Importance of grandparents to the grandchildren

Modern parents often don’t realize the importance of their parents to their children. It is generally because they mostly have to be busy.

Most of the modern families consist of a father, a mother and children (usually two). The concept of grandparents seems to be vanishing from the family scene. This has been a reason for ever-increasing corruption in social and moral values and rapidly growing emotional problems in children. A modern (unitary) family cannot often fulfill the lack of busy parents' care and attention.

In traditional eastern families, grandparents are still highly valued. They are often taken as the source of knowledge and home-skills. They are respected as the most important members of the family, and they are expected to provide the younger generation with blessings and security. But modern culture is increasingly penetrating into these traditional values and the young boys or girls have started ignoring their elders.

But as a modern parent, you must always put your efforts on creating opportunities for your children to be in touch with their grandparents. Your parents (your children’s grandparents) are your past and your children are your future. To make your future better, you must let them learn from your past.

Keeping your children in touch with their grandparents is your investment for future. Nobody can teach the children social, moral and personal values as effectively as their grandparents can. Most of the children feel more comfortable with their grandparents than with their parents. The children enjoy learning the values with their grandparents.

The grandparents are the source of knowledge and traditional skills. They are always eager to share their store of knowledge gained by lifelong learning with the younger ones. Therefore, your children can learn many practical life-skills from them and be ready for the future challenges.

Grandparents play important role to keep the family bond tight and intact. In today’s world, many families break up because of the lack of mutual understanding between the husband and the wife. But grandparents can be bridge to join the other members in the family. Since they are the most experienced people, they can practically handle the crises that come in the family.

Grandparents often tell interesting stories and anecdotes that provide the children lots of chance to think and imagine. It helps in their mental growth.

Both grandparents and grandchildren get emotional support from each other if they have a good relationship. The grandparents do not feel lonely and bored in their daily life, and the grandchildren do not feel they have nobody to love. The grandparents have high value in a family usually when parents are extremely busy and cannot provide even a little time to their children.

At last, children learn to respect the elders in the family. They see their parents showing respect to their grandparents and learn to do the same in future. DON’T FORGET: You reap what you sow.

(Published in The Himalayan Times on 01 October 2013.)