Relationships Between Grandparents and Grandchildren Essay

The bloods between grandp arents and grandchildren vary within e genuinely family. Some families develop pissed relationships with their grandchildren, while others are seemingly unrecognized by one another. For this interview, I was hoping to come into contact with an individual who has maintained a healthy relationship with his or her descendants. Origin tot exclusivelyyy I was going to interview someone out of doors of my family however, I realized that if I were to interview my own granny, I could try two different thoughts of the grandparent-grandchild relationship, hers and mine.I chose to conduct an interview with my grandmother (maternal) whom is an 82-year-old Latino woman who primarily speaks Spanish. She was born in Texas in 1931 and currently resides at this location. Her socioeconomic status is middle class. My grandmother is a widow. Her husband passed extraneous 10 years ago this month. She is currently unemployed, and resides in the same home office that she shared with her husband and children. She has seven children (six females one male), eleven grandchildren (five females six males), seven great grandchildren (two females five males), and one great-great grandchild (female).Considering that my grandmother is the graduation generation, in that location are still five active generations on the maternal side of my family. I would moderate liked to talk just round my grandmothers relationship with the fourth and fifth generations of my family, just now they presently live in atomic number 31 and unfortunately at that place is not much contact between them. The all child currently in the fifth generation, her great-great grand girl, still has not met the first generation because they live so far apart from each other.Thankfully, cod to technological advancements in communication, my grandmother has been equal to(p) to see pictures and videos of all the family members from all generations. In the interview, I asked her how she would describe her current relationship with her grandchildren. As expected, she state that her relationship with all of her grandchildren was great and there were no problems with any of them. dubious about the sincerity of her answer, I thusly rephrased the question to ask her how she felt about each individual relationship with her grandchildren.I made a list of all her grandchildren and asked her to talk about each one. What I was sufficient to draw from all the individual relationships was that she is proud of all her grandchildren regarding their accomplishments thus far. She did promulgate some regretful elements that she has experienced as a grandmother to such(prenominal) a large family. She stated that she is sad that she does not get the hazard to see or talk to galore(postnominal) of her grandchildren as often as she would like.She only has the chance to interact with some of them during special occasions such as Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Years, and other maj or holidays. Even then, not all of the grandchildren are able to result those events because the majority of them are al cony adults and meet their own lives and responsibilities that seem to bring forth become priority over family festivities. some other one of my grandmothers concerns is that not all of her grandchildren are able to communicate with her effectively, because there is a slight manner of speaking barrier.Although she understands English middling well and can interpret what her grandchildren are expressing to her, she is unable to speak the language correctly when she is responding to them. Regretfully, many of her grandchildren are not fluent in the Spanish language. She expresses that the reason for this is due to the fact that Spanish is not taught to children while they attend school which never influenced them to learn. Further more, since my grandmother has never been employed throughout her life-time and instead opted to be a housewife, she never felt th e need to drive.Since my grandmother never learned how to drive, she never obtained a drivers license. I asked her what her primary mode of transportation is and she verbalize that one of the perks to having so many grandchildren is that nowadays children learn how to operate a vehicle at an archean age. She only has a few grandchildren that live nearby but she is able to get a ride from them to take her to any appointments she may pay off or to just run errands. Originally her husband would drive her wheresoever she needed to go but by now he would be about 88 years old.She manages to maintain a strong relationship with one of her grand girlfriends in particular. Her youngest little girl, along with her granddaughter, currently lives within her household. This would typically grow it much easier for her to keep a healthy relationship with her granddaughter who is approximately cardinal years old, but her daughter that is 39 years old, went through a divorce about 5 years ago and is currently diagnosed with schizophrenia. some(prenominal) my grandmother and my cousin must back down my aunt with her mental disability. Regretfully, this is winning a toll on everyone in the household.While I was listen to her speak about the blot, I was able to add a see question regarding how the current stain has affected her relationship with her granddaughter. She expressed that the situation has impaired relationships between herself, her daughter, and her granddaughter. She continued talking about how her daughter arbitrarily goes through behavioral outbursts and it is incredibly difficult to calm her down and at times. Sometimes situations can escalate to a point where she and her granddaughter have no choice but to call the authorities because her daughter can be a potential threat to herself or others.My grandmother and her granddaughter work unitedly to keep everything in the household running smoothly but there are times that the tension is too great be tween everyone in the household. I wanted to go a little more in depth on her thoughts about her daughters divorce and how she feels it affected her relationship with her granddaughter. She said that because of the divorce, she can now have her daughter and granddaughter closer. She was naturally sad that her daughters marriage ended in divorce but since her daughter and granddaughter used to live in San Antonio, she didnt get to see them very often.She enjoys being around her granddaughter all the time and it wouldnt have been practical if it werent for the divorce. I believe my grandmother was very lucky that her daughter is the one that maintained custody over the father. A divorce may strengthen bonds between the grandparent and grandchild especially when grandparents become more involved with sympathize with for their grandchildren. In cases where contact between grandparents and grandchildren decreases or ends, the result can be traumatic and painful for all concerned. (Miln e). I then proceeded to ask her about what kind of activities she participates in with her granddaughter. My grandmother takes the time to sit with her granddaughter and talk about school related things, watch movies together, and share ideas & concepts on things that her granddaughter should paint. As I got to this point into the interview and I asked so much about the grandparent-grandchild relationship, I was curious what my grandmothers perspective was on being more of a parent than a grandparent.My grandmother feels that she has to be more of a parent to her granddaughter due the fact that her daughter has schizophrenia. She tries her hardest to help her granddaughter with homework and advice but she feels that there are still a lot of things that she cannot do on behalf of her daughter. My final question was based off of one of the chapters that I memorialise in the class assigned textbook. Grandchildren whose parents had poor relationships with their own parents saw their gr andparents slight often and rated the quality of the relationship lower than those whose parents recalled caring relationships. (Quadagno, 2011). With that in mind, I asked if she felt that her granddaughters relationship with her was affected by her daughters relationship with her. I gave an example such as, If your daughter was close to you, then that would make your granddaughter close to you also, and vice versa. She told me that when her daughter first moved post home, she was still very upset with the divorce and she would lash out at everyone. My grandmother said that since her daughter would treat her badly, her granddaughter wouldnt have as much respect for her.It took about a year until her granddaughter began to realize that there was something wrong with her mom and began to get closer to her grandmother for comfort and support with handling her mother with schizophrenia. After talking to my grandmother about her perspective on this grandparent-grandchild relationship , I couldnt help but feel as if she was not being completely truthful with all her answers. I read in an article in USA Today, Grandparents may feel that they themselves have failed as parents.They may feel a sense of shame and invade that it says something about the parenting of that (adult) child. (Facciolo, 2012). I would have liked to go into more full stop regarding her thoughts on her daughters divorce, and how she really feels about it. I believe if I were to have gone too much in depth she would have gotten middling upset because there are a lot more factors regarding her situation at home. Overall, it was interesting getting insight on the grandparent-grandchild relationship which I never really gave too much thought on.