Comments about ‘BYU study: Grandparents help kids be kinder, more involved’

A lot of truth to this and its unfortunate that parents don't involve themselves in their childrens lives. Parents spend too much time stressed out with their multi-tasked lives and forget what is the most important thing in their lives, their own children.

But I have contradictory analysis of the reasons and why parents have become less important in the lives of their children. Grandparents provide attention to grandchildren without all the gadgets education says they have to have. Children always have and always will need the personal association that TV and toys can't provide. Grandparents hug and talk while the parents run off to multitask.

It's not their fault, its how government, education, and business has programed the parents to put greed ahead of parenting. All their lives the young parents have been programed to think they cannot provide for themselves or their family. How prosperity and wealth and happiness is measured is completely different. In my younger day prosperity was measured with how much I have to spend, today it is measured in how much debt they can get. Happiness was no debt, and a home full of sharing yourselves and associating with each other.

Good points, AmPatriot.

And when grandparents get caught up in this "We need more," or "I deserve to play now" mindset, the grandchildren suffer. Grandparents who see vacationing at different beaches each summer as more important than seeing their grandchildren once every four years don't even seem to exist to those children. The only impact they have is a negative one.

The days of the "good old-fashioned" grandparents may be vanishing. I hope I'll remember comments like yours when I'm a grandmother.

When my children were small, my husband parents where too old to do anything with them and mine lived 2000 miles away. Both did what they could, but that was before Skype, internet, cheap telephones and travel. So, when my grandchildren came along, I determined to be a part of their lives--whatever the personal cost. I have set through endless piano and dance recital, swim meets, soccer games, frozen at football games, yelled at basketball games, watched children as they watched the Nutcracker for the first time and had more sleep-over (actually non- sleep overs than I can count. Has it be worth it? YES a million times. Children in these times need loving grandparents.

For those of us who do not have grandchildren close by, we are doing things the old fashioned way as well as visually/talking on the computer. My parents did not live close to us, so they have wonderful memories of letters and cards my mother would send to them. The dollar bills she would send for holidays and birthdays were always crisp and new looking. I told our children my mother ironed them so they were extra special. I found out later she would pick up crisp new dollars at the bank. They were still impressed that she would take the time to do something special for them. So, from this experience we came up with the idea of sending postcards each month. Our grandchildren are thrilled. We write something about the picture and that we love them. Most children do not receive mail anymore so this has helped form a bond with them.