Having married an older man with three children, I became a step-grandparent at 44 when our own children were just 12 and 10. With many more babies to follow (ten in total) our house became a busy place for weekend breaks, mass cooking, travel cots and many changes of bedding. I wouldn’t have changed a thing.
Still, there is something different about having step-kids compared to the ‘real’ things. I held a lot of babies, played in the campsite pool and read stories. But it has always been at arm’s length. The step-grandchildren called me Oggy, which I loved, but they each had their own Grandmas, so I was never expected to truly step into the role as a ‘real’ grandparent would.
This worked for me, as I just wasn’t ready. My own struggles with disturbed nights, head lice, worms and the battles of the school run were still too raw for me to take them on again. Plus, conversations about potty training and breastfeeding are really dull unless it’s your potty and your breasts. As much as I was happy to play trains and Lego on the floor with my own kids, that moment had passed, and I felt very resistant to get back down there again for someone else’s. With distance, a lot of parenting is actually quite boring.
I also knew I had no right to an opinion as I watched things being done differently from how I would have done them. All grandparents either meddle or bite their tongues over issues of food, sleep or how laissez-faire parents should be, but as a step-grandparent, it was never my right to even have a tongue to bite. I’ve built up a wonderful relationship with my stepchildren over the years, and this was not the time to risk it just to win a few points over vegetables. I controlled my meddling far more than I expect I will be able to do when my own grandkids come along.
As a step-grandparent bringing up teenagers, there were moments I felt overwhelmed and a touch resentful of all the childcare. It was a lot of work and, alongside bringing up my own kids, it sometimes left me feeling slightly invisible.
But there were also massive positives. My marriage was struggling when the step-grandchildren arrived, but the constant distraction of babies and a full house seemed to give us space to have fun again. Living with one other adult can make it easy to fall into a prolonged sulk. But all the annoying bits seemed to cancel each other out when there were lots of people around, and daily life just seemed so much easier. We were buoyed up to offer the weekend breaks for the exhausted new parents. And when they all left, we suddenly had a whole new conversation about them rather than us and the sulks lifted.
But by far the biggest benefit was to our children. As a rule, most children stop wanting to come on weekend walks, morning coffees or National Trust visits as soon as they turn into adolescents and most parents stop dragging them along as soon as they can legally leave them at home. But for ours, the treat of cute babies to cuddle or toddlers to play with seemed to win the argument pretty much every time and our extended (and ever-extending) family became the mainstay of most weekends and many holidays. That was one battle, at least, that no longer needed to be fought.
And being everyone’s favourite auntie and uncle did wonders for any teenage tensions. If our children were ever feeling unloved, hurt or having friendship issues of their own, a family visit would see them jumped upon by their many adoring nieces and nephews and within seconds, all upset would have vanished. They also got to be the grown-ups around all the little ones, which built their confidence as they taught them to swim, distracted them from tantrums and showed them how to build the best den. And they also got to be the child and just play when their own lives were becoming too grown-up.
I have loved my hands-off experience of step-grandparenting. I simply wasn’t ready to do more than I did and definitely needed the time and space to recharge my caring battery. But being part of a massive extended family has been fabulous and over the years, it has managed to smooth over the cracks of what could have been quite a sulky time.