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I am answering this one as a grandparent.

Why do we play a vital role in a child's early (and later) development? I think it is because grandchildren are born LOVING US! Because we also simply and honestly love them. Because we are no longer responsible for daily decisions, and have more time than just-starting-off parents, we love them with a more pure and easy love than we were able to give our own children.

I loved my children, but I was totally responsible for them...from their vitamins, their diet, their education. Not so with grandkids! I could just love them because they were still "mine," but ultimately their own parents' responsibility.

My first grandson was born thousands of miles away, but we forged a bond I think will hold forever. I'd seen him, of course, when he was a baby and about every year after. When I went back to Boston to see him as a "child," he was three. I came home to my extremely rural state, and when I called and talked to him, he said, "Oh, Grandma. Do you 'bemember my PARKING LOT?"

We'd walked a lot of miles in that Cambridge parking lot. He enacted all the fantasies he had stored in his preschool mind...and even if I weren't his grandmother, I'd have thought at least some of them were amazing. But mostly, I think, I was the one person in the world at that point who took hours and hours to just listen to Jamie.

My second grandson lived very close to where I do. I kept him with me a lot when I could get off work but his mother could not. She still calls the two of us "trolls in the hole" because after another three kids came along, Eric sometimes needed a break. He begged to come here and we just "mellowed." He could relax, I could relax. We worked.

Jeff, my son's second child, was born in Boston like his brother. I was there right after his birth and again, managed to see him about every year. But he didn't remember. When I went to California, where they'd moved after college, Jeff also was about three. He was peering out the window when my son drove me into their drive after collecting me from the airport.

Jeff was there to make sure Grandma wasn't only in the "mailbox." Every morning, Jeff got up really early (don't all three-year olds?) and I would awaken to find a tiny boy's eyes staring at me to make sure I was still there-and still not only in the mailbox!

My other three natural grandkids and my step granddaughter also have good relationships with me - very special, I think. I was able to love them all unconditionally when they were small, and they certainly love me the same way.

Which I think is the key. Grandparents just love. And every child needs exactly that. As parents we just can't do it unconditionally. Parents are "responsible." Parents must worry about things like clothing and food, moving along with one's career, being responsible for moral values and educational values and...everything.

Grandparents sometimes help with money and gifts, but parents ultimately are responsible. Grandparents just love and let our grandkids know about our own values (even if out-of-date), but most of us "oldies" know that children also make their own decisions in the end. Just as we did, just as our own children did, and just as our grandchildren will. And that is okay. We still love them - and guess what, they love us back a whole lot.

Learn more about this author, Margaret Shauers.
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