Tag: grandparents

Teens On Your Terms

Young, wild, and free … isn’t that what it’s supposed to feel like to be a teenager? While it’s normal for teens to push and discover their limits, it’s also dangerous. Due in large part to the fact that parenting decisions are only as sound as the information on which they’re based, more parents are choosing to rely on tools and technology than gut instinct.

Here are three strategies for parents concerned about their children safety:

1. Install a GPS system in your teen’s car.

In the old days, parents would check their cars for new scratches, dents, or overly fast tire wear and ask other parents if they had seen their kids driving recklessly or beyond their geographic limits.

Parents who utilize GPS technology know where their car is, where it has been, and how fast it has been driven. When continued driving privileges are tied to responsible use, safer driving results. More importantly, teens know that their parents have access to this information, which makes them feel safer if they get lost or into trouble. It’s like having a parent in the car at all times.

2. Install software for monitoring email and chat room conversations.

Sexual predators target teens in Internet chat rooms. Parents should obviously urge their kids not to give out personal information or agree to meet someone they “met” on the Internet. However, since teens know their online activities are a privilege and can be monitored, they’ve got a constant reminder. Parents urge teens to resist talking or behaving online any differently than they would if their parents were in the room because, in a way, they are.

3. Initiate a parent – child contract and home drug testing program.

Peer pressure often increases when kids “just say no” to drugs, alcohol, or tobacco. Kids need a “socially acceptable” excuse, and the words “My parents test me” stop pushy peers in their tracks. Parent and Child Contract Software (PACCS), developed by Dr. Michael Reznicek, helps facilitate conversations and establish expectations (including both rewards and consequences) between parents and teens regarding drug use. Home drug testing kits can be administered at home and provide instant results for a fraction of the cost of a lab, without sacrificing accuracy or privacy.

Grandparents and Family

Grandparents are an important resource for both parents and children. They routinely provide child care, financial assistance and emotional support. Occasionally they are called upon to provide much more including temporary or full time care and responsibility for their grandchildren.

An increasing number of children in the United States live in households headed by a grandparent. This trend is due to:

  • increasing numbers of single parent families
  • the high rate of divorce
  • teenage pregnancies
  • AIDS
  • incarcerations of parents
  • substance abuse by parents
  • death or disability of parents
  • parental abuse and neglect

In many of these homes, neither of the child’s biological parents is present. In most cases, children taken care of by grandparents move in with them as infants or preschoolers and remain with them for five years or more. These grandparents are a diverse group ranging in ages from the thirties to the seventies. Many grandparents are ready to simplify their lives and slow down. Giving that up and taking over the responsibilities of being a primary parent again can stir up many feelings including grief, anger, loss, resentment and possibly guilt. This transition can be very stressful and the emotional and financial burdens can be significant. Culture shock at having to deal with children and adolescents of a different generation can be great. Grandparent headed households have a significantly higher poverty rate than other kinds of family units.

Many grandparents in this care taking role underestimate or are unaware of the added burdens their new role as ‘parents’ will place upon them. Grandparents often assume their role will be to nurture and reward children without having to set limits. When grandparents serve as parents, however, they must learn to set limits and establish controls as they did with their own children.

Many children living with grandparents arrive with preexisting problems or risk factors including abuse, neglect, prenatal exposure to drugs and alcohol, and loss of parents (death, abandonment and incarceration). This situation can create risks for both children and grandparents. Caring for your grandchild can also be very positive and rewarding. Grandparents bring the benefit of experience and perspective. They can also provide important stability, predictability, and be a healthy role model for their grandchildren.

It is very important for grandparents to receive support and assistance. Seeking out other family members, clergy, support groups and social agencies can be helpful. The Grandparents Information Center (sponsored by the American Association of Retired Persons) is a good place to get information, referrals and support. The American Association of Retired Persons website address is www.aarp.org. Financial aid may be available especially if the child was abandoned, neglected or abused. Mental health professionals including child and adolescent psychiatrists, community mental health and child welfare agencies and parent-teacher associations are other important resources for the grandparents.

Child and adolescent psychiatrists recognize the important role many grandparents play in raising their grandchildren. The better grandparents are able to meet their own needs, the better they can fulfill the demands of parenting.

Family Traditions

My family always had traditions when I was growing up. Every Christmas eve was spent at my great grandparents’ house. The entire family – great grandparents, grandparents, parents, uncles, aunts, cousins – would gather at my great grandpa’s and grandma’s and we’d open gifts and laugh and spend the evening together as a big family. Once my great grandparents passed away that tradition passed on to my grandma and grandpa, and we’d all congregate there.
Christmas morning was spent at our house where we got up and “had to eat breakfast first” before opening presents. Then we’d get ready, trying to somehow incorporate everything we’d received as gifts into our outfit somehow so we could take it to my other grandparents’ house (my mom’s mom and dad), which is where we went next. Again, the entire family, aunts and uncles and cousins too, would gather there and spend the day together, opening gifts and eating and laughing.
Easter was always spent at my house where my mom would fix this huge Easter feast, and both sides of my family (mom’s and dad’s) would come. We’d spend the day eating and playing and finding Easter eggs. After hunting eggs my sister and my cousins and I would always sit on the picnic table and count our eggs and eat some of them. One year I remember we tried cracking them open by slamming them into our foreheads. Pain!
New Year’s night was spent at my grandparents’ house. We’d all bring something to trade. One year I traded something, I forget what exactly but I think it was a pocket knife, for a bottle of hairspray from my aunt, which I discovered wouldn’t spray. I was so disappointed! I’d try to stay up every year until midnight, though I’m not sure if I ever succeeded. I must have because I remember one year being awake to hear my uncles shoot off guns, which is what the grown-ups did to bring in the new year.
Traditions don’t have to be something big to be remembered and enjoyed. I remember sitting outside in the dark on the picnic table with my cousins and Grandpa while he told us scary stories before bed. Usually it involved a witch who ate off kids’ toes. Grandpa even had this spooky witch laugh he did. I still can’t sleep at night with my toes uncovered, and if I wake up in the middle of the night to discover my feet out from under the blanket I promptly pull them back in to safety.
Every year my grandma always called my sister and me when she heard the first whippoorwill call. I think that meant summer was here, and we could go barefoot now. I love to go barefoot, now as much as then, which is why I always had bee stings all over my feet then and dirt all over my feet now.
Birthdays were special times because the day was all about us. Grandparents and aunts and uncles would call on the phone all day long to sing “Happy Birthday”. I still miss my grandma and grandpa calling every year on my birthday now that they’ve both passed away and now that my other grandma can no longer remember that it’s my birthday. Mom always fixed us whatever kind of cake we wanted for our birthdays.

She made these big fancily-decorated cakes for us when we were kids (I have photos), but as we got older my sister always requested cherry cheesecake and I wanted angel food cake with strawberries and whipped cream, year after year.
These are just some of the many traditions we had in my family. Now that I’m an adult and I have a family of my own I’ve tried to continue many of these traditions while adding in a few of my own. We still spend Christmas eve with my dad’s family, and we still have to eat breakfast every year at mom and dad’s house before we can open presents (the torment!).

Christmas day is always spent at my mom’s parents’ house. Many things haven’t changed, and I’m glad.
Birthdays here at my house are always big deals. I decorate the dining room and often the living room with streamers and balloons everywhere. I have a big “Happy Birthday” sign that I put up. The kids fully expect all of these things and would be disappointed if they awoke on their birthdays to find that I hadn’t done them. The first thing they do when they wake up on their birthday is to run into the dining room and living room to see my decorations and all the presents piled up in the exact spot that they’ve been in every year on a birthday.
Everyone, hubby included, gets to pick out a cake they want and I make it for them, which is why I’ve made everything from a Care Bear cake and Pokemon to Batman and Transformers, and nearly everything in between.

Every year hubby requests a pineapple upside-down cake. Everyone always gets to pick out a birthday meal too. Sometimes it’s as simple as some chicken nuggets and French fries, while others it’s a feast of fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans, and biscuits. Whatever it is, I lovingly prepare it, because not only is it my way of showing them I love them but it’s my way of making sure they have traditions they can carry on themselves one day.