The Grandparent Paradox

Is it possible for grandparents to know their grandkids? I mean really know their character and personality? In one way I think with minimal interaction they know them better than anyone. Yet, at the same time, I think this is exactly what makes knowing them hard. It’s the grandparent paradox.

Grandparents will recognize family characteristics at a young age. It could be physical (he has so-and-so’s nose), or personality, or a certain way of speaking. But, unless they spend a lot of time with the grandchild, those accurate and true observations pre-color the whole picture of who their grandchild is.

And that’s even before controlling for the phenomenon I’m going to call the grandparent conundrum. The grandparent conundrum is the tendency for kids to act differently around the grandparents than when around the home and often anyone else.

I can’t fully explain it or figure out exactly why, but my wife and I have observed this countless times with our kids and it certainly skews the grandparents from getting a rounded picture of their grandchildren.

It can take the form of a talkative and outgoing kid clamming up and being shy around the grandparents. Or it can take the form of a grandkid demonstrating bad behavior that they would never do anywhere else. Well, almost anywhere else. Kids still prefer the homefield advantage of home for acting their worst.

Maybe that’s part of the key to the grandparent conundrum. If grandkids feel at home with their grandparents they’re more likely to act like they do at home. Although that doesn’t account for those opposite behaviors (e.g., clamming up). And, unless they go there a lot, I don’t think most grandkids would feel at home at their grandparents house. I only went to my grandparents’ house a few times as a kid and as much as I liked it, it felt like a foreign country.

Prior to having grandkids, my dad once said he thinks parents are looking for the return of their kids as children and that probably doesn’t happen until they have grandkids. Now that he has 23 grandkids, I wonder if that has held true?

I think kids are always on the lookout for parental figures and have a vague but strong notion that the parents of their parents are the ultimate parental figures. It seems if you have grandparents seeing a version of their children in their grandkids, and grandkids seeing a version of their parents in their grandparents it’s not surprising that a unique relationship develops. And possibly even that paradox.

The good news is you can live with a paradox and it doesn’t have to inhibit the grandparent and grandchild relationship. The contrast of knowing so well, with not always knowing so accurately might even enhance it. It certainly lends itself to surprises and discovery as your grandkids grow.