Parenting the Second Time Around

My grandsons are here for the week.  Along with their two dogs.  They are attending a day camp here on the island (the boys, not the dogs) alongside kids who live here on Sanibel year round, and other grandkids like themselves.  Their evenings are spent with us. We have them for a couple of weeks each summer, as we do two of their cousins.  Its our way of helping to pick up some of the slack in childcare.  It also means some extra time with the kids themselves.

Ours is a relatively easy lot when it comes to grandparenting.  I know people who are virtually raising a grandchild or two.  And across the nation, their are thousands of grandparents doing just that.  Thousands of grandparents who have sole responsibility for their grandkids.  Sometimes it is because both parents have died--but more often it is because the father is missing from the scene, and the mother is caught up in drugs, or is imprisoned, or in some other way unable to parent her own children.

I often say that being a grandfather is not only the best job in the world, it is also one of the easiest.  I don't usually say that this time of year (the part about being easy)--but I really do say it with some frequency.  When I was a boy and we'd play make believe I always wanted to be the grandfather.  Even then I knew that it was a great gig. 

But in the summer, when the grandkids are here by themselves, and we're packing lunches and making sure showers are taken and breaking up squabbles, I remember that for some grandparents its a year round 24/7 job.  And I offer up a prayer of thanks.  Thanks for my own children, who have all grown up to be capable parents.  Thanks for their very able partners and spouses who are as well.  And thanks for those grandparents out there who step up to the plate when needed and become surrogate moms and dads.  God grant them the strength and wisdom they may need as they do parenting the second time around!

(Photo:  Me and my oldest grandson on our bicycling adventure last summer.)