I have periodically mentioned that becoming a grandparent was a real emotional rollercoaster for me. I know many men who have happily become grandparents without a single hiccup but that’s not my story.
Something about moving into another generational tier really freaked me out. I just can’t explain it but it set me off. Really bad!
It was tearfully that I asked my daughter-in-law Sarah (@sarah_ash) if there was anyway this newest disruptor of my emotional wellbeing could call me something, anything other than GRANDPA. We settled on Papa!
Now three, almost four granddaughters later, I still hate being a grandparent, but I love my granddaughters. Kim hates it when the first person they run to is me, but it’s a great boast to my ego.
Yesterday I tweeted that one of the benefits of being a grandparent was being able to build a tree-condo for the girls. It’s funny because I never quite finished any of the tree houses I started for my own kids. Maybe you have experienced something similar. I don’t know if it’s that I have more experience building now than when my kids were this age. Or maybe I’m just more motivated. What do you think?
Either way, I’m regularly told that I’m doing things for my grandkids that I never did for my kids. I have to plead guilty to that charge. It’s not an issue of how much I love them, it’s just that life is different at this tier than the one before.
Why do you think that grandparents seem to do more for their grandkids than they did for their own? Or maybe that’s not what you see. Let’s chat in the comments or on Twitter.
