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My grandchildren love it when Grandpa is “bad.” “Make the truck wibble wobble,” means having it swerve back and forth in the neighborhood. “Can we go to the pharmacy and get Grandpa medicine?” means the ice cream shop. “Can we try and hit you with water balloons?” means what it says!
Kids love the idea of “being bad,” and getting away with it. They know they can’t do these things in school. Somehow a bit of rebellion against established norms is liberating. Hence, bad Grandpa!
It seems to me that Grandparents, or anyone who loves kids and was old enough to vote for Ronald Reagan or Jimmy Carter, have a lot to offer our school-age children. We enjoyed a lifestyle based on less technology and greater freedom from both of which we learned life lessons that are hard to come by otherwise.
This article includes an invitation to join a group of Berean grandparents, and others, to help share what we enjoyed as kids with the current generation.
We were blessed to grow up in an era when we rode our bikes miles from home without a helmet or a cell phone. While we had TV’s, our entertainment was mostly outdoors. In my world, we played backyard sports, swam in our neighbor’s pool and built tree forts out of wood we found on the discard piles at neighborhood construction sites. Except for swimming, none of this was supervised by adults. We were on our own. The only interventions would be if we crossed a line. Mom took away my slingshot when I shot my sister in the rear end with a cumquat. But my sister was at least 60’ away and running. Mom should have given me a Great Shot Ribbon!
And that freedom and independent learning bore fruit as we grew up. In high school, friends and I built two hang gliders as a school project. When it was time to try flying them for the first time, we loaded the parts into our parents’ station wagons and headed out to find an appropriate hill by the beach . . . just like the Wright brothers. Leaving my parents’ house I vividly remember the conversation.
One of them asked,
“Where are you going?”
“I’m not sure,” I answered, “Somewhere down by the Beach; probably near Laguna.”
“When will you be back?”
“In a couple of days. We’ve got camping gear and food.”
“OK.”
We built these planes ourselves out of wood, plastic sheeting, and bailing wire. None of us were pilots. None of us had had any instruction in aviation. We bought the plans from some guy we didn’t know in Pasadena. We laminated the wing spars ourselves. Here is a photo of my friend, Phil, flying one of them.
Years later I asked my Dad, “What were you thinking?” To which he answered, “you were pretty good kids. You did well in school. You weren’t drinking or doing drugs. So we trusted you.”
More than 50 years later I’m still amazed.
What can we do as Grandparents to help our Grandchildren live more freely?
I think there are three areas of life in which Grammy and Grandpa can step up and help our grandchildren thrive. Those are:
- Everyday life skills
- The blessing of working with your hands
- Knowing it’s going to be alright
Everyday Life Skills
A question that is rarely asked about AI and other modern technologies is this:
“How well does it work when the electricity is off?” Developing everyday life skills can help us live more simply, less dependent on technology and, ironically, less expensively. It doesn’t cost more than 20 cents on the dollar to make a cup of coffee at home instead of buying it at Starbucks and it’s not that hard to brew good coffee. Learning to do so may be a tiny step in the right direction.
Similarly, a great many home repairs can be completed with a screwdriver, plyers, and duct tape. But it helps to know when you need a Phillips-head screwdriver! Without any illusions that our grandchildren might become as capable as the children of Amish Farmers, we can still equip them to better care for themselves in simple, everyday ways.
Working with your Hands
There is also a tremendous joy that flows out of the Biblical imperative to “work with your hands.” When Paul is giving advice to brand-new believers on how to be good Christians, before he urges them to pray, give to the poor, worship, read scripture or sing hymns he tells them this:
Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life will win the respect of outsiders and you won’t be dependent on anyone. I Thess: 4:11-12
We can quibble about whether or not Paul literally meant “work with your hands” as opposed to “support yourselves” but manual labor was no more respected in the 1st Century Roman world than it is today. So, the phrase is striking. And its preeminence in Paul’s advice giving is more striking still. Somehow, it’s important.
For our purposes it’s the joy of making things and building things that is also valuable. One modern writer, Mathew Crawford, wrote a fabulous book called, Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work, in which he extolls the virtues and joys of working with your hands and laments the loss of Shop Classes in High Schools.1
Working with your hands is an experience and a way of life we can help our grandchildren experience.
It’s Going to be Alright
Finally, we can help our grandkids simply by bringing them the perspective of our longer lives that most of the time, things work out. And even when they don’t, God has this.
It is helpful, for example, to point out that there are only two decisions you make in life that really matter. Those are what you believe about God and who you marry. Belief in God has eternal consequences and who you marry feels like it has eternal consequences! Everything else can usually be fixed. In an age of inappropriate and at times oppressive anxiety we, as older Christians, can help our grandchildren experience a time of Holy Calm . . . if we are willing to do so.
Grandparents’ Club
I would love to see us start an informal Grandparents’ Club at Berean. For the most part as Grandparents, we have more time than our children who are working and raising their children. There are things we might do that would simply overwhelm their already crowded lives.
We might, for example, start a gardening club and then build a number of raised beds between the buildings and the North wall. We could deflate tires in the parking lot to then be changed by students in the “essential life skills” class run by our Grandparents’ club. And there is undoubtedly room to teach students how to build things, cook, sew and knit and share other life skills. And for those grandparents with a teaching background who are willing to complete the necessary requirements, there will always be opportunities to serve as substitute teachers or tutors.
If you would enjoy participating in such a group, then grandparent or not, shoot us back an email in response to this Bulletin. If even a few people are interested, I hope to host a casual get together some evening at our home just to discuss things we might want to do.
While helping our grandchildren, we might also learn a few things from them . . . as shown here!
Blessings,
Bob Fry
Photo credit: https://ifunny.co/
1 More recently Crawford wrote a fascinating article for First Things in which he posits embracing the Incarnation as an answer to modern “anti-humanism. You can read it here. The Rise of Antihumanism.
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