, there is growing awareness of the risks of excessive screentime, especially for young children. These include poor development of interpersonal skills and effects on sleep. Our page on Setting and Enforcing Screen Time for Children explains more about these risks.

The expert advice on how much screen time should be allowed is also considerably less than most children probably get (see box).

Grandparents are perhaps less likely than parents to allow children unsupervised access to screens—but they may also be more likely to give into requests for screentime, or want to watch a favourite programme themselves while the children are present. It is therefore important to know and enforce parental rules on screentime.

What should grandparents do to keep themselves updated?

The best way for you to keep yourself updated is to ask your adult child and their partner for information.

They will probably be happy to tell you more about their chosen approaches, or signpost you to more information online. This will also ensure that your approach is consistent with theirs, and you are presenting a united front.

---

In Conclusion...

Grandparents often need practical skills and knowledge to ensure that they can look after their grandchildren effectively and appropriately.

Changes to parenting approaches and styles means that grandparents’ knowledge about child-rearing may be out of date. Luckily, most parents are happy to fill in the gaps with information or access to resources, and this should not be a problem. The key is for grandparents to be willing to ask for more information to ensure that they know what they should be doing.

---