Episode 143: Parent Like A Grandparent

Introduction

Hello. Welcome back to Live Free Creative podcast. I’m your host Miranda Anderson. You’re listening to episode 143: Parent Like A Grandparent.

I am excited to share this idea and new perspective with you today and hope that you enjoy it as much as I have.

Before I jump into the show. I want to share a little bit about our life lately.

Life Lately

If you were on Instagram at all in the last couple of days, you have seen my big, exciting backyard update that our artificial turf that I’ve been thinking about for a long time, planning for the last several months. And then finally this week, it is installed. It’s finished. It looks amazing.

We had an interesting experience through the whole thing. So last year, I’m just going to give you a little turf update…I know that you’re all super excited about the grass in my yard.

So last year in the spring, I decided I was going to make it my mission–some of you may remember this–to grow healthy grass in our backyard.

When we moved into our house, the whole yard was sort of just a little bit of a weed mud pit. And we have slowly, section by section, tried to revive it with different techniques. We have a whole area with the garden that has gravel. We’ve got a great carved out section where we have playground, mulch underneath the playground, and the chicken coop.

I have some planters we’ve added a bunch of hardscapes. There’s two patios. And of course our hot tub area. And this center section that has remained is sort of just the big middle of the yard that was supposed to be the play area, the grass area.

Unfortunately, grass doesn’t grow very well in this particular section of the yard or anywhere to be honest. So I decided that maybe the problem was that I hadn’t given it enough try, like I really needed to give it the old college try.

So last year we aerated, we fertilized, I did several different kinds of seed. I overseeded did it. There was even a section where I tried some of that true lawn or the seed in fabric that you may have seen advertised on Instagram. I that’s where I saw an Instagram ad and I bought some of it and I said, I’m going to try all the things.

So we, of course, these things started to pay off and for about three to four weeks in the height of the spring time, like June-ish, I had the most lush, beautiful looking lawn. It was warm long days. The humidity was there. It wasn’t super wet though. It was just like all of the conditions, plus all of the care and love and attention that I was giving to this area of the lawn were perfect.

And then it started to get hotter. It started to burn off a little bit. And then in the fall it started to rain and of course the leaves came down. And what I realized was that most of what had grown was essentially a little bit of summer grasses from the seed, but a lot of green that didn’t have staying power.

And so rather than going dormant in the winter, it all just died again. So what we had for the entire fall/winter season was just dirt, essentially mud, this whole center of our yard that we have been walking around.

If you head out my back door directly across from my back door, you’ll go across the patio, down the steps across the paver patio. If you kept walking straight, you would end up at the front door of the clubhouse. It’s a perfect line, just straight across to run in and out. And we have been going down the steps across the paver patio to the side around where the garden area is because that’s where the gravel is. So we wouldn’t have to walk across the mud.

We can’t even walk across the center of the yard in any direction. The whole center was this mud pit. Finally, I think in the fall last year, I had a specialist come in and I asked about digging up a few inches, adding some more drainage, adding better soil and laying down some new, fresh sod.

And the landscape specialist said that because of the clay soil and the amount of shade that we get. We live in this beautiful downtown area of Richmond, where there are really great big trees. It’s one of the most charming parts of our neighborhood. That of course means that we have a lot of shade, which is such a benefit in a backyard in the South where it’s so hot in the summer.

But not for growing grass.

So he said between the clay and the moisture and the shady areas, nd then just not getting enough sun, that even if we laid fresh, shade-tolerant sod, it wouldn’t live very long. That particular area of the yard isn’t conducive to growing grass.

And so he recommended artificial turf, which is something that had been on my radar for a long time anyway, and I had him quote me this area. It’s about a 700 square foot area, not a big area. It’s about 25 feet by 15 feet. And then there’s a little dip out of it where the playground area sort of encroaches.

And his bid for the 700 square foot area was over $10,000, which was a lot more than I expected. So I had to kind of back up and say, okay, I’m not ready to spend $10,000 on this tiny section of the yard where laying new sod would have been about $2000.

I had to come up with a new plan.

So I started doing some of my own investigation and talk to some landscaping companies and went back and forth about some ideas. And finally, I was able to find a source for the type of turf that I wanted to use that’s more eco-friendly, it’s made in America, and the landscape company said they would be willing to sell it to me at a contractor rate because of all of the home design and decor that I do as on top of owning a business.

And so I have a tax ID number. So I was able to buy the materials by myself where normally you would only be able to get them if you were a contractor, but I–operating as the general contractor of my own yard–was able to source the materials. And then I hired my friend, Jose, who has been doing our hardscapes in our backyard for a couple years.

He’s done all of our patio done, all of our brick and stone work. He’s fantastic. And I hired him to help me with a semi DIY project. So he came on to help with all of the prep work, which the prep for laying artificial grass is the exact same as for laying pavers, where you have to dig and then you lay down concrete base and a little bit of sand, you have to level it and make sure that the water is going to drain all the correct direction.

And all of those things that I felt a little bit unprepared to do myself, especially on a larger area. This is a larger area than we have put pavers in before. So between my being able to buy the materials myself and then hire the labor piece, and Jose was also really excited about getting the chance to do some turf because although he does all sorts of landscaping and hardscapes, he hadn’t yet done artificial turf.

So we worked on it together over the last few days. And today, the day that I’m recording, we actually laid down the rolled out the turf, laid it on the prepared area, trimmed all the edges, got it nailed in and back-filled and sprayed off.

And it is gorgeous. It’s so lovely. We can walk across the yard in any direction. I looked out my kitchen window and this afternoon, my kids were sitting on the middle of the grass playing Monopoly in the shade of the big trees.

It just feels like a breath of fresh air in the middle of our yard. And because it’s just a smaller section, we still have a full garden area. I have the area under the pine tree where the playground is and the chickens live where we have some blackberry bushes and we have blueberries and I’m planting more plants. And of course we have lots of planters.

So I don’t feel like, I think one of the things I was worried about with adding artificial grass in the outdoors was feeling like I’d be taking away from that outdoor nature feeling. But I realized that because we are surrounded, we have beautiful trees, we have the garden and the planters and the plants and the blackberry vines growing up the fence line, that there’s plenty of real nature feeling nature out there.

And being able to have a low maintenance, no water, no mowing, no problem turf to walk across and enjoy and let our kids play on and be able to set chairs up on and kick soccer balls on. And all the things we want to do is just going to be so fun.

So that is the big, exciting news. I’m preparing a blog post all about it.

You can see the update on Instagram, the before and after picture from that area of the yard, and I will be doing a blog post pretty soon, where I can share all of the details and the ins and outs of the DIY piece of it, the steps. And there’s a lot of that already online if you’re curious, but it’s very, very exciting.

It’s something I’ve been looking forward to. And now it’s done.

Parenting Like A Grandparent

A couple weeks ago. I spent three whole weeks in Utah with our families. I hosted a retreat in Southern Utah, and then we spent time with my parents, with my husband’s parents and family. We spent time with cousins. We spent time seeing family going on, hikes, enjoying the outdoors and had a really marvelous vacation, homeschool-cation, retreat-cation.

It was all exactly what we needed.

One of that things that felt really impactful for me, that was a take home message for myself. Like a note to self was how much fun grandparents have with their grandkids. Having grandkids is like all of the fun of parenting without most of the stress, when you can enjoy them and see them for the brilliant little people that they are and expect them to be messy and wild and not bear the personal responsibility of their full wellbeing all the time.

And of course, there’s exceptions to this where I know there’s a lot of grandparents that operate as full-time parents. I know there’s a lot of parents who already feel this sort of healthy detachment from their kids’ lives and development. It was a great reminder for me though.

And the reason that I wanted to share this episode was that I think we can all benefit from having the perspective of inviting our own parenting to feel a little bit more like grandparenting.

Sometimes when you think of some of the stereotypes or cliches of the difference between parenting and grandparenting, what comes to mind for you?

One of the things that comes to mind for me is that grandparents enjoy the kids. They really just enjoy spending time with them, that grandparents can love them and then give them back, which is not something I’m going to recommend you do in your parenting. The sense of lightness and ease that comes maybe a little bit of spoiling sometimes, maybe a little bit of indulgence.

Of course I’m not recommending anything that would be unhealthy or detrimental for your child. I’m inviting the idea that some of the fun and enjoyment and sweetness of the relationships that grandparents have with their grandkids is something that parents may miss out on simply because of their own personal expectations or guidelines or even hesitations.

So I wanted to just explore a couple of those ideas today and invite you to consider where, if anywhere, in your parenting, you could loosen your grip a little bit to enjoy the experience and your kids a little bit more.

I have recommended several times to different friends, and I think even on the podcast, I’ve mentioned the book, The Self-Driven Child. This was a book that was part of my friend Janssen’s Everyday Reading’s book club last year. And I read it and was felt so reassured by it.

This book, The Self-Driven Child, was written by a test prep professional and a child psychologist, and what they found in all of their research about how to help kids be successful as adults.

That’s really what the book, getting to the heart of it, is–that kids need to be self-motivated. And they need autonomy. And one of the ways that they have autonomy is by feeling that they’re in control of some of the things in their lives. That having a heightened sense of control, being able to make choices and not be forced to do things, feeling like they have a little bit more freedom to be themselves. It helps them manage stress, it helps them feel more motivated and self-motivated, and it gives them the confidence that they need to then make better decisions.

Something that I love about this idea within The Self-Driven Child and how it relates to parenting like a grandparent is that I think grandparents have a little bit looser grip on the idea of what the grandkids need to be doing all the time.

So parents tend to be more micromanaging and grandparents tend to be a little bit more relaxed.

And I think some of that may come with age. Of course, these are all stereotypes because you may be a relaxed parent and have your own parents or your children’s grandparents that are super uptight. So they’re just stereotypes we’re working with. But I think the idea holds that if you can loosen some of your grip on your parenting, on the choices that your kids make that enables themselves to take a tighter grip.

If you’re passing a baton, thinking of parenting as being a baton pass. You’re running together and at some point you’re holding the Baton as the parent. You’ve got the majority of the responsibility. You’re doing all of the providing, the protecting, the feeding, the nourishing, the clothing.

As your kids get older, they slowly start to take some of those responsibilities on, they start to be able to go to the bathroom by themselves. They start to be able to go to sleep on their own. They start to be able to dress themselves. And maybe at some point you even stop laying out their clothes for them. They get to choose what they wear. They get to do their own laundry or not. They get to shop for some of their own clothes.

Think of the baton slowly passing from your hand into the child’s hand.

Now they will never be able to fully take off unless you let go at some point. At some point, you slowly loosen your grip as they tighten theirs so that there can be a clean pass.

What we hope, what I hope, is to raise my children to be competent and responsible and independent and independently happy adults. And in order for me to do that, I have to start in trusting them with decisions and responsibilities early and do so in a nonjudgmental, non confrontational, non micromanaging environment.

Because if you don’t release any of that grip, or you release the grip and then when they drop it once, you hit them over this head with it, but you know that you didn’t do it the way that I thought you should. And here’s all the reasons why you did it wrong, they’re much more reluctant to do it or to try to try again.

Now I’m not a perfect parent by any stretch of the imagination, but I do care deeply about the idea of inviting my kids to be autonomous. And something that I witnessed with grandparents is that they tend to be a little bit more hands-off, that they don’t have exactly the same ideas, like specific ideas, of what the kids should wear or eat or do every minute of the day.

They’re not so helicoptery. They care deeply for the child. But less deeply for the individual specifics of the ins and outs of the child’s day. It’s right there in that sweet spot where you’re holding onto the baton, but not gripping it so tightly that there’s a little bit more autonomy. There’s a little bit more freedom.

And that goes both ways. It’s a little bit more freeing for the child, and it’s also a little bit more freeing for the grandparent. Grandparents, stereotypically, have so much fun just enjoying the kids because they get to enjoy them without all of the pressure.

As I was taking some notes for this episode, I wrote down that parents tend to take things more personally, as it relates to their children, that they feel their children’s lives reflect on theirs. And sometimes attribute to themselves the labels of good mom or bad mom, good dad or bad dad. I don’t know if very often a lot of grandparents think of themselves as good or bad grandparents. I’m sure they do. But again, let’s just pull it back to this stereotype.

These archetypal characters, parents, tend to worry more about failure and try to watch out for that all the time for their kids. If we look at the flip side of that, grandparents, I think feel less entwined. They don’t take things quite as personally. They don’t feel like the actions of the child reflect directly on them. They enjoy the kids, they celebrate their successes. Rather than dwelling on their failures, they simply celebrate them and enjoy them.

And I wonder if there’s not a little bit more of that we can be doing. In Episode 68 of this podcast, I recorded an interview with my friend Ralphie Jacobs. The episode is called Parenting On Purpose.

Ralphie is a positive parenting expert and she teaches courses and has these online audio courses, and she does some in-person workshops. And one of the things that she says often is to remind parents to water the flowers, not the weeds. Seek out what your children are doing well and celebrate those things. And in a lot of cases, you can ignore the bad behaviors, you can not dwell on those.

You can correct them or teach them and make sure that your child understands appropriate behaviors, but then celebrate the successes when you give them more encouragement for doing well, then you do punishment or criticism for doing wrong. Then it’s the flowers that will grow. It’s those good behaviors that will continue to grow.

And also looking at parenting from the perspective of curiosity, of not determining ahead of time, what you think everything should end up as, or what the expectations will be for everything, but approaching it, maybe from a place of curiosity of almost like planting some seeds in the garden that you don’t yet know exactly what they’re going to be.

So you’re not frustrated when the tomato plant starts to grow really broad leaves like a zucchini, but you are curious, what is this going to be? I’m going to nurture it. I’m going to water it. I’m going to fertilize it. I’m going to give it sunshine. I might sing to it. I’m going to take care of it. I’ll weed around it.

But you don’t have an exact determination idea in mind of what the end result will be. Because I think like those unidentified seeds, our children come to us with all of this potential, but a lot of it is unknown to them and us. And as we are watching them develop and helping nurture them, the goal isn’t to force them into some particular ideal, the goal is to help them discover as we discover alongside them.

Who they are, who is their wholeness and their fullness and the things that they love, the things that light them up, the things that that they’re good at naturally, the things that they need to work on, how can we help nurture that whole child without constantly criticizing them or being down on them or having an expectation of who they should be, who we think they should be.

One of the things I read in. The Self-Driven Child, as I re-read it to kind of think about these ideas, because I think that I need this in my own life with my own kids, especially after over a year, 14 months I have had my children at home with me all the time.

My kids haven’t gone to school since March of 2020, and they won’t go to school until September. I have had so much kid time and it’s been wonderful and it’s been really hard and everything in between, but I’m noticing that one thing that is really helpful that makes my life feel better is when I just loosen up a little bit about them, about exactly how they’re acting all the time.

And if I just can enjoy them, one of the quotes from the self-driven child is that home should be a place for your kids to rest and recover. They go out in the world to school or playing with friends, or when they’re a little older to their jobs or they go have these experiences where they’re experimenting and they’re learning.

And a lot of times things are going to be hard. They’re going to be hard out there. When they come home, this is a place of shelter and of recovery and of rest and of play and of celebration of self. And I love thinking of my home as a place where my kids feel safe, where they feel they’re least criticized, they’re least domineered, where they feel the most comfortable being themselves.

Do they feel like they can come out of their shells and ask questions and share experiences and explore ideas and make mistakes and beloved loved freely and unconditionally?

Something else that I loved as I was reading and re-reading through this book is this question.

And I want to pose this question to you and have you reflect on it and think about it in your own lives.

What is my child doing in his or her life in order to feel successful? If you can’t think of something your child is doing on a regular basis, that helps them feel successful, independently successful, then there needs to be some sort of intervention, some help.

How can you help them be put in a situation or have an opportunity to feel successful every day

That intrinsic motivation and competency comes through learning and developing the skills of accomplishment of feeling successful. And we have to set them up for success.

Another thing that I loved–I’m just sharing ideas here–another thing that I loved from this book was that play and rest are both vital for our children.

I think both of those are great things that I see grandparents do often with kids. Play, actually play with them or give them opportunities for just real play imaginary, play outdoor, play fun, unencumbered play, and also rest, not needing to be doing something all the time, but actually lately when my kids say they’re bored, I say, that’s so great.

That’s such an important thing to learn. Being bored is going to be one of your most vital skills as an adult human. So I’m really glad to hear that your bored, because it’s something that we all need to work on and they’re like, Oh mom, no, I don’t like being bored. And I say, well, gosh, it’s hard isn’t it? It’s hard and something that we all have to learn. I don’t really like being bored either. And it’s something that we need to get good at because there’s going to be maybe some times in our lives that we have to be bored. And so if we can get really good at it, we’re going to have a lot easier time.

Also, do we help our kids find time for rest. Do we allow them that space? One great way to do this, and I’ve been talking about this frequently on the podcast recently, is making sure that we’re an example of play and rest. Are we doing fun things? Are we enjoying our lives as adults? As the parents are we loving some of our hobbies and finding a way to enjoy even the day-to-day duties?

Are we taking time to rest and recover and read and walk and sit in the sunshine. We can be examples of these important behaviors as we live them. As our children watch us play and rest, we invite them to know that these things are good and that they’re vital that they’re okay.

Can you think right now of some ways, one or two ways or specific ideas for you in your life with your children, or if you have children, if you have grandchildren, even it works. You can even grandparents as a grandparent with a little bit more looseness with a little bit more freedom with a little bit more joy.

Can you think of a couple ways that you can apply this idea to your own life?

Something that you feel like you’ve had a really tight grip on that maybe you can loosen a little bit to allow your child to take hold on their own. And again, we’re not throwing the baton away, but we’re just loosening our grip so that they can tighten their wrist, allowing them to be themselves a little bit more. To not feel quite as micromanaged to not follow up on every single thing that they do all the time, but allow them a little bit more freedom.

One of the biggest gifts that I think we can give to our kids when they are kids is to enjoy them, to have them not feel like they’re a nuisance or a bother, that our life’s work to help them become great people.

Can we just enjoy them?

I think that’s sort of the lightness and the joy and the looseness that I feel around this idea of parenting like a grandparent. Making it your highest priority to simply enjoy your kids as they are. Right now.

Are you enjoying your kids right now? I know for so many of us this year has been really tough and it’s harder and harder the more time we spend with them or doing school and things have been hard. And can you back up a little bit and loosen that grip a little bit and enjoy your kids as they are right now.

If there’s one single thing that you learn from this show today, or one single thought that I can plant in your brain about how to have more fun as a parent, how to make it more enjoyable for you and more beneficial for them, it’s this idea to make it your highest priority to simply enjoy your kids as they are right now.

If you can do that, you are well on your way.

Conclusion

I hope that one of the ideas that I’ve shared with this overall theme of parenting like a grandparent and enjoying your kids as they are right now, I hope something has rung true for you, or has given you an idea, a little bit of inspiration of how you can make this parenting journey even more fun and interesting and enjoyable for all.

I want to thank you as always for being here for listening. If you’ve enjoyed the show, I’d love if you’d share it with a friend, family member or share a screenshot on social media.

I also invite you to leave a review for the show and, if you haven’t yet, to subscribe so you don’t miss an episode and to have a really, really wonderful week.

Happy Mother’s Day.

I’ll chat with you again, next time. Bye. Bye.