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• Controversy: Saying No To Grandma (And Grandpa)

  If you want to laugh out loud, make sure you check out the comments on Madeline's "Granny Manual" post.  Madeline invited readers to vent about their intrusive or misguided parents or inlaws (inevitably the inlaws - why is that always the case???), and over 50 readers took her up on it. Here's my question:  obviously, many of us have to deal with unwanted advice or gifts . . .   Read More... Posted Jun 06 2008, 08:02 AM by asflutz with | with 12 comment(s) Filed under: grandparents, Etiquette, saying no, spoiling grandchildren, conflict resolution

• Granny Manual: 8 Things Grandma Needs to Know About Babies

  I remember my first visit as a mother to the in-law's family compound. I was the only breastfeeder for generations and generations and not at all sure how that would pan out among a crowd that thinks the more time a baby is away from Mama the better. Our newborn napped on a bed; they only knew from bassinets and playpens. We didn't use pacifiers. We were careless about socks. I wasn't the first of my husband's siblings to bring them a grandchild. But I was the first one to be doing everything right. (Settle down, that's a joke.) During that visit, it was finally my baby's great-grandmother's turn to change a diaper -- such a demand, I should have drafted a sign-up sheet -- and I overheard my mother-in-law stage-whispering, "No powder! They're not using powder!" "But rashes! What about rashes," the elder wanted to know. Silence. I knew they were exchanging raised eyebrows, shrugged shoulders, and deep, deep doubt about the wisdom of unpowdered babies. Powder isn't such a bad thing, but what I'm trying to illustrate is that things change. I'm sure you've gone a round or two with the prior generation, perhaps even with your own mother, about what you do differently as a parent. Poor grandma (and super poor grandpa! He's actually expected to participate this time!). What they need is a manual of things they should know about babies.  Let's whip one up for them. Feel free to add your own, but I'll start with these eight:   Read More... Posted Jun 03 2008, 02:01 PM by Madeline Holler with | with 61 comment(s) Filed under: grandparents, breastfeeding, the poop, grandchildren, baby powder, new parenting, trends in parenting, granny manual, the next generation, sfgate

• Babble Talk: When Mom Moves Back in With Mom and Dad

  Nan Mooney is George Costanza. Okay, she's not really. She doesn't appear to be bald and I seriously doubt she wishes she were an architect named Art Vandelay. But due to unforeseen circumstances, the single mom was forced to move back in with her parents at age 37, with infant in tow. As she writes in this essay, sharing the same space with her parents is hard for many reasons, including those moments when they question her maternal response. Read More... Posted May 06 2008, 09:02 AM by Jen Chaney with | with no comments Filed under: grandparents, babble talk, moving in with parents, cohabiting

• Political Nanny: Extra Cookies for the Loving Woman Who Defies Michelle O.

  Posted by Political Nanny If Barack Obama isn't a family man, he's hidden it well. He likened the duration of his campaign so far -- 15 months -- to the growth and development of a newborn who would now be a capable walking, talking toddler. He mentions his children frequently. He holds babies like a champ. He's got kids on the brain.   Read More... Posted Apr 03 2008, 05:03 PM by Madeline Holler with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: grandparents, childcare, barack obama, michelle obama, malia obama, campaign trail, kids on the campaign trail, Boston Globe, Marion Robinson, Extra Cookie, Sasha Obama

• Telling Grandma to Back Off

  My oldest just returned from a week at grandma's house. The deprogramming only took 24 hours. My Hub and I think its (mostly) swell. Everyone deserves to be completely spoiled every now and again. His mom's brand of doting is wonderful (mostly) and benign. Not every parent is so lucky and WebMD's Dr. P. ponders what to do when you and the grands aren't on the same page. Read More... Posted Feb 28 2008, 01:00 PM by Adrienne Martini with | with no comments Filed under: grandparents, spoiling, Dr. Parker, Dr. Dobson

• Homemade Roller Coaster!

  We should all have access to one of these -- a homemade roller coaster. An auto mechanic, with, I'm guessing tons of property insurance, built a roller coaster in his backyard! He used scrap metal and his welding skills and figured the rest out as he went. Guess what.        Read More... Posted Feb 03 2008, 05:39 PM by Madeline Holler with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: grandparents, DIY, accidental death, lifestyle, grandchildren, activities with kids, activity center, diy life, diylife, roller coaster

• Parents Telling You How to Raise Your Kids? Sound Off On TV!

  I'm pretty lucky about my parents: so far they haven't really given me much assvice about raising my kids. Not that I ask them, mind you, but they're pretty hands-off about that sort of thing. But I know plenty of parents who aren't so lucky and who are constantly gritting their teeth because their parents or their in-laws insist on giving advice where it's not wanted. [Back off, Grandma! You had your chance! (And look what you did with it!)] Is this you? And do you want to be interviewed on camera for a story on "Good Morning America"? (Why not, it's not exactly Jerry Springer.) Fill out this form and who knows, you could be on TV, airing your problems in front of millions! (Be sure and let us know if you do get on the show, and we'll be sure to promote the hell out of you.) (Too shy for TV? I don't blame you. I don't think I could do it either.)  Posted Oct 17 2007, 09:55 AM by Karen Murphy with | with no comments Filed under: parents, grandparents, parenting advice, Good Morning America

• Grandpa Donates Sperm to Daughter-in-Law

  God, those meddling grandparents. First they nag about grandchildren. Then they bear them. Now they want to father them (and I’m not talking about coaching Little League). An English fertility clinic recently agreed to allow a 72-year-old man to donate sperm to his son and daughter-in-law to help her conceive.     Read More... Posted Oct 06 2007, 03:42 PM by Madeline Holler with | with 6 comment(s) Filed under: grandparents, infertility, DNA Testing, grandchildren, donor sperm

• Bad Babysitter: The Other Worst Nightmare

  As Karen pointed out in her post on the daycare that disciplined toddlers using tacks (pause to gag in horror), leaving your child in the care of someone else is a nerve-wracking proposition. Of course babysitters are included in that, and we've seen some wretched childcare stories. But when the babysitter is a relative, like say, the grandmother, it's ugh and more ugh. In this case, a grandma who thought the legal drinking age ought to be nine years old. Well, actually it's worse than that.   Read More... Posted Sep 14 2007, 04:02 PM by Kelly Mills with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: grandparents, child abuse, child care, babysitters

• Are There Cool Names for Grandparents?

  Mine was the formal family. My grandparents were known as "Grandmother and Grandfather." Bleh. That's a mouthful when you're a kid. But we didn't see them often and it was only awkward once every few years. My kids call their grandparents "Grandma and Grandpa." Original! It took my parents awhile to get used to their new names; my dad especially failed to respond on more than one occasion when someone addressed him as "Grandpa." But I hear kids all over addressing their grandparents by all sorts of other names:  Grammie, Pop-Pop, Nana, Meemaw, Paw Paw... Ugh. Read More... Posted Aug 28 2007, 07:34 AM by Karen Murphy with | with 26 comment(s) Filed under: grandparents, grandchildren, names, nicknames

• Sleepaway Camp: A Mixed Bag

  We've been covering summer camp loads lately, and I know my own camp memories are not super-fond. (Note: "bookish kid" and "camp" do not make a happy mix, or at least they didn't in the olden days.) But this week we are getting to test sleepaway camp in the best possible way. Grandma is doing her own camp for my kid, complete with staying the night, and I imagine there will be a minimum of short-sheeting and toothpaste in the hair while she sleeps. Woo hoo! I love my kid, but all of the sudden I have more freedom than I know what to do with. It's awesome and a little scary, all at the same time. Mostly I'm giddy. My husband, however, made camp parent mistake number one. He just finished reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I won't give any plot details away (especially since I haven't read it yet, I'm no camp fool) but all you need to know is that it's the kind of book that makes you want to grab your kid and squeeze them tight, perhaps for twenty-four hours at a stretch. I just overheard him on the phone with the kid, saying, "You know I love you more than anything else in the whole world" in a cracking voice. That's right, papa played himself, the sucka. I'm imagining it will be a loooong week for him, and a short one for me. By the way, the kid is thrilled to be at Grandma Camp. Last week she said to me, "Sometimes when you talk you sound a little like grandma, and it makes me sad because I miss her. Could you try not to do that?" Now there's a brutal twist on not wanting to sound like your mother.   Posted Jul 03 2007, 07:29 AM by Kelly Mills with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: grandparents, camp, summer activities

• Encouraging Grandparents to Get Involved in Summer Fun

  If your children have grandparents in the vicinity, I certainly hope you're taking full advantage of them. Ours live far away, so we can only abuse their good natures from time to time, until the kids are old enough to fly unaccompanied. One grandfather in England put together a list of activities that people can do with their grandchildren this summer, and it makes me want to pack my kids up, pin a note to their shirts, and ship them off to this guy to hang out for a while. Train excursions, walking and cycling tours, visits to castles and manor houses, about a jillion museums and zoos. It sounds positively fabulous. When my kids are just a little bit older, they'll be able to spend summers chilling in the AC with Grammy in Phoenix, going to movies with their cousins and doing art projects with their great-aunt. They'll explore the Minnesota countryside with their Mimi and Papa, learning to paddle canoes and waterski. I hope their memories will be as fond as my memories of driving around the Midwest with my grandparents, hitting up farm auctions and visiting distant relatives. But I wouldn't say no to anyone who'd like to volunteer to act as an adoptive British Grandparent to my kids. Dude, castles! Please share what your children will be doing with their grandparents as they get older, so I can decide if I need to ship mine there as well. Maybe we can work out a trade? Posted Jun 05 2007, 02:39 PM by Patti with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: children, activities, grandparents

• Are You Better Off Than Your Parents?

  Looking around the average suburban neighborhood, replete with 4 bedroom 1 1/2 bath houses, 2 car garages loaded up with newer vehicles sporting in-dash DVD players, it certainly appears that some of us are "better off" than our parents before us.  But according to the Wall Street Journal, this isn't the case. Men in their 30s today earn 30% less than their counterparts in the mid-70s.  Obviously, total household income is higher in families where there are two breadwinners, but so are daycare costs and cost of housing as a percentage of total income (I'm not even talking about gas prices). As our expectations of the good life change and expand (just look at the size of homes now as compared to 20 years ago), it is also more difficult to measure how we are faring compared to our parents.  Personally, I think we're better off from a material standpoint, but in general our debt-to-income ratio is horrid and our material expectations have gotten totally out of hand. How does your family's income/lifestyle compare to your parents?  Posted May 25 2007, 02:19 PM by Rachael Brownell (Redsy) with | with 4 comment(s) Filed under: parents, materialism, wealth, grandparents, american dream, income

• Twins Need to Spend Time Apart: Grandma Knows Best?

  Grandparents are a blessing.  An exhausting, irritating, fabulously joyful blessing.  And there are so many of them.  With so many opinions.  Take the example of the nice grandma who opines about the importance of her twin grandchildren spending time apart. Her intrepid adviser encourages her to talk "frankly" with the twins' mom (her daughter) about the importance of treating each twin individually and blah blah blah.   Here's the thing about grandparenting that's fabulous: It's not parenting.  Grandparents who do their job well refrain from opinion-giving unless the absolute essential health and welfare of the grandkids is involved. And by the way the three-year old twins in this story who the grandma complains never spend time apart, probably don't have individual activities yet because their parents are so overwhelmed just keeping things together day by day.  Back off, grandma, have some compassion! Posted May 18 2007, 01:11 PM by Rachael Brownell (Redsy) with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: children, kids, twins, grandparents, parenting advice, multiples, childrearing, opinions

• Grandparents: Love 'Em or Not, They're Part of Your (and Your Children's) Life

  Today is my mom's birthday (hi mom!).  She's in her 70's now, which plants her firmly into Grandma territory, not that she sees her grandchildren much because we live on opposite coasts.  Sure, there are annual-or-so visits, but it's not the same.  I never had close extended family while growing up either, so this doesn't seem all that strange to me, but I know that my children would like to see more of their grandma and to get to know her.  I have friends who have almost the opposite problem, having parents or in-laws who live in their neighborhood or just across town, but for some reason I don't hear them complaining a lot.  I think it's great for children to grow up knowing people of different generations. Read More... Posted Mar 21 2007, 03:57 PM by Karen Murphy with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: grandparents, families, grandchildren

• Toy Battles: Who has the Right to Choose?

  This column about a grandmother asking whether she needed to respect her son and daughter-in-law's wishes when it comes to choosing toys for the grandchildren reminded me of the battles described by many families I know.  I've been lucky in that my parents have always respected my thoughts when it came time to give gifts to my children but I know other families for whom this is a routine and often highly dramatic battle.  In the cases I know, the children's parents have specific thoughts about how they wish to raise their children, often avoiding media or commercialized toys or simply trying to cut down on the sheer volume of toys that seems to accumulate and then continue breeding in every home these days. Meanwhile the grandparents have different values or just attempt to show their love for their grandchildren by buying out the entire contents of Toys "R" Us on a monthly basis. Read More... Posted Mar 16 2007, 08:08 AM by Karen Murphy with | with 11 comment(s) Filed under: parenting, toys, grandparents, conflict, tacky plastic toys

• Should Contact Between Adopted Children and Their Biological Families be Legislated?

  Contact between adopted children and their biological parents can be fraught with conflict.  The well-publicized case of Allison Quets who gave up her twins for adoption and then kidnapped them is case in point.  While open adoptions usually specify the type and frequency of contact between parents and children, the situation for relatives of biological children is sometimes less clear, especially when the situation involves older children, or  foster care followed by adoption. In states such as North Carolina, where adopted children are allowed to maintain contact with biological relatives, a recently convened panel recommended proposed legislation that would set out enforceable rules to forestall battles over continued contact. Organizations such as Origins Canada specialize in reuniting people separated by adoption and take the position that adoption is a big business and that some mothers are pressured into giving their children up for adoption.  If this is the case, the need for guidelines addressing these relationships seems increasingly important. Posted Jan 21 2007, 04:57 PM by Rachael Brownell (Redsy) with | with no comments Filed under: parents, adoption, grandparents, foster care, biological parents rights, parents rights, allison quets, North Carolina, Origins Canada

• Too Many Grandparents, Not Enough Time

  Today's grandparents are younger, hipper, and less inclined to rock (in a chair) than previous generations.  The Baby Boomers ride Harleys, swear in front of the grandkids, wear leather, and do not always forsake their sinful youths in favor of growing stodgy.   They live longer and healthier lives than their parents.  And roughly 40% of Boomers have been divorced at least once.  The generation that bought wholeheartedly into the concept that kids prefer to live with happily divorced parents, rather than unhappily married ones, didn't realize the Pandora's box they were opening. Which brings us to the current situation. Currently, there are 78.2 million Baby Boomers in the U.S., about 1 million of whom are my childrens' grandparents.  My parents divorced in 1979 and each remarried.  I married someone whose parents similarly divorced and remarried.  So between the two of us, we have 8 parents.  Since ours is a second marriage, my children also have 4 parents, each of whom have parents who have divorced and remarried. You following so far? My children have twelve grandparents. TWELVE.  Imagine birthdays and holidays with this many loving grandparents (most of whom are within driving distance).  Can you say 'too much of a good thing'? Clearly we set a new standard for 'blended' families here.  A standard I'm not sure future generations will be able to make sense of without a computer, a roll of measuring tape, and a five-dimensional holographic family tree.  Posted Jan 10 2007, 01:00 PM by Rachael Brownell (Redsy) with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: divorce, grandparents, Baby Boomers, blended families