Grandparents: pals or pressure!
raising a second family have lost their peer group. Their contemporaries are not involved in rearing children, and many of their friends and relatives may be unable to handle the challenges of caring for a child again. Support groups offer grandparents who face common problems the opportunity to meet each other and share their experiences, knowledge, strengths and hopes. Parenting classes are also a good way for grandparents to obtain support while updating their child rearing knowledge (Bjorklund, 2001).
Linking respite services with support groups is an important way to reach and assist grandparents on an ongoing basis. Because respite can provide continuous care giving breaks, this partnership is especially crucial for grandparents who are raising grandchildren with special needs. A large number of children being raised by grandparents may fall into this category, because children whose parents are absent are likely to have been affected by substance abuse, neglect or other traumas (Bjorklund, 2001).
Children develop an understanding to tackle with the situation as they have shared the stories with their grandparents and could understand how the life and circumstances should be taken. It is a perpetual relationship and children also understand how to cope in difficulties of pain and anguish and how to help the ailing when they help their grandparents. This creates a humane bonding between them. When children are staying with their grandparents then they become mature and are not reactionary towards the situation rather they think logically and are not selfish. This temperament helps them to resolve the difficulties with ease (Bjorklund, 2001).
Staying with grandparents is full of accomplishments provided proper understanding is developed between the two groups. Grandparents must also behave with maturity with their grandchildren to build confidence in them even in the situations like family violence to stay and stand as a rock rather than crying around and abusing parents for their disputes.
When grandparents are living in the family as a joint family then disputes are taken care by them. It becomes all the more responsibility of the head of the family to take care that disputes do not occur and they should take the responsibility of creating a congenial and co-operative atmosphere in the family where even the biggest problem doesn’t seem to be big and taken care with ease. The family bonding is all about parenting and affection, to stand by each other in difficulties and enjoy together all the happy moments. It is about sharing and therefore achievements of a child become double when grandparents provide their enduring shelter (Bjorklund, 2001).
It is the need of time to have an understanding towards the humane rather than living with disputes for the progress of the family, for society and for the nation and hence for the world. We are human beings this thought must be deep inculcated in individual’s mind and family is a unit of the society, broken family leads to broken and disputed society and here no progress can be made. Grandparents should therefore take the charge of providing a better future with their experiences to their grandchildren.
At times grandparents feel loss of their traditional grandparent role, together with the shift in commitment to the grandparent-as-parent role has resulted in a space of difference between the ideal and the real of being a grandparent. This space of difference is made up of a series of binary experiences described as myth/reality, visible/ invisible, deserving/ undeserving, voice/ silenced, included/ excluded. This has impacted grandparents self esteem and self-verification processes.
References
1. Ackerson, B. J (2003). Coping with the dual demands of severe mental illness and parenting: The parents perspective. Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Human Services, 84(1), 109-119.
2. Bjorklund, R. R., Bee, H. L. (2001). The Journey of Adulthood. Prentice Hall.
3. Fuller-Thomson, E., Minkler, M. (2000). America’s grandparent caregivers: Who are they? In Hayslip, B. and Goldberg-Glen (Eds). Grandparents Raising Grandchildren: Theoretical, Emperical and Clinical Perspectives, Springer Publishing Co New York.
4. Fuller-Thomson, E., Minkler, M. (2003). Housing issues and realities facing grandparent caregivers who are renters. The Gerontologist, 43(1), 92-98.
5. Fuller-Thomson, E., Minkler, M. Driver, D (2000). A profile of grandparents raising grandchildren in the United States in Cox, C. B. (Ed). To Grandmother’s House We Go and Stay: Perspectives on Custodial Grandparents, Springer Publishing Co. New York.
6. Giarrusso, R., Silverstein, M., Feng, D. (2000). Psychological costs and benefits of raising grandchildren: Evidence from a national survey of grandparents. In Cox, C. E (Ed). To Grandmother’s