The Imperfect Parent - Articles || Rugrat Reprieve

PUBLISHED December, 2007
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Rugrat Reprieve

It Takes a City and a State

by Rachael Brownell

We are grandparent rich in my house. What with the remarriages and divorces and remarriages and reconfigurations, we’re a regular people soup of a family. While I occasionally still feel guilty that I wasn’t able to keep everything all nuclear and white picket fence-ish for my daughters, I’m increasingly impressed and grateful for the many adults they have in their lives who love them well and feed them sugar and provide the best guilt-free babysitting available on the planet.

And really, the best rest a parent could ask for is the guilt-free kind. The time away when one recognizes that all parties are benefiting from the separation. Here are some of the activities my children enjoy solely because of the skills and patience of their grandmas:

Sewing
Making gingerbread houses
Reading Fancy Nancy one million times
Long discussions about trees, and birds, and flowers
Cooking
Decorating stockings

Without our posse of grandmas, my children would be little Martha Stewart heathen outcasts, just like me.

In addition to all the domestic skills and patience our collective pool of grandparents share, it brings the ratio of adults to children to the sweet spot where what we lack in energy what we can achieve in sheer numbers. When the under 4-footers outnumber you, you know it’s time to cash in the chips.

And the life-long relationship our children are building with people (much less cranky people) who are older, wiser, and more rested than Mom and Dad will ever be will add a dimension to their lives richer than food, clothing, and everyday parental adoration.

But what of all the children who are grandparent-less? What of those who, for whatever reason, are far away from grandparents? And while adopting a grandma or grandpa is difficult in a society as rigidly separated by age as ours, it seems the perfect solution to the ongoing problem of the rugrat reprieve.

Whether by birth or choice, there is no quicker way to reduce isolation and tension than fostering healthy relationships between one’s own children and other non-parent people… Community, it turns out, is a hard commodity to do without. So how does one build a community these days? Aside from joining a quaint society like the Kiwanis or Lions, or a local church, community is elusive

What about you and yours? Do you have people to whom you entrust your children so that you can take a break? A beloved daycare provider? Babysitter? Or, like me, have you been blessed by the riches of one million grandmas?