by Robin Tidwell

Created on: October 01, 2010   Last Updated: November 29, 2010

Not all grandparents who never seem to be able to spend time with their grandchildren are overtly being denied access to them; sometimes, an adult child doesn’t seem to care or to realize the importance of grandparents in a child’s life – or the significance of a grandchild in the life of the grandparents. 

Sometimes, especially in the case of blended families, expectations are merely different.  Sometimes, there are old hurts and wounds that prevent an adult child from having a relationship with his parents, and therefore the grandchildren are also kept at arms’ length.

How do grandparents cope with these situations?  They may deny the problems exist; they may become angry and hurt.  They may do all three, at different times; they may long to confront their adult children, but resist in case they make matters worse and, instead of seeing the grandchildren a few times a year, are only allowed an annual visit of a few hours – at best.

Sometimes, grandparents do speak to their children and try to work out a compromise; often this results in a brief change, but doesn’t solve the problem.  In a perfect world, the children will understand the grandparents’ point of view, but the longer the issues continue, the more difficult they are to resolve.

Grandparents may become depressed, even clinically, when realizing all they’ve missed and will continue to miss: their grandchildren’s “firsts”, whether in person or via photos and videos; rocking them, singing to them, baking cookies, teaching, telling stories, seeing a particular movie for the first time.  All these things are important to grandparents and, someday, will be important to the grandchildren when they realize what they, themselves, have missed.

In some families, grandparents see the kids weekly and enjoy family dinners, holidays, special occasions or even no occasion – just a few hours or a weekend with the grandchildren.  In some families, grandchildren rarely see their grandparents, either because of distance or busyness or some other reason.  In blended families, in particular, this can be problematic due to different traditions.

If one grandparent was raised in a “village” of extended family, and the other was not, there will be different expectations.  Sometimes this occurs when one adult child is raised differently than the new spouse and expectations are adjusted

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