In my work with parents of twins, I have heard many stories—both positive and negative—about their experiences with grandparents. Having recently become a first-time grandparent to a singleton, I can now relate to the dilemmas with more perspective. The most difficult scenarios seemed to involve grandparents who did not live close by. Especially during the harrowing months after the babies were born, the parents needed physical help, emotional support, and buoyant optimism to help them through the exhaustive transition. For […]
Tag Archives: grandparenting
On Becoming a Grandparent
In the three decades that I have shared parenting advice, I have heard many stories—both positive and negative—about moms and dads’ experiences with their children’s grandparents. Now that I am a first-time grandparent, I feel as if I have joined an exclusive club with terrific membership benefits. In addition to baby-sitting duties, I take my sixteen-month-old grandson to an hour-long class near my house once a week. I admit that in the beginning, I was a bit nervous about embarking […]
A Grandmother’s Twin Tale
When new acquaintances get over their surprise about my vocation as a twin therapist, they ask all sorts of questions and tell me interesting stories about twins. I particularly loved an interaction I had with a woman who has seven-year-old fraternal twin grandsons. She told me how upset she had been when her daughter-in-law and son decided to put the boys in separate kindergarten classes. While she wisely did not share her disapproval of this decision with the boys’ parents, […]