Dear 21st Century Dad, my 17 almost 18 year old daughter is a new mother as of four months ago. Now that motherhood is supposed to have made her a certified adult, I can look back and reflect that her teenage years presented us with many difficulties. We fought and fought until she moved out a month before her 16th birthday. She shared a raucous house that frequently was the centre of police attention.
She wants to move back into our house. There is no male owning up to be the father. The baby is beautiful and my wife showers as much love upon the child as a grandmother can do.
I’m 52. No way do I want to raise another child. My wife has a physical disability so she cannot do a lot of carting kids around. We’ve missed our daughter, not our daughter’s behaviour. I’ve appreciated the kind of peaceful silence our house has experienced without teenage traumas. My blood pressure dropped to almost normal a week after she moved out.
With a 4 month old baby, I’m prepared to give up silence. What can we do to ensure our house maintains some semblance of peace? I love my daughter. I can’t wait until the boy throws a baseball. What do I do in the meantime?
Dear Buy a Cigar but Don’t Light it Yet,
Congratulations granddad! Our daughter is moving back into our house and she brings with her our future.
A raucous house is no place to raise a child. Beautiful images, peaceful sounds, playful movements and gestures of love should impress a baby’s mind. A loving granddad offers safety and security, and a love that comes freely from deep in the heart.
Our daughter is wise and lucky. She is wise because she has recognized that her teenage lifestyle offered little benefit to her child. She would constantly be dependent upon the state to support her. She would never have time to educate herself and raise her son. Like many teen moms, she would complain about her lack of social life, and she would be singled out from other teens. North American statistics suggest she would probably have a second child as a single mother.
She is lucky because we have decided to welcome her and our grandchild into our house.What will be different than before?
Do we expect our relationship to change overnight just because our daughter is presenting us with a new grandchild? The wisdom of having parented an obstreperous child with much conflict says NO; much will be the same even if everyone’s intentions are clear and magnanimous. We need a behavioural contract.
1. Our daughter must commence an anger management program. We will have wished in retrospect that we had raised our prodigy in a peaceful atmosphere. An angry mother who rages at her baby, rears an angry and violent child who begets an angry and violent adult who begets an angry and violent baby. Intelligence demands that we attend the same anger management course. One person who argues with him or herself is delusional, two people who argue experience the ups and downs of relationship.
2. Our daughter must attend parenting classes. Her new parenting knowledge will hopefully cement a mother/daughter bonding which may mature her personality and offer her deep insight into the process of birthing, and living.
3. Our daughter must attend a life skills course with the intention that she will live by herself as soon as possible, and successfully. Once we considered our daughter’s neglect of household chores to be an annoying but typical teenage behaviour. No more. She will need to be knowledgeable of nutrition, sterilize the baby bottles, clean the dishes, organize the diaper disposal, childproof the house, and those other hundred thousand myriad chores. All our parenting memories should return upon the first baby wail in the middle of the night. Be lucky it is not us who has to get out of bed.
4. Our daughter must be drug free. No ifs, ands, or buts. She’s a new mom. A different being!
5. If we want our daughter to succeed economically in life, she needs to upgrade her skills and education. If we want our daughter to nurture our grandchild, she will have to dedicate many one on one hours to develop a wholesome mother/child relationship. Education and motherhood are mostly mutually time exclusive. Who is going to babysit? Even if grandmother did not have a physical disability, does she want the babysitting chore?
6. Live in grandparents need a break. How can we develop a respite program amongst our friends and relatives? The in-laws, if they can be found, may wish to be a positive influence in the grandchild’s life. We can develop a plan with them that can extend far beyond respite. They may contribute financially with a Registered Educational Savings Plan, birthday and religious holiday gifts, suppertime invitations, weekend stays, and perhaps in a hundred unexpected ways. Let’s remember, it’s their bloodline they are nurturing. We can welcome them into the family.
7. Our daughter needs a break. She is both a mother and a woman. Unless she adopts abstinence with her new boyfriends, we will be worrying every time she goes out. Does a 17 year old single mother have a curfew? Do we have any say over her new partners? (Did we ever?) What’s the plan if she gets pregnant again?
8. We sign a memorandum of agreement that can be initialed by a lawyer that will state in the event of a disagreement severe enough that our daughter must leave our residence, we will have weekly access to our grandchild.
9. What will be the date when she moves into her own dwelling? To be independent? We may need the help of a professional who combines the skills of a career counselor at an employment centre and a life skills coordinator.
We are in for a tough time. We need to plan, talk, explore and negotiate without the added weight of guilt. We need to access every bit of community help we can get, and lots of luck. Piles of it.
We have an adult in our family whom is a child, and a child who is an adult. We have a right to enjoy our senior years.
We also have a child on her way to be a parent, and a new grandchild. Blessings upon us.
Google:
1. Life Skills Training +Baby Steps + Handbook for Teen Moms-To-Be +Alison Stuebe, MD & Tarayn Grizzard
2. FAMILY SERVICE CANADA - Directory of Members
3. Health Protection
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