Why I Used to Rant About My Mum’s Grandparenting (And What It Taught Me About Parenting)
Last Sunday, I stood at my kitchen counter measuring flour for chocolate chip cookies, my 7-year-old Lila perched on a step stool beside me, dumping half a bag of chocolate chips into the bowl before I could tell her we only needed two cups. Counter tops were dusted with flour, a crumb of butter was melting onto the floor, and I was just about to hand her the wooden spoon to stir when my mum walked in from the backyard, wiped her hands on her jeans, and plucked the spoon right out of Lila’s reach. “You’re smearing batter all over the place,” she said. “Let Nan do this, you can sprinkle the chips on top after it’s in the pan.”
I felt that familiar hot prickle of irritation creep up my neck, the same one I’ve felt a hundred times before. I said, sharper than I meant to, “Mum, she’s helping. Give it back.” Lila slid off the step stool and mumbled she didn’t care anyway, and went to sit on the couch to watch TV. My mum shrugged and started stirring, and I spent the next ten minutes fuming, mentally adding this incident to the long list I rant about to my friends every month: my mum won’t let my kids do anything for themselves.
It’s the same every time we visit. When Lila was four and trying to tie her own shoes, I’d sit back and let her fumble for ten minutes, and before she could get the second loop tied, mum was on her knees doing it for her, saying we were late for preschool and didn’t have time to wait. When my 10-year-old Jake forgot his soccer cleats for practice two years ago, I told him he’d have to sit on the bench that day to remember for next time, and mum was already in her car driving to the house to get them before I could finish talking. I ranted about it constantly: she’s undermining their independence. She’s teaching them someone will always fix their mistakes so they never have to try. I read all the parenting blogs, I knew better than to step in and do things for kids when they can do it themselves.
That changed a little last month, when Jake had a Viking longboat project due for school. I had a big work deadline that week, so I told him it was his project, I’d help him cut cardboard if he got stuck after I finished my work Wednesday night. I closed my office door, and didn’t think anything of it for an hour. When I got up to get coffee, I paused in the dining room doorway and stared. The whole table was covered in popsicle sticks, glue smears, crumpled newspaper, half a broken cardboard hull sitting in the middle. Jake was cross-legged on the floor, frowning at a sketch he’d drawn, and my mum was sitting right next to him, holding a pile of extra sticks. “You sure that’s how you want the bow curved?” she said. Jake shook his head. “No, I need to cut the edges more. Can you hold the ruler for me?” She did. No one took the scissors from him. No one re-did the hull when he messed up the first one.
Later, when I was cleaning up after dinner, I heard Jake say he wanted to quit, that it was stupid and all his friends’ projects would be better. I was just about to go in and give the “you started it you finish it” speech I’d given a hundred times, when my mum spoke first. “Oh, I get that,” she said. “I tried to make your mum a birthday cake when you were your age, dropped it on the floor, and cried for an hour. I just threw it out and got an ice cream cake from the store. Wanna take 10 minutes and get a snack, then see if you wanna mess with it a little more?”
That’s when it hit me. I’d spent years ranting about how my mum does everything for the kids, but I’d never stopped to notice the difference between what she does and what I thought she did. I was so hung up on my rule that kids have to do everything themselves to build independence, that when my kids said they wanted to quit, I’d push them to keep going, even when they were miserable. I was holding the problem, in a way: I needed them to finish it to prove they were learning, to prove I was doing it right. My mum? She lets the kids hold the problem. She doesn’t care if the project gets a bad grade, or if the cookies are lumpy, or if they take 15 minutes longer to put their shoes on. If they quit, that’s okay with her. If they keep going, she’s there to help hold the ruler.
That’s the thing I’ve started bringing into my own parenting, and the thing I tell other parents who complain about their own parents’ grandparenting habits. First, before you snap or go off on a rant later, pause for two minutes to see who’s leading. If your kid is still the one calling the shots, even if grandma is holding the glue or helping tie a tricky knot, that’s not undermining anything. It’s just help. Second, if something actually does bother you, you don’t have to bottle it up for a big rant later or snap in the moment. I started using a simple line that works almost every time: “[Kid’s name]’s been working on doing this herself lately, can you let her give it one more try?” It’s gentle, it doesn’t call my mum out as bad grandma, it just says what I need.
I still rant about my mum, don’t get me wrong. Last week, she gave the kids two lollipops each right before we went to my sister’s for dinner, and I ranted about it to my partner while we cleaned up the sticky wrappers after. Last Sunday, after the cookie incident, I still felt annoyed for an hour. But the rant is softer now. I don’t see every little thing she does wrong as a threat to my parenting. I see that she’s giving my kids something I don’t: permission to mess up, permission to quit, permission to not be perfect every time they try something new.
We still have awkward moments, we still bump heads. Some days Lila doesn’t get to stir the cookies, some days Jake gets his project driven to school when he forgets it. It’s not perfect, it’s just family. Right now, that’s enough.
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