Ask Margaret: How to Foster Relationships with Grandparents

What can we do to foster relationships between our kids and their grandparents? A listener in our Facebook group asked:

"A question for those of you sandwiched between kiddos and elders in your home. How do you encourage interaction between the two ends of the spectrum? Our elder is old-school and equates time with our kiddo as a time to treat them with food and gifts. How do you support this relationship?"

It's important to realize that in any interaction that you are trying to foster, that you don't have a tremendous amount of control, Margaret says.

That being said, you can lay out guidelines and be very clear that, for example, "we only eat between these hours and this hour, and this is how we approach this kind of food. And so please limit the amount of treats you give my kid to one a day." You can go over this boundary with your kid as well.

If your child has overlapping interests with any of their grandparents, that's a great place to start. You can also direct your child to talk to their grandparents if they express curiosity about a topic or time period they're familiar with. It can also go the other way, in that you can suggest a grandparent play a game or engage in an activity that your child is passionate about.

Ultimately, you are a facilitator, not a controller, and you can't dictate the relationship between your child and their grandparents, but you can keep offering up opportunities for connection.

Here's the article Margaret references in the episode:

Susan Adcox for VeryWell Family: 6 Factors of Grandparent-Grandchild Closeness

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