is upon us. The shopping centre will now be full of grandparents who, having now dropped their grandchildren at school, are doing the essential shopping for "after-school" snacks. Some of them might be lucky enough to be able to enjoy a little bit of quiet "down time" over a cup of coffee with friends - even if they have to keep watch on toddlers at the same time.
I was talking to some grandparents yesterday. They were watching their grandchildren tearing up and down our short and, thankfully, quiet street. The Christmas bicycles and scooters were getting a work out. The parents of two of the children had gone off to a "work" barbecue.
"They didn't want to take the kids because of the alcohol," the grandfather told me resignedly. I could see he thought it was just another excuse to leave the children with their grandparents. The grandparents have had to care for them right through the long summer holiday from school. They had to care for them and their home-schooling through the worst of the pandemic situation last year too. "Granny" was once a teacher. It was assumed she could cope even though she has not been well.
I wonder how many other parents left their children with grandparents and went off to a holiday barbecue event? I suspect there were quite a few. There were far too many children who were simply handed over to their grandparents for the entire summer. "Out of school hours" care ("OSH") was available but grandparents come free. They will be used if available.
It is difficult not to make yourself available. Our mother made herself available for Middle Cat because Middle Cat's MIL, like the good Cypriot-Greek woman she was, saw it as her duty to care for the grandchildren. Our mother had just two small boys to be concerned about. P.... would sometimes have all her nine grandchildren in the house - and then their parents would come in at the end of the working day for a meal. Middle Cat was never happy about this. It didn't seem right to her even though P.... insisted it was. But our mother looking after the two boys? Well, "Mum used to be a school principal. She knows how to.... "
The Senior Cat did help. He would still teach small children how to bang in a nail out in the shed if he could. Still he admitted to me quite recently that "all that child minding meant your mother and I didn't do the things we had planned and we didn't spend enough time together".
And that is true of so many grandparents now. The "retirement" they looked forward to no longer exists. They take on a new role as "carers" - carers of not just their grandchildren but their children (do the washing, the ironing, cook an evening meal, shop for basics, buy new schools, take the car in for a service and more). On top of that some of them also have parents to care for or, at very least, be concerned for as they reach extreme old age.
The paediatrician and her husband who live across the road come from another part of the world. They have no close relatives here. They cannot rely on anyone else to care for their children. They know they can call on me in an emergency. I don't doubt that the grandparents who care for the two children next door would help as well.
Both these people work. M.... works from home when he can. If he can't and S.... is working they pay for child-minding. They have a regular person they can call on. The boys like her and she will come to them until the younger of the two starts school next year. She is young and active and will finish her own training at the end of the year too. Yes, it has worked out well but it has been work too - work finding the right person and work being involved in what activities she will do with the boys. They don't get spoiled by her - "She's just like Mummy and never lets us...."
It's harder for grandparents, especially when their children have different ideas about how children should be brought up. The grandfather in question went off to help a wobbling new rider and the grandmother turned to me,
"I'll be so glad to see them back at school tomorrow. I love them but it gets a bit much at times."
She held up the extra paper and cardboard I had just given her. There were instructions in there for a couple of paper and cardboard toys as well.
"Thanks for this. I'd better go and get a meal started. With any luck they will be ready to settle down to this for a little while and I can get their things ready for tomorrow."
I couldn't help thinking their mother should have been doing that. It is their grandparents who will be taking them to school today.
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