Where do you stand on an issue? We have often been asked, or asked ourselves, this question when a debate has been raging around our ears. I know I have. Sometimes the answer comes pat straight out. Other times one is not so sure. One teeters this way and that, then retreats to a no-man’s-land of neutrality wherein, it is said, lie stationed the troops of indecision. Can we be blamed? Can we blame ourselves? Certainly not. I have ceased blaming myself a long time ago for not being sure one way or another.
Right now, I am not sure about something connected with parenting. It is this: My friend Barney has two grandchildren. (It is true, readers who have been with me a while will find it hard to envisage Barney — rascal, prankster, borderline egotist – in the guise of a grandfather, but it is true, he sired one son and that son has now sired two!)
Those two little kids – aged three and 18 months — require looking after. Both parents work busy schedules, five days a week. Saturday and Sunday the kids are theirs. They endeavour to spend a weekend playing Happy Family.
On Mondays and Wednesdays the children are dropped off at one of the many child-care centres that dot the city (whose fees are threatening in this year to go through the roof.) On Tuesday, a grandparent on the mother’s side takes charge of the kids (who are sometimes driven out to the grandparent’s house; other times the said grandparent drives to keep an eye on the children at their house.) On Thursday a cousin who is working on a diploma takes charge, keeping one eye on feeding and play times and the other on her essays, notes and assignments.
On Friday, it is Barney’s turn and he, to give him his due, goes over diligently. If Barney loves anything or anybody it is his two grandchildren, even if little Ivy will forever be held accountable for knocking a cup of scalding coffee into her grandpa’s lap, an act Barney will claim was more by design than by accident, because she’d just been threatening to throw a tantrum and he’d just happened to call her a stubborn, saucy little vixen.
Jeremy, the grandson, is discovering that he cannot set a foot outside the front door on Thursdays. Cousin Sadie will have none of it — not even the cool spring breeze on a picture postcard day can draw her away from her studies.
Grandpa Barney is the love of Jeremy’s life simply because grandpa breaks all the adult rules and takes the kids wherever the thought takes him on any given day. The kids have been to the cinema to see Frozen, they have spent hours in the park, Jeremy running freely, Barney rather self consciously pushing Ivy in her pram and looking over his shoulder from time to time both to see if Jeremy is behaving and also to check if his role as baby tender is being taken note of.
On Mondays and Wednesdays, goodbyes at the child-care centre are very teary for both kids. They rarely ever notice the parents missing on other days.
Here’s my dilemma on the subject. Is it good for the children to have so many different handlers at this age? Or is it detrimental? Is it good to introduce them so early to different boundaries so that it will make them more adaptable as they grow? Or is it going to leave them confused and indecisive in later life? Already, Jeremy is confessing to everything because he’s being told to be honest always, then he’ll never be punished. Ask him who broke the television and he’ll say, “I did.” Even if he didn’t. And little minx Ivy is watching Jeremy from her pram probably thinking that with brother Jeremy in this mode she will, in the years ahead, be able to get away with anything.
Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney, Australia.
