Raising Your Children's Children
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[0 Comment]Sarah* works in middle management with a national company. Charlie took early retirement to stay at home when it became apparent that they'd have to raise their daughter Abby's child, because Abby and her husband refuse to take responsibility for their own lives, much less that of their child.
Sarah and Charlie face an increasingly common circumstance. Four and a half million caregivers are raising more than seven million children in the United States today. Most of these are grandparents raising their children's children. Others are family members caring for a relative's child. While some of these cases arise because of the death, mental illness, or incarceration of one or both parents, 80 percent or more are because of the drug and alcohol addictions of the children's parents.
"People are less than honest if they say something like this doesn't affect their marriage," says Pat Owens, who with her husband, is raising a grandson and is co-founder of GrandFamilies of America (www.grandfamiliesofamerica.org). This organization provides grandparents and other kinship caregivers with tools for navigating the complex government systems they meet in attempting to help relative children.
Decide Whose Problem It Is
Grandparents raising grandkids are destined to make a painful discovery. You cannot fix other people's problems, even if the person who is failing is your own much-loved child.
Your focus must be on keeping the grandchild safe. Untangle yourself from your child's trials and tribulations. This is difficult because this is your child we're talking about. How can you bear to think of her in need, maybe homeless?
Sarah finally recognized she could not continue to function at this level of emotional turmoil. Charlie saw the wisdom of what she was saying. Hard as it was to do to their own flesh and blood, they had shake free of Abby's messes and use the strength they had to give the baby as normal a life as possible.
"Once we worked our way to the same page, this decision drew us together," Sarah says.
Elsie, who with her husband, Paul, is raising their drug-addicted son's two children, agrees.
"It's the parent—your child—not the grandkid, who keeps your nerves on edge. If they were strangers, you could say, 'Go!' But it's your child. The financial and emotional strain is awful. My husband and I determined early on to discuss everything concerning our son and his drug problem with each other. We found it took communication between us to another level. It had to. It was either that or let this drug-addicted adult child drive a wedge between us. It finally becomes a 'them-or-us' mentality."
Even though you're loving parents, you must not be enablers.
"We sat down together and decided where the boundaries were," said Joan who with her husband, Sam, is raising their grandchildren. "My husband and I had been down the road of paying for rehab for our son's drug problem three or four times. We'd paid apartment rent. We'd fixed his car. Yet he made no effort to beat the habit. He still doesn't. It was such a relief when we finally accepted the fact that we were just enabling his bad behavior with our financial support. It's not that we don't still love him. We do and always will. But we released him emotionally and financially. Our addicted son can come around and bounce ideas off us. We pray for him and listen to him if he wants to vent. But taking on the role of parents again for his children is all we can handle. We will not support his bad behavior."
Related Topics:
Advocate, Grandchildren, Grandparents
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