We grandparents have Face Time.
We grandparents have texting.
We grandparents have old fashioned telephone contact.
When we ask our grandchildren about school or activities, we grandparents, as do the grandchildren’s parents, get the plain old “fine” or “good.”
We want to keep our grandchildren talking. This Grandma tries everything. I talk to the parents of the grandchildren first to know what is going on and can ask them questions about what I learned in advance.
Basically, I have discovered that our teenage grandchildren will answer texts more than voice mails. Does anyone listen to voice mails anymore?
Then, I saw an article with a list of questions for parents to get children talking and realized we grandparents also need a handy list.
Number 20 really hit me hard. It is what my Mother, GG Frieda, asked me after school each day. See blog post, “2018 New Year’s Resolutions Focusing on Feelings That Span A Lifetime Will Bring Us Joy.
My Mother’s question was: “Did you help someone today?” Of course, with my Holocaust survivor Mother, what followed was that if someone had not helped her, she would not have survived the Holocaust, and a story of the help followed. Threat of death and life that followed as a result of the help is much greater a burden than what we want to hear from our grandchildren, but there is no reason we cannot then share how we helped someone that day, modeling behavior we want our grandchildren to emulate.
My Mother always asked, “Were you happy today,” which was followed by, “what made you happy today?” See the blog post above for more about how the Holocaust impacted what questions my mother asked of me and what I heard about the Holocaust from her.
Number 13 in the internet article is similar, “What was the nicest thing you did for someone else today?” As with helping, we can share also what nice thing we did for someone or someone else did for us. We can follow up with what was the nicest thing someone did for you today. Kindness is what we want our grandchildren to give and receive. See blog post, “Because Everyone Has Something, There are Life Lessons to Pass on To Our Grandchildren.”
There is a tip on the website, to take a screen shot of the questions to have handy when you speak to the grandchildren. Great idea. And when one question works wonderfully, star that question as a keeper.
After further research on the internet, I discovered that the lists of questions to ask children about their day to get them talking are very similar. Here is another list of ten questions to screen shot, from www.scholasticparents.com:
Tell me about the best part of your day. What was the hardest thing you had to do today? Did any of your classmates do anything funny? Tell me about what you read in class. Who did you play with today? What did you play? Do you think math [or any subject] is too easy or too hard? What’s the biggest difference between this year and last year? What rules are different at school than our rules at home? Do you think they’re fair? Who did you sit with at lunch? Can you show me something you learned (or did) today?
This Grandma sings songs with the preschoolers, but the school age children just cringe when I try to sing any song, even those that I work hard to learn on the pop station to be the hip grandma. I got the eight year old to dance with the eighteen month old to “Baby Shark,” videotaped it, and must have watched it a few dozen times already. I am learning to take screen shots during FaceTime.
Any help to keep us close and involved with our grandchildren is always appreciated.
Joy,
Mema
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