10 More Lessons from a Mimi
11. There is no checklist and there are no universal rules for success.
12. Crying is communication.
13. Babies and children are full humans and should be treated as such.
14. You are also a full human and have needs that conflict with the needs of others.
15. You also need to eat, poop, and sleep.
16. No one is going to give you an award for doing a good job.
17. If you haven’t learned to apologize before now, buckle up and go in for a deep dive.
18. Try to remember that you are the grownup in the situation.
19. There are two kinds of time: clock time and baby time.
20. As much as possible, make this an amusement park ride.
I think a lot about why it is that being a grandmother has been less stressful than being a parent. The biggest difference: I’m getting a full night’s sleep most of the time. But there are a lot of other differences.
I’m not caught in a religion that tells me everything is my fault and that gives only surface level appreciation for the hard work of parenting. I’m more confident in myself and my skills as a caregiver, but at the same time much looser in my ideas about what it is that makes a good caregiver, more attune and attentive to the information children offer about what they need from me. I am even better at attending to my own needs while helping others. I also don’t have a particular schedule that I need to follow because I get my work done when grandbaby isn’t with me. That means grandbaby time is mostly just for fun.
YMMV