Treat 'Em Like Grandkids

Monday Devotion

“Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter. . .”

Deuteronomy 5:13

A grandfather in Yona Zeldis McDonough’s novel The Four Temperaments reflects on having grandchildren:

“People always said you enjoyed your grandchildren more than you did your children. It was true. When the boys were little, Oscar was still so consumed by anxiety about his career, still plotting and working to shape the trajectory it would take. Looking back, he saw himself as constantly worried: about money, about his music, about Ruth’s happiness, about his own. Not that he ignored or neglected his boys; quite the contrary, they were a large part of his thinking and activity. But they were also a part of his worry, woven tightly into the scratchy fabric of his anxiety. He worried about where they went to school, their musical education, their choices in friends and girls, their various annoying or alarming habits. Accidents, choking, drowning, drugs, cigarettes—the worries, no less troubling for their being so common, shared by so many parents. With Isobel [his granddaughter], however, he discovered that he was much less worried. He had no program for her, no agenda. Instead, he was able to live in the present with her much more fully than he could with his own children. And, to his surprise, he was happy there.”

One reason grandparents enjoy their grandkids so much is that they’re not always trying to fix them or correct them. They take the time to enjoy them, and that makes all the difference. They live in the present, with no resentment about the past and less obsession about the future.