The Joys and Pitfalls of Being a Grandparent

The Joys and Pitfalls of Being a Grandparent
“Nobody can do for little children what grandparents do,” writer Alex Haley said. Rido/Shutterstock
Jeff Minick
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From that most prolific of authors, Unknown, we have this aphorism: “A grandparent is a little bit parent, a little bit teacher, and a little bit best friend.”

That amalgam of those three little bits into “grandparent” creates one of the greatest joys life can bestow on us. Being a grandparent is as different from being a parent as pepper from salt. Delight often replaces the worries we felt as parents, and an indulgence we would never have shown our sons and daughters flows like a river to the grandkids. The dad whose mother rarely treated him with candy in his boyhood watches gape-mouthed as she hands his daughter a Hershey’s candy bar.

Jeff Minick
Jeff Minick
Author
Jeff Minick has four children and a growing platoon of grandchildren. For 20 years, he taught history, literature, and Latin to seminars of homeschooling students in Asheville, N.C. He is the author of two novels, “Amanda Bell” and “Dust on Their Wings,” and two works of nonfiction, “Learning as I Go” and “Movies Make the Man.” Today, he lives and writes in Front Royal, Va.
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