Why does the same person who handed out every cookie when you were little wink and slide your child the third cookie? Why does a dad who never had time to sit down and play now spend all afternoon building a tower to knock your baby down forty times in a row? This is one of the quiet secrets of family life. A strict parent turns into a soft grandparent and everyone notices it, and most of us never stop to ask what is really going on.
The easy answer is that grandparents are spoiled because they can give the child back at the end of the day. This is part of it. But I think underneath the easy answer is missing something more subtle and interesting.
Is it really possible to get the child back?
Giving the child back is important, but that doesn’t explain the heat. Many people take a break from a difficult task without being softer. Something deeper has changed in the grandparents, and a lot of it is just age. People tend to become more mellow as the years go by. Like clinical psychologist Leon Seltzer observesan older person’s “attitude is more tolerant, accepting and forgiving” and therefore they are “less harsh on their grandchildren’s misbehavior than when they were raising their own children”.
So part of the spoilage is a calmer nervous system. Spilled juice that will trigger a tired parent hardly writes to a grandparent who has seen forty years of spilled juice and knows that the floor survived. The stakes feel lower because the stakes for them are actually lower.
What were they too tired or too scared to give the first time?
Here he gets to his heart. When these same people became parents, many of them were tired, scared and emaciated. They were holding down jobs, paying bills, worrying about whether they were doing anything right. Fear and fatigue sharpen people. You rush, you rush, first you discipline, then you feel bad because you don’t have the reserve to be patient. It’s hard to be gentle when you’re running on futility and fearing failure.
By the time they became grandparents, the fear and exhaustion had mostly lifted. The mortgage is paid, the career is behind them, and they are no longer responsible for turning this little person into a functioning adult. The rest is love, most of the pressure is gone. Seltzer describes the grandparents this time: “More patience, open heart, compassion and wisdom” this puts them “in an excellent position to provide their grandchildren with what they weren’t even able to offer their own children many years ago.”
Read this slowly because that’s what it’s all about. Moderation was absent for a simple reason. At that time, it may not have been really in them to give, because they did not spare their patience. Love was always there. There were no reserves. Now the stocks have arrived and they are pouring them onto the next little guy that comes along.
So spoiling is a kind of repair?
I began to think of it as a second chance to be the parent they wished they could be. The child receives a more lenient treatment, and the grandparents quietly recover the old regrets. Every tender afternoon with her grandson becomes a small replay of the more difficult afternoon they remember decades ago, when they were too angry to be kind. The grandchild gets a cookie, but the grandparents get something too. Eventually, they become a softer version of themselves that circumstances wouldn’t have allowed the first time.
I see it in my own family now. The grandparents around my daughter are noticeably more comfortable than I imagined as young parents. They enjoy the process itself, not just the results. They are not in a hurry. They dwell on little things that I often overlook while working and managing the household. I don’t feel judged when I look at them. I feel like I’m seeing a preview of the patience that seems to be lifting.
It also speaks to my occasional impatience as a parent. It’s rarely when I snap at the end of a long day because I love my baby less. Because I’m tired, worried, or carrying ten invisible things at once. Grandparents simply put these ten things on the floor. They live in a different season, in a different weather, and quietness comes with the season.
What this means for the rest of us
If you’re a parent who’s watched your own mom or dad spoil your child in a way they’ve never spoiled you, you’re allowed to feel a small, complex pain about it. Where was this gentleness when it was needed? This feeling is fair. But it can often help to see what’s going on. More than anything, it’s a testament to how much patience they’ve finally found, and a sign of what’s always lurking beneath the weariness, waiting for a calmer day to come.
If you’re a tired parent who promises to be more lenient tomorrow, take some solace from a grandparent. Your patience is real and will come. You can borrow some now by dropping one or two of the invisible items you’re carrying. The rest will come in its season, and when it does, it will be a little person waiting to be the exact version of you that you worked so hard to become.
