Relationships Between Grandparents and Grandchildren Essay

The familys between grandp bents and grandchildren vary in spite of appearance every family. Some families develop unbend able-bodied family familys with their grandchildren, plot of land other(a)s atomic number 18 fulfillmingly unrecognized by nonpareil a nonher. For this interview, I was hoping to pay back into jobber with an individual who has prolonged a healthy human kindred with his or her descendants. so unmatchabler I was going to interview soulfulness out place of my family however, I realized that if I were to interview my profess granny knot, I could contend two different postures of the grand refer-grandchild relationship, hers and mine.I chose to de red-hotr an interview with my grannie (maternal) whom is an 82- socio-economic class-old Hispanic cleaning woman who primarily speaks Spanish. She was born in Texas in 1931 and shortly resides at this location. Her socioeconomic location is middle phratry. My granny is a widow. Her economise pass ed away 10 age past this month. She is currently unemployed, and resides in the same root word that she donationd with her husband and children. She has seven children (six females superstar male), eleven grandchildren ( b chooseetb both(prenominal) team females six males), seven slap-up grandchildren (two females five males), and one great-great grandchild (female).Considering that my nanna is the first base generation, there are still five active generations on the maternal side of my family. I would pay back desire to gabble almost my grannies relationship with the fourth and fifth generations of my family, notwithstanding they instantly live in Georgia and unluckily there is not much(prenominal) contact between them. The only child currently in the fifth generation, her great-great grand girlfriend, still has not met the first generation because they live so far apart from individu alto lasthery other.Thankfully, referable to technological advancements in comm unication, my grandmother has been able to see pictures and videos of both the family members from all generations. In the interview, I asked her how she would describe her current relationship with her grandchildren. As expected, she said that her relationship with all of her grandchildren was great and there were no problems with all of them. Uncertain or so the sincerity of her answer, I then rephrased the question to ask her how she snarl about each individual relationship with her grandchildren.I made a tip of all her grandchildren and asked her to talk about each one. What I was able to draw from all the individual relationships was that she is proud of all her grandchildren regarding their accomplishments and then far. She did reveal some regretful elements that she has go through as a grandmother to such a large family. She stated that she is no-count that she does not get the opportunity to see or talk to m any(prenominal) of her grandchildren as often as she would like.She only has the scene to interact with some of them during special make such as Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Years, and other major holidays. Even then, not all of the grandchildren are able to attend those events because the absolute majority of them are already adults and have their own lives and responsibilities that seem to have croak precession over family festivities. Another one of my grandmothers concerns is that not all of her grandchildren are able to communicate with her effectively, because there is a slight language barrier.Although she understands English reasonably well and can interpret what her grandchildren are expressing to her, she is unable to speak the language in good order when she is responding to them. Regretfully, many of her grandchildren are not fluid in the Spanish language. She expresses that the reason for this is overdue to the situation that Spanish is not taught to children while they attend school which neer influenced them to lea rn. Further much, since my grandmother has neer been employed throughout her manners and instead opted to be a housewife, she neer felt the need to experience.Since my grandmother never learned how to drive, she never obtained a number one woods license. I asked her what her primary panache of transportation is and she said that one of the perks to having so many grandchildren is that flatadays children learn how to wreak a vehicle at an primal age. She only has a few grandchildren that live nearby that she is able to get a ride from them to take her to any appointments she may have or to vertical run errands. Originally her husband would drive her wherever she needed to go that by now he would be about 88 years old.She manages to maintain a strong relationship with one of her grand missys in particular. Her youngest daughter, along with her granddaughter, currently lives within her household. This would typically make it much easier for her to have a healthy relations hip with her granddaughter who is well-nigh twelve years old, but her daughter that is 39 years old, went through a divorce about 5 years ago and is currently diagnosed with schizophrenia. Both my grandmother and my cousin must support my auntie with her mental disability. Regretfully, this is taking a campana on everyone in the household.While I was listening to her speak about the situation, I was able to add a execute question regarding how the current situation has affect her relationship with her granddaughter. She expressed that the situation has impair relationships between herself, her daughter, and her granddaughter. She continued talking about how her daughter randomly goes through behavioural outbursts and it is incredibly difficult to calm her raven and at times. Sometimes situations can heighten to a point where she and her granddaughter have no choice but to call the authorities because her daughter can be a potential threat to herself or others.My grandmother and her granddaughter work together to keep everything in the household running smoothly but there are times that the focus is similarly great between everyone in the household. I wanted to go a little more in prescience on her plans about her daughters divorce and how she determines it touched her relationship with her granddaughter. She said that because of the divorce, she can now have her daughter and granddaughter tightr. She was naturally troubling that her daughters marriage finish in divorce but since her daughter and granddaughter used to live in San Antonio, she didnt get to see them very often.She enjoys being around her granddaughter all the time and it wouldnt have been possible if it werent for the divorce. I entrust my grandmother was very well-fixed that her daughter is the one that maintained time lag over the father. A divorce may strengthen bonds between the grandparent and grandchild especially when grandparents become more involved with caring for th eir grandchildren. In cases where contact between grandparents and grandchildren decreases or ends, the egress can be traumatic and vexatious for all concerned. (Milne). I then proceeded to ask her about what kind of activities she participates in with her granddaughter. My grandmother takes the time to sit with her granddaughter and talk about school related things, watch movies together, and share ideas & concepts on things that her granddaughter should paint. As I got to this point into the interview and I asked so much about the grandparent-grandchild relationship, I was peeping what my grandmothers perspective was on being more of a parent than a grandparent.My grandmother finds that she has to be more of a parent to her granddaughter due the fact that her daughter has schizophrenia. She tries her hardest to economic aid her granddaughter with homework and advice but she feels that there are still a lot of things that she cannot do on behalf of her daughter. My last-pl ace question was based off of one of the chapters that I read in the class assigned textbook. Grandchildren whose parents had poor relationships with their own parents adage their grandparents less often and rated the quality of the relationship lower than those whose parents recalled caring relationships. (Quadagno, 2011). With that in mind, I asked if she felt that her granddaughters relationship with her was touch by her daughters relationship with her. I gave an example such as, If your daughter was close to you, then that would make your granddaughter close to you also, and vice versa. She told me that when her daughter first locomote back home, she was still very disoblige with the divorce and she would lash out at everyone. My grandmother said that since her daughter would share her badly, her granddaughter wouldnt have as much respect for her.It took about a year until her granddaughter began to realize that there was something wrong with her mommy and began to get clo ser to her grandmother for teething ring and support with handling her mother with schizophrenia. after talking to my grandmother about her perspective on this grandparent-grandchild relationship, I couldnt help but feel as if she was not being completely truthful with all her answers. I read in an term in USA Today, Grandparents may feel that they themselves have failed as parents.They may feel a sense of shame and perplexity that it says something about the parenting of that (adult) child. (Facciolo, 2012). I would have liked to go into more detail regarding her thoughts on her daughters divorce, and how she really feels about it. I believe if I were to have gone too much in depth she would have gotten slightly upset because there are a lot more factors regarding her situation at home. Overall, it was interesting getting cleverness on the grandparent-grandchild relationship which I never really gave too much thought on.