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Tough Love
Living with Your Child and Grandchild
By Laura Paul
Grandchildren can be the pride and joy of grandparents, but it's an entirely different situation when the grandchildren are living with their single parent and grandparents. Much of the mystery and excitement is gone. A teenager granddaughter who used to be so polite has lost her halo and grown outright obnoxious and annoying.
Experts say grandparents, as the head of multigenerational households, have countless challenges, especially when their grandchild is acting out. They must balance their roles as fun-loving grandparents while still insisting their children raise their own children – even if it is under the grandparents' roof. Also, grandparents need to know when to let go if a grandchild is not pulling his or her share of the responsibilities or is contributing to more gray hairs.
Sally Houtman, of Los Angeles, Calif., could not put words to it as a child, but she knew things were not the way they were supposed to be. Houtman, the author of To Grandma's House, We ... Stay – When You Have to Stop Spoiling Your Grandchildren and Start Raising Them (Studio 4 Productions, 1999), lived with her grandparents, brother and father.
"I remember being in school, and when my classmates came back from family vacation, they went to Grandma's farm or they went to visit Grandma and Grandpa and got in an airplane and then came home," she says. "I remember thinking as a child how I did not get to do that. My whole family was in the same house."
"I was very aware when I was growing up that something was missing that I did not get to take advantage of," Houtman says. "As a child I did not think about the fact that my grandparents were not getting it either. As I got older I really started feeling for them – they missed out, too."