We’re hearing those magical words again: Back to School. It’s important to be ready for the new academic year, of course, and we’re not talking about the children. That’s why they have parents, to make sure the immunizations are up to date, names are permanently inscribed on clothing, orientation is attended, homework routines are discussed.
For grandparents, a new school year involves a different set of support activities, a big chunk of which is providing money. Those can be direct, like paying for after-care, covering fees for activities, and financing instruments and/or sports gear. And then there are the indirect expenses, like buying all the leftover bake sale cookies or surreptitiously acquiring the comic books the parents are trying to limit. Yes, grandparenting duties often wander into the gray areas.
Often, though, it’s about simply being available. A child may need help with schoolwork and your decades of experience will be deeply valued, except in math, which nowadays is some confounding method devised by experts to keep grandparents out of the equation. So, prepare to pay for a tutor. Otherwise, be that engaging source of wisdom where youngsters will love to hear stories about the long-ago days of the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s when dinosaurs roamed the Mid-South and gas was 19.9 cents a gallon. Don’t forget to show them photos of you with big hair (or any hair) wearing paisley and peppermint striped fashion combos.
They’ll also love to hear how Miss Crabapple, your high school English teacher, enforced rules against split infinitives and demanded subject-verb agreement. Much of what young people say these days would be deemed appalling by Miss C, and as a responsible grandparent, you can make a fun game of it by correcting your young charges constantly. They may tire of this exercise before you get sick of doing it, though. When, after all, do we decide when we’ve all suffered enough?
There are also opportunities with the written word. Inform your impressionable descendants that, as literacy expert Pam Allyn has said, “Reading is like breathing in and writing is like breathing out.” Encourage creative expression and you’ll have treasured birthday cards for years. And if you really want to give the kiddos an advantage, be sure and teach them to write in cursive. They’ll be the envy of their classmates, I’m pretty sure.
The larger mission is always to help the youngsters learn new things and cope with new situations. This is good and proper, but sometimes, your role as a grand is to simply be there and listen. School at every level has its stresses and it’s not always about tests and homework and academics. Sometimes, you serve best if you listen to them complain about their parents (they’re so unfair!), siblings (mean!), other students (annoying!), cafeteria food (yuk!), teachers (unfair, mean, annoying, yuk!), girlfriends/boyfriends (whatever!) — you know exactly what I’m talking about because it happened with your children and it happened to you back in the Cretaceous Period.
The key to all this is to simply pay attention. I once asked a minister how he counseled people who came to him with arrays of woes and troubles. I was looking for a clever set of words he’d always be able to produce on demand, but, he said, he mainly listened. So many issues get resolved, or at least eased, when the person can talk to someone about what’s going on. And then if you follow that up with an offer to go get some ice cream and a comic book, much has been achieved.
So keep in mind that “back to school” is merely a subset of activities going on in August and September. Students will be imagining how the new year will go, particularly if it’s a new school. Parents will be hashing out logistics and schedules. Grandparents, though, have the advantage of enjoying the big picture — helping out with details, providing a ready ear, arranging for welcome distractions, making sure the routine never gets boring.
And, of course, writing a few checks.