grandparenting Being a secret-sharing grandparent BY LINDA AND RICHARD EYRE A ll of us grandparents are teach- ers in our hearts, and we have things we want to share with our
1. “Joy is the purpose of life and a choice you can make every day. 2. “Most kids are waiting for some- one to lead them, but they just don’t know it yet.” 3. “Blood is thicker than water, and cousins are more important than friends. We will always stay close to each other, set a good example for each other, and be there for each other.” 4. “Good popularity comes from being nice to everyone, and it lasts. Bad popularity comes from only being nice to certain people, and it doesn’t.” That first discussion we had together about these first four secrets was price- less. In the open, unguarded words of preadolescents, they talked about fol-
grandchildren. But, how do we do it in a way that interests them and grabs their imagination? When we asked ourselves this ques- tion, we knew that the key to success was to come up with something relevant and identifiable and to connect it to some kind of mystery and some kind of reward. We knew the things we wanted to teach them—the legacies of insight that we wanted to leave in their minds and hearts, but we weren’t sure how to get them inter- ested or keep them interested. As we often do, we resorted initially to a bit of bribery. We couched it by telling our three oldest grandkids, who were ten
family reunion, we had s special meeting with those three grandkids and told them that if they could memorize the four secrets we were about to tell them—and if they could give at least one example of how the secrets might play out in a real-life situa- tion—we would give each of them one of the Secret Rocks and that rubbing their soft, polished surfaces during the school year ahead would remind them of
lowers and leaders and about how hard it is to go against the crowd but how good you feel when you do. They thought of examples among their friends of click-ish, “bad popularity.” They had thoughts about how they could decide to be happy, even when they were having a bad day. They talked about how much they liked each other and how glad they were that their parents were siblings and that they would always be cousins. Continued on next page
or eleven at the time, that there were four secrets that we wished we had known when we were their age. The word “secret” got to them a little more than some “lecture” or “advice” or “principle”, but we still needed more— more intrigue and more motivation. So, we found some rare South American stones at a rock hound place—small polished rocks that we know we're different than anything they had seen— and we named them the “Secret Rocks.” Then, at a
the secrets they had memorized. Those four initial secrets were:
33 GRANDP arenting
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