Surrounded with Love: Grandparents Raising Grandchildren
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More than 3.5 million children in the US are raised by a grandparent. In their own words, three grandmothers explain the reasons for their caregiving/parenting decisions, and share their rewarding experiences raising their grandchildren.
* Delores, a 48-year old married woman is raising three grandsons after her daughter was murdered.
* Aderian, a 65-year old grandmother is raising two grandchildren, ages 12 and 6 after mental illness incapacitated both of ther parents.
* Jewel, a 64-year old grandmother, is happily raising" three grandchildren, ages 18, 13, and 4.
Surrounded With Love explores both the positive and negative feelings of the pareneting grandparent: the hard work, the challenges and the added responsibilities.
Citation
Main credits
Vanden Bosch, James (film director)
Vanden Bosch, James (editor of moving image work)
Other credits
Videographers, David Jousma, Tihomir Mijatovich; editors, Tom Laughlin, James Vanden Bosch, Jim Riemersma.
Distributor subjects
No distributor subjects provided.Keywords
Speaker 1: The reason I live with my grandma is family problems. My dad, he's not able to take care of me, and neither does my mother. It's sort of weird living with my grandma, but I like it a lot. I'd rather be there than anywhere else.
Speaker 2: I'm living with my grandma because my dad, he couldn't really take care of us because he was drinking alcohol. The court said that we were in custody of my grandma, and so we've lived with her ever since.
Speaker 3: My mom was going traveling and I didn't want to go, and so I told her I wanted to live with my grandma. It's okay. It's just not like I'm really crying. It's not like that. It's okay with me.
Dr. Fernando Torres-Gil: Grandparents have always played important roles in taking care of their children and their grandchildren throughout human history. That's not new. What is new sadly for our country is that grandparents increasingly are having to step in when their own children are unable to take care of their own kids. Grandparents taking care of grandchildren today, oftentimes can be a manifestations of some of the real serious problems confronting American families in American society.
Whether it's drugs or illegitimacy or unemployment or children being too young to raise their own children, what we're finding is that increasingly, grandparents are having to step in to take care of their own. It's not a new phenomena. What is new is some of the challenges that grandparents are facing, some of the needs that they have and ways that hopefully we can work with them as they take on this additional responsibility.
Speaker 5: I'm 48 years old. I have six grandchildren total. I have three grandchildren living with me. I work in food service at Illinois State University and I've been on my job now for 19-and-a-half years.
Speaker 6: I'm a 65 year old grandma. I'm raising two grandchildren at this time. Jessica is 12. AJ is 10. I've had them about six-and-a-half years. I got the kids after they had been in an extremely abusive situation.
Speaker 7: I'm 64 years of age and a grandmother and happily raising three grandchildren. Antonio aged 18, Alexander age 13, and believe it or not, Ashanti age 4.
Connie M. Booth: We find that there's more than three-and-a-half million children nationally living at home with their grandparents. The number one reason for that is the drug abuse, chemical abuse by the parent. Primarily, a crack, cocaine epidemic. Other reasons that grandchildren are living with their grandparents include mental illness of the parent, incarceratation of the parent, death or illness. We're starting to see the impact of the AIDS epidemic, but the number one reason still is the drug use by the parent.
We find that they try to parent the children and end up dropping them at grandma and grandpa's doorsteps saying, "Mom, dad, would you just take them for a week, I can't handle it anymore?" That week sometimes turns into months, sometimes turns into years, and finally, grandma and grandpa say, "The child needs some stability. It needs to know where it's going to be be sleeping. We're going to go ahead and raise this child."
Speaker 7: Antonio and Alexander came into my life when my daughter made some very, very unwise decisions. She asked me to keep them for just a little while, while she got herself together. Getting herself together meant trying to go into a treatment plan for substance abuse, and that was in 1981. At this point, I have had them ever since. She has had more than her share of problems, and she has made many, many unwise decisions, and the substance abuse along with a lot of other undesirable behavior has continued.
Speaker 6: It was actually a charge of mine that brought the attention of the children to the court as their father's mental state deteriorated. It became more and more evident to me that the kids were in danger. I was in and out of the house almost on a daily basis, but he was spending hours crying. I would walk in and he would be curled up in a knot, wrapped up in a blanket crying, totally unable to come to pay any attention to what the kids were doing, much less handling things for himself.
Both of the kids were badly damaged. They've been in counseling most of the time that I have had them. I moved the children when I got them into a house that I had helped my son get for the kids while he had custody of the kids. They had only been with their mother about four months when all of the abuse occurred. The abuse was bad enough that there are things that are going to change the kids entire life. There are things that are not going to go away.
Speaker 5: Well, I got a call, my daughter had moved to Columbus, Ohio, and she had just given birth to Dartanian. I got a call from one of her friends stating that he was going to report her to DCFS and they were getting ready to take the baby away from her, and I didn't understand why. He told me that she's never there, she never takes care of him and she's on drugs. This is the first time I'd heard of her using drugs. At this point, I didn't know what to do. I got in touch with her, and she didn't deny it.
I guess Dartanian was made a ward of the state in Columbus because he actually was born with cocaine in his system. I talked to her and asked her what she wanted to do, and she didn't have any answers. I called my brother and I talked to him, and he was telling me he was on his way here to Illinois for a vacation to visit his mother-in-law, and he could bring the boys with him when he came here if I had decided that I would take them. At that point, I told him, I said, "Well, I'll take the two oldest ones. I don't think I'll be able to handle a baby."
When he showed up, he brought all three with him. Basically, that's how that we ended up with three boys. The story behind it when I went there was she had met this girl who invited her over to her house. When she got to the girl's house, there was another girl there, so now there's three girls there. Before Tammy had arrived, there had been two guys there, and they had asked the one that lived in the apartment, that owned the apartment to hold $40 for him. She told them, she would.
Well, here they are sitting up and I guess they wanted to get high, and they decided to take the $40. Well, Tammy decided to stay at the house for some reason, then the other two left with the money, went and got high, and came back. When the guys came back looking for the money, she couldn't explain what had happened.
She didn't want to tell him that she had taken his money and spent it for drugs. She said, "Well, I left the money in the house, and Tammy was here, so she must have stole the money." Tammy said, "No, I didn't have the money. I don't know anything about it. If you give me time, I'll go get you $20." The guy didn't believe her. He drove her outside and put a gun to her head and blew her brains up.
Dr. Torres-Gil: I had the opportunity recently of attending a conference on grandparents raising grandchildren, and a chance to speak to this crowd of several hundred grandparents who are going through the hard work and the challenge and the responsibility of coping with grandchildren, but who are also there because they support each other, and it's something that they would not give up because it's their role and their mission.
I was struck, however, by the need for many of them to come to terms with their feeling of guilt and failure, that somehow the fact that they were raising their grandkids was a sign that they had failed, that they had not been good parents. Much of this conference was to counsel and guide them and coach them, that in fact, it is not a reflection on them. It is not a sign that they did anything wrong. This is just something that has happened. It's about life, and that in order for them to be good grandparents, they have to first let go and forgive themselves and not attach any sense of guilt.
Speaker 6: The first thing any grandparent is going to have to deal with who takes the children, although they've got the daily care of the kids they have to work with is probably the trauma and the unhappiness that goes with the problem with their own children that caused this to happen. There are always the occasion it may be death, but in most instances, it's probably drugs and alcohol. Along with all the physical things you're doing, you're going to have to come to terms with your own unhappiness with your own child.
This, frequently, is intensified by the rest of the siblings of this child because there can be complications there. The rest of the kids that we have had as our own children, may be jealous or unhappy about the additional attention or they may be so disgusted with this other brother or sister, whatever it may be, that they think it's time just to write them off, and it's very difficult for a parent to do. There may be complications with other grandchildren that are not getting the same amount of time and intention. It's one of the things that I have to deal with.
Also, am I being fair to the rest of the grandchildren? Very probably, I am not because when I go on vacation and these kids are going to go with me, the rest of the grandchildren don't always. I look at the few things of value that I have realizing that eventually, there should be a will. The things that are really important to me, I would like these kids to have.
Connie: Some of the issues the grandparents have said are resentment, sometimes guilt. They wonder, "What did I do to cause this? What did I do?" We try to assure them that they did the best they could and that the drug epidemic is so widespread now that sometimes it's very difficult to shelter your children from that. The overriding emotion again is love. Love for that adult child who's wandering away as well as love for that vulnerable little child that they feel they need to protect now.
Speaker 5: There was so many different things that had happened in my daughter's life that I felt I had to come to grips with, and I just couldn't have anyone helping me. The only thing I had was prayers, really. This really brought me around. It helped me because no matter what else I dealt with or who I talked to, people were-- I know they were sympathetic but they kept saying, "I know what you're going through." I would get upset, and it's like, "No, you don't. You really don't know what I'm going through," but we adjust. It gets easier but it still hurts.
Speaker 7: She's waking up at somewhere between 5:00 and 6:00 and I'm tired and sleepy and don't want to move. We have to get up and get breakfast and get hair-combed, and pull her away from the television, which I don't turn on but if I don't get up right away, she turns on Barney or whatever happens to be on. I don't really like that, but I'm sleeping and I'm tired and I'm old. Okay. She gets up and does what she can until I can come to life, and then we do our regular thing to get ready to go. I take her to the babysitter, and then I go on to work.
Speaker 6: The kids can be helpful. They can contribute to things. They get their own clothing on, pretty much can find the things they want. At this point, they do have ideas of their own. It's not lay out their clothes and say, "Let's do this." The negative part to that is my two, at this point, are old enough. We're spending every night running. There's karate and youth group and choir, and karate again, and basketball, so every night is just chase, chase, chase.
Speaker 7: This one teacher kept sending back, "You haven't completed the information." I went up and told her, "This is all that I have. There is no additional information. Do you understand? Don't ask about the father because I don't know that. This is all you need to know. This is the address, this is the phone number, and I'm the one, so don't send anything else back. Don't send another note." I haven't had that trouble.
Speaker 5: We do talk about drugs. That's something that I refuse to keep a secret. I don't think they know the extent of everything about their mom yet, but they know that she just didn't die. They know that she was killed. They know about drugs. They talk about it at school. We talk about it here at the house.
I told Will, "To me, this is very important because of Dartanian and the condition that he had at birth, I want them to know at an early age what drugs would do." I am going to tell them the truth about their mother. I feel it is my job. If I don't do it, someone else is going to do it, so I want them to hear everything. Before I die, I want to make it perfectly clear that there was no secrets kept from them.
Speaker 6: 99% of the things I do at this point hinges around the children. I'm not working at developing new friends greatly. The kind of movies we go to now are things that kids like. If we're going out to a dinner theater, we go to one that's a comedy or something they can enjoy. Vacations are planned around the kids. It's living within a totally different framework. Sometimes, we eat at the table, yes. Sometimes, they eat on TV trays, and sometimes, we're fortunate to get a meal in.
With the commitments at night, it can just be run, run, run, and I understand, at this age and time, that's only going to get worse. Their stability lies with me, their sense of safety. Both of them still like, at this late time, snuggling time and personal time at night. We have a special little kiss that they both think we're supposed to go through. Jessica will tell you she can't go to sleep at night without her special kiss.
Connie: They appreciate living with grandma and grandpa. They still love mom and dad, but they've learned not to expect much from them. When they've been told that mom and dad are coming over for the weekend or pick them up or will be there for their birthday, they just shrug it off. Grandparents told me that, at first, whenever the phone would ring and it was their parents, the children would run to want to talk to the phone. As the years go by, the grandchildren are more likely to say, "I'm busy now," or, "I don't want to talk to them right now," that kind of thing. Grandparents see that as a positive and that the child is learning what's reality and what they can expect from their parents and what they can't.
Speaker 6: The dad's relationship with the kids is probably going to be a little hurtful as far as they are concerned. As far as Jessica is concerned, dad can do no wrong. I think AJ is not quite as avid with that. I just keep telling them, "Give dad hugs and kisses, and love him." They just have to learn to be the one to help him instead of asking him to help them.
Speaker 5: When I really decided to keep the boys because Will is not my children's father, he was their stepfather. I thought, "This is asking too much." First of all, we married and I had three kids. Now, I'm going to him again and I want to raise three grandchildren. I told him, I said, "This is my decision. I'm not going to let them separate the children. I don't know if I'll ever see them again or what my chances are I ever be of getting the boys back.
I said, "As far as the marriage is concerned, I would love for us to always be together, but if not, I understand. This is a decision that I'm making for my grandchildren." Will never seemed like it bothered him. He said, "Okay," which I was really surprised about. In fact, I think he blended a lot better than I did. Maybe it was because they were boys. He was running around here, shooting them with water guns, and playing with them, and buying balls for them, and stuff like that, taking them to the park. He really had a lot of patience when I first got them.
Speaker 6: In my own personal life, the impact was tremendous. The first thing is you lose all of your friends. People my age really are not interested in PTA and the things that kids are doing and what's going on at school. They don't care for the music or whatever. There are a few of my friends who still retain any contact at all. There are some that I have friends with. There are one or two who like kids well enough that we occasionally do things with.
Connie: We've been running the support groups for about five years now. Some of the grandparents have stuck with it for the full five years.
Speaker 6: The idea of the support group is first to give moral support to any grandparent who has done this, to even give them physical help if they need it on occasion, as sometimes we can sit for each other or help out now and then. The first aim, the most important thing above all is that shoulder to cry on when you're totally down, when things have gone absolutely wrong, when you think, "My golly, I can't stand another day of this. What am I going to do?"
Those hours, those things can happen in the middle of the night sometimes. As a support group, we should still be there for these people when it's really terrible. We get together once a month. We have speakers sometimes. When we do this, we try to answer some of the needs or things that look like they need to be addressed. Eventually, we may want to look at legislation.
Speaker 7: Knowing my story, I would just tell them it's a labor of love. This is your blood. If you can handle it, by all means, I think you will feel better doing it yourself than throwing it out and just letting them go into a foster home because I have no problems with-- I know where she is. If she was any place else, I would just be a wreck. I advise people, if they can do it, if they can handle it, knowing what they're getting into, I think it's wonderful. That sense of family and bonding, that's so important. She knows she's loved.
Speaker 6: It's wonderful to be needed still at 65, to have a productive part in someone's life. I do a newsletter for this support group and send it out every month, and the little-- I don't remember the whole thing verbatim. I just said, "I'm probably not going to have very much money and I may not have very many material things, but a hundred years from now, the important thing is going to be I can say I was important in some child's life." I think this is the important thing to say. I saw a need, a need that was great enough that I couldn't walk away from it.
Speaker 5: Well, they're definitely not alone. There's a lot of grandparents doing this. It's not so much about what you can buy for a child, it's just for a child to know that there's someone, someone that's going to wipe away a tear or find a band-aid or just give them a hug, really. Someone that's just going to sit down and read a story or listen to what they have to say. It's not about putting a steak on the table, it's whatever you give a child. They're happy with it, as long as they know that they can be surrounded with love.
Speaker 1: One thing I'd like to add about my living with my grandma is that the bond between each other really gets much greater when you are together, and the love for each other really gets stronger, and after a while, you're almost inseparable.
[00:22:27] [END OF AUDIO]