Grandparents seem to have this habit of loving grandchildren more than the parents of those grandchildren (apo). That phrase “parents of those grandchildren” means us, of course. For many of us new parents, this is rather strange because our children are twice removed from our respective parents, and so our parents’ love and loyalty should be stronger towards us. Or so we thought.
Let’s talk of concrete examples. (By the way, this is not only about lola or grandmother, but also about lolo or grandfather).
I’ve noticed that our kid would often get invited by the grandparents. Visit their home. Go out of town. Check the mall. Any place outside our own home. Then, almost as an afterthought, we’ll get invited too.
Maybe I’m just paranoid, but I soon discovered that I’m not the only “victim”.
Just the other day, my wife’s cousin was complaining. She scolded her son after he took the crayons and made a mess of the living room wall. She, in turn, was scolded by her mom, for the (arguably sensible) reason that it has her fault leaving the crayons lying around. It’s not the fault of the grandchild, grandma said.
I thought the grandma’s line of reasoning makes a lot of sense. Don’t want crayon drawings on your walls? Hide the crayons.
Everything would have made perfect sense if we stop there. But there’s more. It so happened that my wife’s cousin, way back when she was little, also made a mess of their pristine wall . . . and got scolded by her mother for that work of art. Now her mother, who is now the grandmother, appears to be applying an entirely different standard altogether, ripping one’s sense of justice into diaper pieces.
Double standard. I think that’s it. Our parents are treating our children differently from how they’ve treated us when we were young. Come to think of it, if your children are visiting the grandparents’ home, they could watch TV until they fall asleep. They can eat all the chocolate they could eat.
It would appear that our parents want to make parenting very challenging for us.
I’ve heard a number of reasons given for this “strange” behavior by grandparents and I’m pretty sure you also have a pet reason. My father said this is just normal because all their children have grown up and have left the nest, so to speak, and they long to take care of little ones.
Conspiracy theorists have this reason — it’s our parents’ way of getting back at us. ‘Ika nga sa ginuntaang aral: “Natutunan ko kina Inay at Itay kung ano ang JUSTICE – Isang araw magkakaroon ka rin ng anak, tiyak maging katulad mo at magiging pasaway at pasakit din sa ulo!” Peace.
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