Grandparents, grandkids have
new ways to keep in touch
Star Tribune, Sunday, March 11, 2001
By Kim Ode

For a lot of kids, Grandma and Grandpa are little more then faint voices on the phone, Money in the birthday card, a week at Disney World the end of a boring drive over the holidays. It’s not really anyone’s fault just the inevitable consequence of more job transfers, more divorces and more diversions that beat out spending time with a couple of old people.

When Don Schmitz was a kid growing up on a farm in Fairbault, Minn., he saw his grandparents all the time. “They’d baby sit us whenever Mom and Dad dropped us off to go to some weddings,” he said. Now he’s 55 and saw a similar relationship with his three granddaughters end when his son’s family moved to Sweden. 

Schmitz would not be relegated to a signature on a card. As a former elementary school teacher, he knows by experiences and through research that around age 6, kids start to seek other meaningful adults in their lives. “It’s great for grandparents to start playing a role,” he said. But how? 

Grandkids & Me may be one solution. The new organization founded by Schmitz, sponsors weekend camps where grandparents and grandkids can play and learn more about each other, away from the intervening generation. Grandkids & Me also offers groups where grandparents can trade experiences, with a focus on how computers can help them keep in touch .

The first weekend camp, one of few such programs in the country, is in May. You can find out more at http//www.grandkidsandme.com.

Grandparents must find ways to keep connection

When Schmitz left teaching to get a master’s degree in human development, he looked at the changes people make in their lives, “what your legacy is, what your heritage is, what you’re going to pass on,” he said. And I kept wondering, ‘what is it that helps people continue to change in their lives?’”

Today’s grandparents are different from those of even a generation ago. They are living longer, some are wealthier, many have more formal education than their own parents. But in many cases, they also must be different and must continue to change to maintain a connection with their families.

“Just as the advent of industrial work forced dramatic changes in our country,” Schmitz said. “We see the same thing happening to grandparents, a whole new set of rules.”

In recent years, all 50 state have adopted grandparents rights laws, which permit Grandpa and Grandma to seek visitation rights if their children get divorced. 

Most grandparents don’t face having to sue to see their grandkids, but even far less dramatic conditions may seem may seem daunting. “Most grandparents say, ‘I don’t know how to talk to my grandchildren,’” Schmitz said. “ So what do we do? We try to shower them with money. We try to shower them to Disney World because we know they’ll be impressed with that – do all these things we don’t need to do when what we need to do is build a birdhouse with them.”

That’s what the weekend camps seek to provide for the geographically farflung, although any family may find unsuspected rewards in a weekend without the distractions of soccer practice and homework and bridge club.

Schmitz said he also believes that technology holds a key. He knows that some grandparents fear using computers, but computers can bring families closer together. For instance, computers enable Grandpa to play chess with a granddaughter in another hemisphere, or even just over the state line. Computers can let them paint pictures together, trade photos or chat.

The trick for grandparents is to share the wisdom of their experience, “but without sitting there and telling them what to do,” Schmitz said. For some grandparents, there are no role models for how to do this. “It’s difficult because these changes snuck up on us so quickly.”

But the other reality is that today’s longer-lived grandparents may literally have decades more free time to spend with their children, grandchildren – and great- grandchildren

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