On Tuesday and Thursday mornings, I deliver the delightful and determined Elizabeth Holiday to Tiny Tots Nursery School, where the unflappable Mrs. Porter reminds Lizzie and her eleven three-year-old classmates of the importance of making green choices, not red choices. In her second full month of school, Lizzie is getting the hang of the daily routine, washing her hands, matching the letters of her long name, and sitting criss-cross applesauce when it’s circle time.
Her adoring Nana is getting the hang of the routine as well, handing off my little charge to her teacher so I can escape to my nearby house and start – or finish – my weekly T-G column before it’s time to pick her up.
About half of the dropper-offers appear to be well past child-bearing age. I overheard one grandfather asking his granddaughter where they should go for lunch. “Steak and Shake, of course,” she answered, as they made plans to enjoy their Tuesday date together. One woman told me she’s the great-grandmother. My immediate (but unspoken) reaction was, “I’m going to have to do this for another generation?” Oops, I meant, “I’m hoping to be privileged to do this for another generation!”
It’s hard to believe I’ve been riding the smitten grandmother wave for eight years, and based on the demographics represented in the nursery school lobby, I’m in good company. For some grandparents, it’s a limited-time relationship, tucked in between work schedules and leisure activities. For others, it’s an economic necessity, as child care costs in Northeast Ohio are estimated at an average of $177 per week for a preschooler, easily vying with a mortgage payment for the highest expense in the family budget.
In comparison, Nana Daycare tends to cost the provider money, for TD Ameritrade found that grandparents spend an average of $2,383 each year to benefit their grandkids. We only have two littles, but a trip to the store can sure be expensive. Lizzie nearly had me talked into buying a small package of Hatchimals, only $9.99. How dare I deprive her of these magical creatures nestled inside colorful speckled eggs, just waiting to hatch so they can sing, dance, and play games with her. I’m not giving up my Nana role to some self-hatching robotic bird.
My care for Elizabeth and her older sister, the lovely Madelyn Simone, is a labor of love. I’m glad to be able to provide a consistent presence in their lives, and save their parents a few bucks, for the good news is that I can return them to their parents’ care at the end of the day. Not so for many other men and women my age and older. According to government data, there are about 2.7 million children being raised by grandparents or other family members, a number that has grown with the opioid epidemic. And 20% of those families have incomes below the poverty line. Ouch!
The federal government is paying attention to the challenges faced by these custodial grandparents. Given the struggle to find any common ground of bipartisanship in D.C. these days, I was pleased to see the House and Senate passed the Supporting Grandparents Raising Grandchildren Act, a bill co-sponsored by Republican Susan Collins and Democrat Bob Casey.
Casey noted that this second round of parenting presents its own challenges, such as “delaying retirement, navigating school systems, bridging the generational gap, working through the court system to secure custody and finding mental health services.” The SGRG Act will establish a resource bank for these guardians. Hopefully it provides support for third grade math as well.
As Charles and Ann Morse recognize, “A child needs a grandparent, anybody’s grandparent, to grow a little more securely into an unfamiliar world” Whether hundreds of miles away, around the corner, on 24/7 guardian duty, or filling in for a neighborhood child, the value of a grandparent’s care is incalculable. Lesley Stahl describes her experience: “I am convinced there is a gramma gene that disables the word ‘no.’” I’m accused of having that gramma gene, but in a world swimming with “no,” I want our little ones to find their own “yes” to life, a yes rooted in a grandmother’s love.
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