Trish Gribben: Grandparenting with love and laughter

By NICK SMITH

If I'd known grandchildren were so much fun, I would have had them first.

(T-shirt slogan)

Internationally successful author Trish Gribben is not short of the odd slogan. When asked why she needed to write a book about grandparenting, the 58-year-old Aucklander defines the subject with a short yet weighty sentence: ``When you talk about grandparenting, you are talking about all of life.''

Gribben is right, of course, if discussing the subject in the broadest possible sense, but the real answer lies in simple economics and demographics.

Tandem Press commissioned her to write the book. From the publisher's point of view it is aimed at a most desirable market - the baby boomers, those born between 1946 and 1961.

Baby boomers are the largest social group in New Zealand, comprising about a third of the population. They are also the wealthiest generation in our history, with more than 60 per cent having a household income of $48,000 or more.

The oldest baby boomer turns 54 this year and many of them are becoming grandparents.

Here is a captive audience, perhaps raised on such luminary publications as I'm OK, You're OK, ready to part with $29.95 for a different sort of self-help book, Grandparenting with Love and Laughter.

Gribben dismisses the cynics with the tart observation that she is not a grandmother and the book is not a self-help manual.

Despite the many helpful tips for new grandparents, she is right. If anything, this is a reasonably thorough examination of what it means to be a grandparent in New Zealand in the new millennium.

Says Gribben: ``This is a sharing of grandparents' stories and experiences threaded together with some ideas that are very dear to my heart.''

She interviewed more than 100 grandparents while researching her book. The stories are varied, surprising and inevitably fascinating. It is the breadth of experience that makes the 180-plus pages vital reading.

Along with the charming expressions of adoration - ``It's an astonishing love'' ... ``I've fallen in love again after 35 years'' - are the gritty realities of grandparenting in the noughties.

Take Jasmine, a 40-year-old living in Europe when she learned her son had become a father. Despite her son's relationship lasting only two years, Jasmine kept in touch.

``I sent letters, postcards, presents, money for education; whenever I came out to New Zealand, I visited. I was lucky that I was allowed to see my grandson. It was always a wrench, a heartache, but I wanted him to know there was always another side to his life.''

There are others: ``No, I'm not a general babysitter. With 10 grandchildren all born close together, I'd be out every night. As for looking after the babies, I know my limitations. Never again.''

Most testimony is positive, such as that of Barbara, who cares for her grandson three days a week: ``You only have the chance to be so close while they are little. It goes so quickly, you have to make the most of it. Once they're off to school and tearing about it's too late.''

Gribben says grandparents expressed surprise at the strength of emotion they felt. She did not speak to people uninterested in a grandparent's role, and makes no apology for the fact that the book is focused on the positive.

``Perhaps the greatest lows and greatest joys come out of family life and this book is about helping grandparents enjoy their role.

``My passion has always been about children and whatever we can do to help each child on its way.''

Gribben's work on Pyjamas Don't Matter, a seminal, common-sense manual for parenting that sold by the truckload, ensured she helped many children on their way. She followed Pyjamas Don't Matter, which was published in the United States and Britain and translated into numerous languages, with other child-related tomes such as Nits and Other Nasties, Coming, Ready or Not and the constantly updated Tots and Toddlers, given to new mothers throughout the country.

This is a woman for whom issues surrounding children and parenting are obviously second nature - ``but to have the chance to explore it again from a grandparent's point of view was a personal challenge for me,'' she says.

``Grandparents have a hugely underestimated role in children's lives. It's a huge challenge for new grandparents in our changed times.''

She talks about the difficulties experienced when both parents work and expect grandparents to take up the parenting slack. The trouble is, grandparents are also working for a living.

Surprisingly, food issues loom large in creating inter-generational family tension. A whole chapter is devoted to some of those perils. One grandfather claims that dealing with his grandchildren's eating habits is trickier than talking about sex.

``The old traffic advice, `Stop, look both ways and listen,' is actually bloody good advice for grandparents,'' Gribben says.

``Grandparenting gives my generation a second chance at hanging in there for kids. Children thrive on love and fun. So do grandparents. The two generations are made for each other.''