The Importance of Grandparents

Most of us were fortunate enough to have grandparents close by at the time were born.

In fact when our mothers become pregnant to bear us, no doubt they must have turned to their parents, our grandparents, for advice and assistance. This is probably because our parents were young and needed someone to hold their hands; someone who had been there before.

Undoubtedly, most of our parents would have depended on their parents during that crucial time and during our childhood too. Our grandparents would have been there at the side of our parents to help bring us up when we were infants. Needless to say, we owe much to our grandparents.

All of us know grandparents as symbols of wisdom; they speak from experience and tell us how to go where they have been. They may not be up to date in matters of science and other branches of knowledge, but they have been through the ‘school of hard knocks’. They are usually experts at relationships. Many of us have learned at their knees things that have saved us pain in later life. It is grandparents who tell us that though money and other symbols of wealth are great to have, the real values in life are the non-material kind.

They themselves had probably discovered this through a lifetime of pain and sorrow. We often see them trying to make up to their children -- our parents -- for their having being strict, perhaps even unkind, to them when they were young. As it turns out, they often try to parent us to make up for the mistakes they made in parenting their own children. Thus, by being close to them, many of us who listen to them are saved from making the same painful mistakes.

It is unfortunate that, as part of the modern lifestyle, we are losing contact with our grandparents. It just is'nt wise at all, but it is happening all around us, we are now discarding some of the most beautiful aspects of being a human. Pushing grandparents out of the scene is one of them. Many of them are being exiled in old folk’s homes; where being deprived of something useful to do and of being loved and wanted, they waste away to early ends.

One can only hope that the trend will be reversed; if not for the sake of our grandparents -- then at least for the sake of the wisdom they have to offer all of us.