Step Grandparenting

Blended Families

FamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript

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Step-Grandparenting

Guest: Ron Deal

From the series: Step-Grandparenting

Bob: When two families merge—when they blend—and now there are stepchildren and stepsiblings—one of the forgotten parts of this equation often, is the new step-grandparents. Here is Ron Deal.

Ron: Sometimes, when somebody else made a choice—and all of the sudden, you’ve got not just one, but maybe you’ve got five step-grandchildren—what if you had a bunch—what if you already thrown yourself relationship with your biological grandchildren, now you’ve got five more? It’s like—“How do I fit all of this in? How do we do the finances?” I’m just saying—I’ve seen and been involved in situations where the step-grandparents just aren’t terribly excited about this. That can be a disappointment to their adult child.

Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Monday, July 30th. Our host is Dennis Rainey, I’m Bob Lepine. Step-grandparenting can be tricky. We have some thoughts today from Ron Deal—

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—on how to make it work more effectively. Stay with us.

And welcome to FamilyLife Today. Thanks for joining us. There was a conference back last fall for grandparents. We had some friends who put this together. We helped promote this event—a national conference of grandparenting.

Dennis: The Legacy Conference.

Bob: That’s right. One of the speakers at the conference was Ron Deal who joins us in studio today and is the leader of FamilyLife Blended®. Ron, welcome back to FamilyLife Today.

Ron: Thank you.

Bob: You got invited to come and speak at this conference about step-grandparenting which, Dennis, I don’t know if I ever even stopped to think about that subject—but that’s an issue that a lot of families that all of the sudden find themselves in with very little preparation and very little coaching.

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Dennis: I would say most grandparents feel overlooked when it comes to blending a family together; and I can’t imagine what it would be like—to feel like—in some regards, you may be an outsider—

Ron: Yes.

Dennis: —to get back in with grandkids that—at one point—you were their heros. You’re hearing a lot about this subject as you speak around the country.

Ron: I am, Dennis. Bob, in preparation for that Legacy Conference, I did some homework. I do this every single day, but I was a little shocked to discover that 40-percent of families in the U.S. have a step-grandparent—40-percent! By the way, that’s stat is 20 years old—it’s old.

Dennis: So, it’s likely higher.

Ron: It’s likely much higher. The other thing that I found was that the prediction that demographers have is that by year 2030 in the U.S.—there will be one step-grandchild for every 1.7 biological grandchildren—less than 2 to 1 ratio. It is a very common experience. It’s going to continue to be—

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—a common experience—and of course, it touches all three of the generations.

Bob: Not just all three generations, but I’m thinking about all of the different permutations of what makes a stepfamily—and then how that expands to the grandparenting. So, if our son and daughter-in-law get a divorce, and now she is the custodial parent, where do we fit into that; right?

Ron: Exactly.

Bob: If there’s an estrangement between our son and this daughter-in-law, we may be cut out of the picture—

Ron: Right.

Bob: —with our grandkids.

Ron: What that means is that, at Christmastime, when you want time with your grandkids, there’s probably four or five or six other sets of grandparents who, also want time with the grandkids. So, all of the sudden, life just got really complicated fast.

Bob: Then, I’m thinking about the other situation which is where our son or our daughter marries somebody who has been previously married and brings grandkids in, and we didn’t just become new in-laws—we became new step-grandparents—and it happened in an instant.

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So, instead of watching these kids be born, we’re now step-grandparents to a 13-year-old and a 15-year-old that we haven’t ever known before.

Ron: What if you have some real mixed feelings about that new relationship? By the way, this is one of the things we are hearing from people: “Hey, I have step-grandchildren. By the way, I also have some biological grandchildren. I’ve known them their whole lives, and they’ve known us—we have traditions and time together and all sorts of things. Now, I’m trying to figure out: “What do I do, and how do I find time for the step-grandchildren? But that relationship came about because my child”—let’s say—"made some really poor decisions; and we have mixed feelings about those decisions.”

“Now, those decisions have resulted in them getting married and having stepchildren—that gives us step-grandchildren—we never really wanted this. It kind of feels like if we jump in as step-grandparents and throw ourselves into those relationships, that somehow, we’re saying what my son or daughter did is okay.”

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“We don’t feel like it’s okay. We’re kind of stuck between, not wanting to give approval—but at the same time—the grandchildren shouldn’t be the ones that suffer.”

That’s the kind of difficulties that grandparents are finding themselves in—trying to wade through these waters and figure out what to do.

Dennis: You outline three different kinds of step-grandparents. There are step-grandparents who step into the life of a child and actually, are in a long-term relationship helping to raise that child to maturity.

Ron: Right. They’ve been in a long-term—we call them long-term step-grandparents, meaning maybe, they were a stepparent at a younger age; and they raised a stepchild, and that stepchild is now an adult, now married, now has children of their own. Technically, those are step-grandchildren to the grandparent; right? But you’ve been in their life since day-one.

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That long-term step-grandparent, probably, has more of a relationship with their step-grandchildren like a biological ...