[Lifestayle] Intergenerational Relationships: What Grandparents and Grandchildren Can Teach

[WilkerCSBD]

The arrival of a new member of the family is a new illusion for the grandparents, who see their energy renewed. Children, by looking at the world without prejudice and keeping their capacity for wonder intact, give their grandparents the possibility of observing the world with new eyes. The psychologist Gemma Benito affirms that grandparents carry with them the story of an already extinct world, with communal practices unknown to our children such as bartering, gleaning or transhumance, and that, undoubtedly, knowing them broadens the horizons and gives continuity to our collective memory. Benito affirms that the figure of the grandparents supposes for the child people of attachment, that is to say, figures that provide security, tranquility, wisdom, affection and protection. It is not surprising that many children see them as confidants and friends, as people who guide them.

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María Gutiérrez Benítez and Gemma Herráiz Segarra are professors at the University of Valencia and experts in intergenerational teaching / learning. They tell us: “A short time ago, grandparents and grandmothers, those who came to have a relationship with their grandchildren, were almost always very old. Not so now; they come into that relationship healthy, active, awake, and with a much longer life expectancy. Today, grandparents coexist with grandchildren, not only in childhood but well into youth, and even in early adulthood ”. Both teachers state that, in a society that lives under the sign of haste, and while the working life of couples and young married couples makes the relationship with their children more difficult than desirable, grandparents have an important place. “Their role has become complementary, summing, in all those facets that life today lacks, and that are important when it comes to the development of the little ones, such as spending time with their grandchildren, listening to them and welcoming them as warmly as they need and be with them during the hours when their parents are absent ”.

Intergenerational relationships are a matter of daily practice. Nazaret Martínez Heredia, from the pedagogy department of the University of Granada, believes that older people when they take care of their grandchildren perceive themselves to be more active and with greater management of their emotions and illnesses. “The satisfaction of the elderly for feeling useful and continuing to learn, the use of the knowledge and knowledge provided, the acquisition of values (empathy, respect and solidarity), the modeling of being better people in life and the recognition of a positive image ”. He says that grandparents and grandchildren can do multiple activities in which both benefit: “going to the park to help improve patience and respect for others, grandparents and grandmothers can teach them traditional games and songs that may be novel and will help them children to develop skills such as coordination, calculation and balance. It is also interesting to carry out crafts to promote skills ”. Undoubtedly, all these moments will favor the bond of union and trust between the two.

For the professors of the University of Valencia, María Gutiérrez Benítez and Gemma Herráiz Segarra, grandparents are seen by their grandchildren as wise people who transmit their legacy, their family history, their values, creating in them a sense of belonging to the family, to his own story, to his life. “The grandparents are the ones who will first transmit to the little ones the importance of the family, as well as their family history. They will be accomplices of their grandchildren, due to their conciliatory, mediating and protective nature towards the little ones, becoming an example to follow ”. With regard to language, older children expand their vocabulary and verbal comprehension, as grandparents tend to get involved by telling them stories, stories that stimulate in them the learning of proverbs, ironies, double meanings and the interpretation of gestures.

And, if we talk about what grandparents relearn with their grandchildren, we could ensure that there is an improvement in their cognitive stimulation that will be reflected in a greater focus of attention on the little ones, on their care and well-being, on keeping awake the senses (perception), in activating short, medium and long term memory (they initiate a process of new information storage), imagination training; On the other hand, grandparents also renew the feeling of responsibility (their self-esteem increases and the feeling of loneliness decreases) and, also, in the face of the children's waste of energy, they will activate the locomotor system.