Some Grandparents Are Part of the Everyday
#WhatRaCheSaid Journal
My grandmother started raising me when I was five years old. My mother was always part of my life, but I lived with my grandmother, and she was the person raising me day to day. When I say she was part of my everyday, I mean everyday.
I remember being in first and second grade and getting up around five o’clock in the morning because my grandmother was a school cafeteria manager. We had to be up and out early enough for her to get to work. Sometimes I would sleep in her office. Sometimes I would stay awake and wait for breakfast with the other children.
Those are little memories, but when I think about them now, they remind me of what her role actually looked like in my life.
She was not simply someone I visited. She was part of my everyday.
She was part of the waking up. The getting ready. The going to school. The decisions. The routines. The expectations. The things I learned about family, responsibility, values, and how we take care of one another.
So when I hear the word grandparent, I do not automatically picture someone standing outside of the child’s daily life. My experience will not be everybody’s experience. But it is one reason I believe early childhood programs have to be careful about how much we assume from a family title.
A Title Gives Us One Piece
A family title gives us one piece of information. It does not automatically tell us how that person shows up in a child’s day.
Grandmother. Grandfather. Aunt. Uncle. Older sibling. Family friend. Godparent. Kinship caregiver.
Those words can tell us something about a relationship. But they cannot tell us everything about the role.
A grandmother may visit occasionally. Another grandmother may do pickup every afternoon. Another may help with appointments and routines. Another may be supporting the child’s parent behind the scenes in ways the program never sees. Another may be raising the child full time. And another family may have very little or no relationship with a grandparent at all.
That is why I do not think our job is to decide what grandparents are supposed to do. Our job is to get to know the family in front of us.
Do not assume a grandparent is standing on the outside of the family’s everyday life. Sometimes that grandparent is one of the people holding it together.
And sometimes they are not. We have to learn the difference instead of filling in the story ourselves.
Now I Am the Grandmother
Grandparents Day means something different to me now because I have lived this relationship from more than one side. I am still a granddaughter. Today, I also help care for the grandmother who raised me.
And now I am a grandmother too.
Being on this side of the relationship makes me reflect differently. There are things I notice now that I probably did not notice when my own children were small. I think about all the times a teacher may have asked me to stop for a conversation, volunteer, participate in something, or give a little more time when I was trying to manage everything else in my life.
Sometimes I had it. Sometimes I didn’t.
Now I get to watch my daughter parent. I watch her balance the things she has to carry and still make time for her child. And there are moments when I think I already know how something is going to go, and then she reminds me that she is building her own relationship with her daughter in her own way.
I love watching that.
I know I was not a perfect parent. I do not expect my children to parent exactly the way I did. For me, part of the reward is watching them take what they received, add what they have learned for themselves, and continue growing.
And when they are ready for Grammy, Grammy is ready.
But even there, my role is not the same as my daughter’s role.
I can be important without needing to be the parent.
I can support without assuming I make every decision. I can know my granddaughter deeply and still respect the relationship she is building with her mother.
That matters too.
Programs Need to Know the People, Not Just the Labels
One thing I have always valued in early childhood is knowing families. When I became a program leader, I did not want family connection to stop at knowing the families from one classroom.
I wanted to know who belonged to whom. Who was connected. Who I saw at drop-off. Who I saw at pickup. Who the child talked about. Who the family identified as important.
Because those relationships tell us something. Not everything. But something.
When we know families, we begin to understand more about the people who are part of the child’s life. That does not require us to pry into people’s private business. It requires us to listen.
Sometimes we just need to talk to people.
A quick exchange at pickup will not tell you a family’s whole story. Neither will an enrollment form. Neither will the word grandmother written next to someone’s name.
That is a starting point.
The relationship comes from what we learn over time.
Who Is Part of This Child’s Everyday?
I think there is a different question early childhood programs can carry.
Not:
“How do we get grandparents more involved?”
Before that, I want to know:
What role does this person already hold?
Maybe grandma gets the child ready every morning. Maybe granddad is the regular pickup person. Maybe a great-grandparent helps preserve a home language, family tradition, story, or connection across generations. Maybe an aunt is the person the parent calls when something changes. Maybe there is a family friend the child considers family. Maybe there is a kinship caregiver doing far more of the everyday parenting than the title on the form would lead someone to assume.
Or maybe none of those examples fit the family in front of us.
That is the point.
We have to ask before we assume.
“Tell me about who is part of your child’s everyday.”
That question does not decide the family structure before the family has had a chance to describe it. And what they tell us may help us understand the child more fully too.
Children Bring Their Relationships With Them
Children do not leave their family experiences at the classroom door. They bring the people who matter to them into their play, language, stories, conversations, drawings, questions, and understanding of the world.
I saw that clearly when I worked alongside a teaching assistant who cared deeply about making sure her heritage was reflected in our classroom. Our children came from different racial, cultural, and language backgrounds, and we wanted the classroom to make room for that.
That sometimes meant asking families:
What books do you have?
Would you like to come read with us?
Would you be comfortable sharing a story in your home language?
Is there something important to your family that you would like us to know?
It was not about making one family responsible for teaching everybody else about their culture. It was about opening the door.
It was saying:
What matters in your child’s world has room here too.
That same thinking applies when we think about family structure. Children should be able to talk about the people who matter to them without us deciding in advance what those relationships are supposed to look like.
Different families can look different and still give children a strong sense of connection and belonging.
We Also Have to Leave Room for Complexity
I want to be careful here because there is no one grandparent story.
My relationship with my grandmother is deeply important to me. That does not mean I want to romanticize every grandparent relationship.
Some relationships are close. Some are distant. Some are complicated. Some are painful. Some are unsafe. Some grandparents are no longer living.
Some families have experienced separation, loss, conflict, or circumstances they may not want to explain to everyone. Some children have relationships with great-grandparents, elders, kinship caregivers, or chosen family who carry an important place in their lives.
And some people may hear Grandparents Day and feel something completely different from what I feel.
There needs to be room for that too.
Respect does not require us to assume every relationship is wonderful.
Respect starts with not filling in the rest of the story for people.
We can honor meaningful relationships without prescribing what family is supposed to look like.
There Is a Difference Between Knowing and Assuming
Early childhood programs do need information. We need to know who is authorized to pick up a child. We need current contacts. We need families to follow safety procedures. There are things programs are responsible for maintaining.
But relationships are more than administrative information.
A name on a contact list does not tell us how important that person is to the child. And an important relationship does not automatically tell us what formal authority that person has.
We can respect both.
We can follow the program’s safety and communication procedures while still being curious about the actual people who make up the child’s support system.
That distinction matters.
Because sometimes the adult who walks through the door every afternoon has information that can help us understand the child. Sometimes they know how the morning went. Sometimes they know what the child keeps talking about. Sometimes they have been helping the family carry something.
And sometimes they are simply there to pick up.
We do not know until we build enough relationship to learn.
One Place to Begin
This does not need to become another family-engagement initiative. It does not require another event. It does not require us to create a Grandparents Committee.
Start with curiosity.
The next time you are learning about a child and family, pay attention to whether you are learning the actual relationships or simply reading the titles.
Who is part of this child’s everyday? Who does the family identify as important? Who seems to be part of the child’s regular routines? What does the family want us to know?
And just as importantly:
What are we assuming that nobody actually told us?
Sometimes one respectful conversation can correct an assumption we did not realize we were making.
Part of the Everyday
When I think about my grandmother now, I can still picture those early mornings. Getting up before I wanted to. Going with her to work. Being in her office. Waiting for the school day to begin.
At five years old, I was not thinking about family structure. I was not thinking about kinship care. I was not thinking about family engagement.
That was simply my life.
She was my grandmother.
And she was raising me.
Both things were true.
Now I get to see family from another place. I am the granddaughter helping care for the woman who cared for me. I am the mother watching my daughter build her own relationship with her child. And I am Grammy, ready when it is my turn to show up.
Those roles are not identical. They are not supposed to be.
What they remind me is that a family title cannot tell us everything about what a person means in a child’s life.
So when families come through our early childhood programs, I want us to leave room to learn the people behind the titles.
Not because every grandparent is part of the everyday. But because some are.
And if we assume we already know what someone’s place is, we may miss an important part of the child’s story.
That’s what RaChe’ said.
#WhatRaCheSaid
