Kids love their grandparents. Why? It’s somewhat baffling because these people were once your parents. Sure, part of it is because of the presents. Part of it is because they spoil them rotten. These are people who have fun with them, who don’t have as many rules, who don’t lord over their existence the way that mom and dad do.
But one of the things great grandparents do (that is, really good one, not great-grandparents, although they might also) is that they treat kids differently. Certainly they treat your kids differently than they treated you…and now differently than how you treat your kids. “He always took me seriously,” one of Ulysses S. Grant’s granddaughters would say of the famous General Grant. “I felt promoted and inclined to live up to my new position as his companion.”
Your kids have that special chair at your parents’ house. They have those rituals, those things they get to do when they visit. Someone is actually excited to hear about the latest news in their lives. Someone wants to get down on the floor and play with them. Someone is aghast—*aghast—*to hear that someone’s parents had not been indulging this little tyrant’s every whim. Someone will not stop talking about how much they’ve grown, how handsome they are, how smart they are. Someone just lets them hang out, don’t pressure them or criticize them, is just happy to see them.
This is what’s special about grandparents but it doesn’t have to be unique to them. You don’t have to spoil your kids, but as we’ve said, you can and must take them seriously. You can treat them like something other than a little accessory or a subordinate. You can treat them like the person that they are. They’ll love you for it—not as much as they love their grandparents, to be sure—but they’ll appreciate it all the same.