Celebrating Grandparent’s Day
September 9, 2020
Grandparent’s Day is Sunday, September 13, 2020, and each year we like to specially recognize the grandparents caring for their grandchildren. Jennifer Odum, Grandparents As Parents Program Manager, contributes this year’s reflection.
As we celebrate all the grandparents in our lives, we want to especially lift up the ones who have assumed primary care for their grandchildren. When these grandparents step up to be parents for the second time around it brings both many challenges and many rewards. Parenting children whose parents are no longer able or allowed to care for them presents a myriad of challenges. These children often face many obstacles such as depression, anxiety abandonment issues and other conditions brought about by the situations they have endured. Grandparents often find themselves isolated from their friends who are no longer raising children as well as from the parents of other children who are from a different generation.
Yet every year 2.5 million grandparents in the United States bring their love and experience to the task of raising their grandchildren. Having grandparents raising them is shown to give these children a better chance at life successes than children who are placed into general foster care. In the Grandparents As Parents program at ONEgeneration we assist over 400 relatives a year with services and support towards this honored role. From Martha who is raising 3 great-grandchildren to Betty who raised 4 grandchildren and now lives with her granddaughter’s family as the matriarch in their multi-generational household, we see daily the amazing impact these grandparents make on their grandchildren’s lives. We see these grandparents provide a stable, safe and loving environment for their grandchildren that has benefits both ways. Having their grandchildren around can help ward off loneliness, depression and provide a fun environment that keeps them engaged in the current world. We see this exemplified by Barry, our 85 years young grandfather who goes to dance classes every week, learns the computer from his grandchildren and proudly takes his granddaughter on college tours preparing her for next year.
On Grandparents Day 2020 ONEgeneration salutes all of the heroes in our Grandparents As Parents program and across the county who tirelessly maintain their family connections and legacies by raising their grandchildren when it is most needed.
Jennifer Odum is the Program Manager of Grandparents As Parents, a program of ONEgeneration.