The gentle and ancient art of grandparenting

Ian Cole celebrates the incredibly important role of a parent’s parents

SOME of my generation, the baby-boomers, may have been lucky enough to know their grandparents and these days lucky enough to be grandparents.

There would be some of my contemporaries who never knew grandparents as many of those grandparents had to contend with two world wars, a depression and some health scares including the Spanish flu and diphtheria.

On top of this, those babyboomers who emigrated with their parents to Australia from Europe after the war, in many cases left grandparents behind.

In good old Scottish tradition, my grandfather came to live at our house in Moonah after his wife died.

A lot of the time he just sat in his chair and he was always at home when I got home from primary school.

He was the first to know what I got wrong in the weekly test and the first to console me when I got a duck at cricket.

He taught me to tie my shoelaces, to tell the time, how to do crosswords and how to pluck chooks. (Thankfully the Inghams entered the scene on time and so I never once had to use that last skill.)

Today the roles of grandparents may have changed, but not the fundamentals.

These days grandparents tend to be more mobile as often their children are working, necessitating babysitting or a variety of caring duties on quite a regular basis.

Combined with this, can be routine school runs, sport runs, music runs and so on.

So what are the fundamentals that are still the same?

Hopefully, the development of a relationship that is memorable for grandparent and grandchild.

Rewards can include seeing a grandchild swim in a race, getting runs playing cricket or playing music at a concert.

Earlier, they may have been privileged to see an early tentative step or hear a first word.

But possibly the biggest reward of all is to receive a welcoming smile, whatever the grandchild’s age, on your arrival. So what’s changed? Not a lot. It’s all about a relationship and probably making time to develop that relationship.

Recently, Paul McCartney, being interviewed on 60 Minutes, was asked what was left for him to achieve considering all that he had done and the fact he was now aged 75.

He replied: “I want to be a good grandad.”

Let me finish with a truism that has stood the test of time — no cowboy in the Wild West was ever faster on the draw than a grandparent pulling a baby picture out of their wallet. Ian Cole is a former Hobart teacher who was a state Labor MP in the 1970s.