Spoil the Grandkids? A Better Way Forward
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:05.000 | We close out the week with an email from a podcast listener named Ashley who writes in to ask this,
00:00:09.000 | "Dear Pastor John, as parents of two young children, my husband and I find ourselves regularly battling the popular idea that the job of grandparents is to spoil their grandchildren.
00:00:19.000 | We are seeking to raise our kids in the fear and admonition of the Lord, but it is hard when our ideas are subverted by the way our parents believe they are loving their grandchildren.
00:00:29.000 | Any advice on how to approach this with them respectfully?"
00:00:33.000 | Thank you so much for your podcast and your ministry. They have been instrumental in our walk with Christ. What would you say to Ashley?
00:00:39.000 | One of the built-in problems in America at least is that many grandparents have more money, usually, than they have geographic presence or energy to spend with their grandchildren.
00:01:00.000 | Therefore, they tend to make up for the guilt feelings of not being near or having energy by giving them more stuff and more expensive stuff.
00:01:13.000 | So the first thing I would say is to the grandparents listening.
00:01:19.000 | I know the feeling. I've got 12 grandchildren. I know the feeling of having the resources and wanting to give good things to your grandchildren.
00:01:32.000 | But if you're a Christian, keep in mind that having things and giving things as opposed to having relationships and giving yourself are not always the best way to love.
00:01:50.000 | This takes some serious thought and creative research to discover the kinds of gifts that might really bless the whole family in significant spiritual or educational or recreational ways.
00:02:07.000 | And under God, the most important people to interact with when thinking these things through is the parents of your grandchildren.
00:02:18.000 | They're called your kids.
00:02:20.000 | We grandparents should put out of our mind once and for all the thought that going around our children to get to our grandchildren is right. It's not right.
00:02:36.000 | We have no right to do that.
00:02:39.000 | Those children are told by God to be responsive, to be obedient to their parents.
00:02:46.000 | Their obedience and responsiveness is to us secondarily and derivatively.
00:02:54.000 | And what that means for us grandparents is that we defer to the parents of our grandchildren, which means we defer to our children.
00:03:07.000 | That may sound contrary to what we ordinarily have thought about our children and how to relate to them and they to us, but it is built in.
00:03:18.000 | I'm arguing it's built into the biblical pattern of children obeying their parents.
00:03:24.000 | Once there is a new unit formed of parents and children, the parents of those parents assume a secondary role in the authority and leadership toward those children,
00:03:41.000 | which means that we should consult those parents and we should be willing to listen to them if they say that the gifts we are giving are proving to be unhelpful in the way they're trying to parent their kids.
00:03:59.000 | And I know this may be painful relationally.
00:04:04.000 | The older we are, the more humble we should be and the thicker our skin should be.
00:04:11.000 | We've been knocked about by life more times and we should have some calluses on our skin so that we don't mope and act immature and self-pitying because our kids have to tell us that our gifts aren't helping.
00:04:25.000 | Now, back to the question she asked.
00:04:28.000 | She wants to know what she should do towards grandparents, and I'm talking to grandparents and she didn't even ask me to talk to grandparents, but I felt like I needed to.
00:04:38.000 | So how do the parents of the grandchildren approach the grandparents if those grandparents are doing things or giving things that the parents find unhelpful?
00:04:51.000 | And here's the first thing I would say, and it's kind of a general principle I would say about lots of relationships, marriage, friendships.
00:04:58.000 | Don't try to give corrective advice to others, in this case to your parents, in the very moment of disagreement.
00:05:11.000 | So, for example, if it's Christmas or a birthday and the kids just opened the gift from grandmama and you find that gift really inappropriate, that's not the time to deal with it.
00:05:23.000 | Don't deal with it then.
00:05:25.000 | The principle is find a neutral time at some distance from the moment of disagreement, perhaps over lunch, and gently ask if we can talk about something important.
00:05:38.000 | And then be as affirming as you can to the motives and to the love that they're trying to express so that that doesn't feel minimized or discounted.
00:05:50.000 | And then explain to them, to the best of your ability, why you think things should be different than they are.
00:05:57.000 | And it would be helpful if you had thought through—I'm saying this as a granddad—it would be helpful if you had thought through some alternative suggestions for your parents,
00:06:08.000 | because we grandparents aren't always as wise and creative as we need to be in this regard.
00:06:16.000 | And if you can think of things that would bless your children from your parents, we would, I hope, be willing to hear.
00:06:27.000 | But I can't end, Tony, without another word to grandparents because of that phrase, "Spoil your grandkids."
00:06:35.000 | It is emphatically not our job to spoil our grandchildren.
00:06:41.000 | That's not funny. It's not funny.
00:06:44.000 | It's not our place to be lenient where the parents are strict.
00:06:50.000 | It is emphatically our role to reinforce with happy unity the parenting that our kids are trying to give their kids, our grandkids, assuming, of course, that it's safe and wholesome.
00:07:09.000 | There should be a united front. This would be beautiful.
00:07:13.000 | There should be a united front of biblical principle that the kids discern in parents and grandparents.
00:07:22.000 | They should see it as a tradition. There's a legacy here.
00:07:26.000 | These standards are coming down from generation to generation.
00:07:30.000 | I'm going to embrace them and use them someday.
00:07:34.000 | So let's be done with the notion that grandparents should spoil their grandkids.
00:07:41.000 | We shouldn't.
00:07:43.000 | We should bless them in every possible spiritual way that we can and shouldn't let material gifts get in the way of that goal.
00:07:53.000 | That is very helpful and eternally strategic perspective.
00:07:56.000 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:07:57.000 | Well, it's time for us to break for the weekend.
00:08:00.000 | What a great week of questions.
00:08:01.000 | Thank you, listeners, for your participation in sending us great questions all week.
00:08:06.000 | You can look back on the episodes that we covered for the week and even browse the most popular episodes of all time.
00:08:11.000 | You can do that at our landing page at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
00:08:17.000 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke. We will see you on Monday. Have a great weekend.
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