(Un)Helpful Grandparents: When Good Intentions Go Awry
It was done with the best of intentions.
Jenny and her husband, a farmer, lived in the 1890’s farmhouse on his family’s farm. The home had been modernized by the time she moved in in the mid-1980’s, but it had been many years since anything had been updated. She had grown up in a farming family, so the hard work and the inconveniences of rural living were nothing new to her. She knew it was a good life for a family, and she looked forward to raising her children there.
When their first child was born, her father-in-law wanted to surprise her by remodeling the one bathroom in the farmhouse. Without telling her, he took advantage of her being in the hospital delivering the baby to get the work done.
Except.
Except…he didn’t get it done.
When Jenny came home with the baby two days later, the bathroom was torn up and non-functional. For the first week post-partum, Jenny found herself trudging outside to use the farm’s old outhouse. She also found herself resenting her father-in-law in a way that was never really resolved.
When I heard this story from Jenny herself, I just couldn’t imagine anyone being so clueless. But I kept going back to the fact that he thought he was doing something helpful and kind. He just didn’t do the one thing that could have avoided the lifelong resentment: talk with Jenny and her husband.
Grandparents are usually eager to help new parents in any way they can. But too often, they fall into one of the traps of helpfulness:
Potential helpfulness: Guessing what sort of help parents need
Vicarious helpfulness: Doing what they wish someone had done for them
Unexpected helpfulness: Surprising parents with acts or gifts they haven’t asked for
All of these motivations for being helpful are natural and can have a positive outcome. Some parents are happy for any help at any time. They don’t care what your motivations are, they are just glad someone did the laundry.
But each of these motivations can backfire, too. If you do the laundry unbidden, your son-in-law may be horrified to learn you were folding his briefs and be uncomfortable around you for weeks.
While new parents usually need and want help, they may not need or want the help grandparents give. Helping too much, or too little, or in the wrong way, can cause parents to feel frustrated. It can lead to friction or resentment.
Before you rush in to help new parents, it’s important to find out what sort of help will be appreciated. That’s not hard: you simply need to ask. Don’t assume anything. Ask parents what would be helpful, and listen carefully to their response. Then respect their wishes.
Take Amanda’s story. When her 9-month-old tumbled over and started crying, Grandma wanted to help. She tried to take the baby from dad and then started offering her a popsicle. Instead of calming the baby down or distracting her, it overstimulated her and prolonged the episode. Amanda and her husband were annoyed by the offer of a popsicle, which was not something they wanted to feed their child. But they were also annoyed by the implied suggestion that they couldn’t handle the situation.
What should Grandma have done? Stayed on the sidelines. If she needed to say something, a simple, “Is there anything I can do to help?” would have given the parents the chance to enlist her if they needed.
This goes beyond helping out in the early days after the baby is born. Grandparents trying to help out and actually being unhelpful is something parents continue to complain about as children grow up.
When I asked parents for examples, here are some of the things they shared:
Grandparents who want to help by taking the kids somewhere, but ask about it in front of the kids so parents are put on the spot.
Grandparents who took the kids for a haircut when they were out with them for the day.
Grandparents who want to pay for dance lessons, which mom then needs to find, enroll in, buy the proper gear for, and take the child to each week.
Grandparents who say yes to a child’s request to making them happy, but end up undermining parents who have said no.
Grandparents who want to surprise their grandchild with new bike, but don’t ask about size or safety requirements.
Or the flip side: grandparents who want to pay for a gift but expect parents to pick it out and wrap it.
These examples, like the story of the outhouse, are all avoidable. Before you rush to help, ask yourself these questions:
Does what I want to do have the potential to make things harder for parents?
Will parents see my helping as a suggestion they aren’t capable?
Will my help make more work for parents (the answer is often yes in the case of gifts!).
After thinking about those things, ask parents if the help you want to give would be welcome. Then really listen and respect their answer. If the answer is no, don’t press for reasons or try to change their mind—just let them know you’d like to help out if they can think of a way you can be useful.
Parents are far more likely to ask for help if they know they can trust you not to overstep.
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