This is our monthly one-on-one conversation. This week, I am discussing my impressions of DeeDee More's great blog post, "A Grandparent's Response to the Surgeon General's Advisory on Parents' Mental Health."
Some of the data collected over the last few years concerning parents and their mental health might be surprising to you. I was surprised to learn about some of the challenges that young parents face beyond dealing with picky eaters, colicky infants, and potty training, to name a few.
As Grandfathers, I think we can help our grandchildren's parents by doing the following:
- Educate ourselves on what is causing stress among young parents and be sensitive to the fact that their stresses are not the same as what caused us stress 20+ years ago.
-
- Check-in on the parents, both your son or daughter and son-in-law and daughter-in-law. Do this by taking just them out to eat or even by using your phone or texting, depending on how they communicate. Ask about THEM and not the grandkids. I know this is a tough one, but do it anyway.
-
- When you visit or talk to them, be aware of their behavior, situation, and what is happening around their home. Notice what is different or "not them," as this could be a sign that they could use additional support or TLC.
-
- Remember to be a good listener. Pick up on whether the person you are talking to wants your input or just needs a friendly ear so they can vent. DO NOT get into a comparison or contest about how rough you had it as a parent and how rough they have it today. YOU went through your struggles and have experience and hindsight. THEY are in the middle of their challenges and need support from their father or father-in-law.
Once you have listened to this podcast, please remember to subscribe, like, and share this conversation with other people who would enjoy the show AND could use the information and support I try to put into every episode.
Links
I invite you to join me at Grandparents Week by clicking this link: https://training.grandparentsacademy.com/a/2147832178/ikxv5HFd.
If you want to sign up for my course, Intentional Grandfathering, please use this link: https://training.grandparentsacademy.com/intentional-grandfathering-masterclass.
You can watch this conversation on YouTube by clicking this link: https://youtu.be/0rOVrNrtMFg.
Here is the link to DeeDee's fantastic blog post: https://www.morethangrand.com/blog/grandparents-response-to-the-surgeon-generals-advisory-on-parents-mental-health
Here is the direct link to download your copy of the Surgeon General's Parental Mental Health & Wellness report: https://www.hhs.gov/surgeongeneral/priorities/parents/index.html.
You can listen to the podcast episode DeeDee and I had together and learned about More Than Grand using this link: https://cool-grandpa.us/?s=DeeDee+More.
Here is my buddy Steve Ownes' website for his podcast, Fascination Street: https://fascinationstreetpod.com/.
Welcome in to the Cool Grandpa Podcast. This is the podcast where we talk to grandfathers, adult grandchildren, and experts in areas of importance to grandfathers. Whether you're a new grandfather, a seasoned pro, or somebody interested in learning about relationships, this is the place for you. So come on in, join us as we learn together, laugh together, and support each other on the Cool Grandpa Podcast. Welcome in to the Cool Grandpa Podcast. I'm excited to have you here. This is the first weekend in September, and I can't believe where the year has gone by already. It's been absolutely crazy this summer, how many things have just come and gone, and it seems like February was like a month ago, not, you know, six, seven months ago. So this is crazy. We're getting into all the 10 members, September, October, December, November, all these months coming into the end of 2024. So a little bit crazy, a lot's going on, and this is our monthly one-on-one, where I get to catch you up on some things going on behind the scenes with the Cool Grandpa Podcast, as well as being able to share some thoughts on some ideas and some topics that are important for not only just grandfathers, but also grandparents as well. We've got a lot of stuff that is definitely crossover that's not just guy-centric, but grandmas can use this information and have their input and their take on these different things. So I'm happy to share this with you. Before we get started though, I want to remind you, starting on Sunday is grandparents week. In grandparents week, you've heard me talking about that, is being put on by Grandparents Academy, and it's something that really helps to celebrate and educate grandparents. So this is a free event. I've got a link down in the show notes where you can sign up and get your free admission to this grandparents week, where you're going to hear all sorts of different experts talking about grand parenting and grand parenting related topics. There's also an option for you to join in and sign up for more of a paid-behind-the-scenes VIP ticket for this, but regardless if you choose the free option or the VIP option, I just would really love to see you there. We've grown this week by a tremendous amount over the first year or so that this has been going on. So I know I had an episode with Aaron, and who's the host and founder of Grandparents Academy, a few episodes back, so you can check that out if you want more details about grandparents week. I want to let you know I've got the second cracker barrel or roundtable discussion is all set to be recorded in a few weeks. This is going to be absolutely a fantastic topic. We're just going to tackle one topic. What this topic is going to be is what do moms and even grandmas need from grandfathers, and this is going to be great. I'm going to have a bunch of women on that are going to help me out. They're experts. Some of them have been guests on the show before, and I'm going to get their input. So this is going to be a little way for grandparents to maybe get some behind the scenes kind of information. I'll do a little recon for the gents out there, and figure out how we can better support our daughters, our daughter-in-laws, and our wives and partners, you know, and what do we need to do? How can we step up? How can we support them in their roles as mothers and grandmothers? I am also working on developing some merchandise. I've had some people talk about the logo, the old man. If you're watching on YouTube, I've got it up on my shirt, but they kind of the guy with the glasses and the hat and the beard. I've had some people talk about that, and so I'm just doing a few different items. One's going to be a ball cap. We're going to have a polo shirt, and we're going to have the little car discs that you, these little things you put in the bottom of your cup holders that wick away some of the moisture and condensation on those hot days, and we're going to have some glasses and some mugs that have the logo on it. Some are going to say one cool grandpa, and some are just going to be the logo. So once I have that up, hopefully within the next week or two, we'll be able to announce that, and you guys can go in and start checking out that merch. And seeing if there's anything in there that makes sense for you to order for the grandfather in your life, maybe over for Christmas or the holidays this year is a cool, different gift. I do want to also remind everybody I've got the 200th episode has been recorded with my friend Steve Owens from Fascination Street. So be sure to go over and check out Fascination Street podcast and see what Steve's about. He's an awesome dude that's really been a great mentor and a friend of me. We got together for just about an hour and talked about the cool grandpa podcast, talked about some of the different things that I've been involved in, and just had a great way to celebrate 200 episodes. You know, essentially it's four years of me doing this. Actually, it's over four years because I started out every other week for a while until I got things going and got the processes down. So again, the 200th episode will be coming out in a couple of weeks, and then next week we've got Patrick Brady on. Now, Patrick Brady is a founder of this application called Heritage HQ, and this is a fantastic application that marries up genealogy with family artifacts. So you can order up and put in pictures and sound recordings and do all sorts of things on this Heritage HQ. We're going to learn more about that. We're going to learn how grandparents can help start filling in some of the blanks, creating those family trees, but doing it in a way that you've got it shared digitally amongst all your family members, and that they can contribute to this as well. So it's a great way, too. I think doing these genealogy projects and maybe not super in-depth, but doing some that really help grandparents and grandkids become connected and hear stories of ancestors and people that have played a large part in everybody's lives within the family. So what I want to do now is pivot over to the thoughts that I had for this week. And if you guys are watching this on YouTube, I'm sorry I've got my eyes going to to some notes here, because I definitely want to make sure I get some of these things right. Now, Dee Dee Moore from More Than Grand has written a blog that came out on September 3rd. It's called a grandparents response to the Surgeon General's advisory on parents' mental health. And this was a really impactful blog article in that it really shows how stressed out that a lot of our adult children are, and a lot of our even friends at work, and that's church, and school, and wherever that are raising kids, just what's going on with them. And I know it's almost a cliche, right? Every generation, it's either tougher or easier than the previous generation. But there's some interesting data that's behind this. So I want to read from 2023 data that 33% of parents experience high levels of stress versus 20% of other adults. And I think that kind of makes sense. If you're other adults, you're not worried necessarily about your kids, about are they missing school? Are they hanging out with the wrong crowd? You know, typical kind of parent stressors. And so that kind of makes sense. Now, here's the other part of this, though, is that approximately 48% of parents, when they are feeling stressed out, it's most days, it's overwhelming, which means that you're caught between fight, flight, and paralyzed, right? Those are kind of the responses that we have when we're under stress, and whether it's a big line chasing us across the savannah, or it's trying to make a decision on do we pay bills or buy groceries? You know, those stresses can be overwhelming and really causes us to do one of those three things, or a combination of those three things. So 48% of parents, most days, the stress is overwhelming versus 26% of other adults. So that is a huge difference, you know, almost 20% different between what feeling just overwhelmed between parents and versus other adults. You know, and I don't know all the data that, you know, the inputs behind that, I'm going to figure that it's going to be a lot of the traditional finances, job insecurity, and especially when this is coming off of 2023, where only a couple of years out of some of the lockdowns, some of the things that were going on with the COVID epidemic. And so I think there's probably a lot of that. It would be interesting to see what 2024, 2025 data would be, and even data before the pandemic. See if we do see a spike in any of those numbers. But it's something to be aware of that, you know, hey, if you're adult children and the parents of your grandchildren are feeling stress, when they feel stressed, they feel really stressed, that it's just overwhelming. They don't see a way that they can process how they can manage that stress, you know, which then, of course, leads to not making great decisions that can have long-term effects. So just kind of interesting data there. In 2021, they're reporting that 65% of parents and guardians and 77% of single parents experience loneliness versus 55% of non-parents. I think this kind of really tracks in with a couple of different things. And this is just me talking here, right? We had Gene Berenson from the Clay Center for Young Healthy Minds was on and we were talking about teen loneliness and how that epidemic of teen loneliness really started mid-70s and it's just been growing, right? So of course teens, eventually they grow up and they become young adults and they become parents and guardians and they become single parents maybe. And so that idea of loneliness and isolation can just be exacerbated especially when you introduce children to that mix because sometimes then you're not going out Friday night with the girlfriends. You're not hanging out and playing softball with the butts. You're not doing some of these different things because you've got the young family and so your network tends to change and you tend to be hanging out with other young adults that have young kids or older adults that have young kids. But you are kind of cut off in your transitioning, your social network, right? You're getting away from the crowd that you used to go out with, the blow off steam with, that you used to bounce ideas off of. And now because of family, you're becoming a little bit more lonely, a little bit more isolated. So I don't want to go into too much more because I know I'm going to have Dee Dee on and we are going to do a bit of a deep dive on her article. Again, that name is a grandparents response to the Surgeon General's advisory on Parents Mental Health. And I'll be putting a link into the show notes for that blog article as well as you'll be able to get over to the Surgeon General's report on the stress for parents. A couple of things I do want to focus on and share some thoughts on is the what we can do as grandfathers, right? Because I want to take a look and keep focused on what grandfathers can do to help out. One of the things we can do is be aware that the stress today is different from when we were parents. And I know that's a no duh because every generation's stress is different than the generation before. A couple of contributors to the increased level of stress is that the working hours and the availability of the office to contact you after you leave the office or after you shut down the laptop if whatever you're doing has increased quite a bit. If you go back and you think about your parents' jobs. There were certain circumstances, sure, where typically dad, if I'm thinking back into the 80s and 70s and whatnot, typically dad, but sometimes moms, might get a phone call after working hours on the weekends. Maybe they're taking a vacation day and working on the deck at the house and somebody calls them on a Tuesday while they're at home doing some different work. Generally though, you were not accessible to your managers, to the people that you were working with. Once you left the office, we didn't have cell phones really. People had access to your home phones, certainly, and that's where the exceptions for some of this came in. But you weren't seeing text messages, you weren't seeing emails flying across, you weren't seeing some of these things. I think one thing that we have to appreciate as grandfathers is that our sons and our daughters are almost always on. Certainly, there's times where they can turn off notifications and they can do different things. But until we get to a point where we come back to some hard-fast rules about expectations of when you respond to communications off hours, dealing with work, I think this is just going to be an area of stress. Certainly, too, the other things that we need to be aware of is that you have all sorts of different diagnosis that are going on with children these days that we didn't have. We didn't have such a wide spectrum, let's say, just picking on autism. You didn't have that spectrum, right? You kind of had it was almost like you either had it or you didn't. And then as things and diagnostic tools got better, we've now elongated that. So we've got more kids getting diagnosed and we've got more things that the parents need to be aware of. We also have a lot more stuff going on in schools and a lot more worries. I know when I was growing up or when I was young dad, there wasn't a question of what's the right age to give a kid a cell phone or when can kids get email addresses or get a laptop or a tablet or anything like that. There's just a lot more to consider that parents go through today. And I would even say the current financial situation, right? I do remember late 70s, the inflation that was going on where you even had mortgages at 12%. You might have loans out there at prime plus one prime plus two. And you had these types of situations going on. A lot of kids, a lot of young parents today, if they're trying to get into starter homes, one, the affordability and the pricing of the home, it's just gotten crazy. And then also the amount of money it's going to take and that monthly payment is crazy right now with the way interest rates are. So hopefully some of that will be coming down. And these are just some things that I wanted to bring up and discuss about, you know, the stress today with young parents is different from necessarily what we had in the 80s and 90s. You know, what we had as parents, as Gen X parents, right? Especially. And then baby boomers, we can even go further back and talk about the differences. One of the big things we can do as grandfathers is make sure that when we call, maybe have some calls with the adult children and make sure you check in with your sons and your daughters, your son-in-law, your daughter-in-law, and ask them how they're doing. Don't even bring up the grandkids. Just call, say hello, you know, if you find out, hopefully you found out what kind of some of their interests are. So if there's something in the news, you can call them, bring that up, and then just use that as a bit of a check-in. Because then it also shows that you care about them. A great example is one of my daughter-in-laws, grew up in Maryland, and is a huge Orioles fan. And the Orioles, after so long, you know, they just flat out sucked for a long time. They are doing so much better now. And so every once in a while, I'm doing a text, I'm doing a call, I'm doing something, and I'm talking to her about the Orioles and how they're doing. If they're going into a big series with the Yankees or the Astros or somebody else, and just kind of, you know, using those interests that we know about our daughter-in-laws or our son-in-laws, using those as those connection points to them be able to, you know, one, call up and you ask them how the baseball team's doing, how the hockey team's doing, something hobby related, whatever it is. And then also just, hey, how are you guys doing? Are you everything going okay? What kind of big plans do you have? And just doing that check-in, I think, really means a lot. And something that grandfathers can really do to make things easy and make sure that those kids and those kids' partners, everybody knows that you care about them and you're not just calling because of the grandkids. The next thing I want to talk about too is, you know, be aware if you're a long distance grandparent like myself when you, what I'm going to say, when you go on site to your children's homes, you know, be mindful, be noticing what's going on. You know, do they normally keep a really tidy home? And now it's really kind of messy. Things have gotten really cluttered. And this doesn't come from a judgmental standpoint at all. This is more of a case of these can be signs that they're having trouble coping and cleaning and doing things that they normally used to do have fallen by the wayside. And certainly with toddlers with little kids and things like that, houses are going to be messy. We understand and expect that. But there's certain other parts of that that you can keep an eye out for. And certainly that is, I think, an indicator of how well or how not so well the kids are doing is when you notice things are kind of out of sorts from the usual. And we have the luxury of not being there every single day. So when we go away, we come back a few months, maybe a year later, and things are noticeably different. That can be a tell that you need to start asking some questions about how they're doing and really find out, you know, what do they need from you to support them so that they can get their feet back under themselves? Because they may have been rocked by businesses going through, call it whatever you want. But it's layoffs. Maybe they're extremely nervous about that. Maybe they've experienced that layoff and they're really struggling just to get up and get going in the day and do more than just the basics. And so some of those things can lead to discussions if you're aware and you're paying attention to what's going on around the house. The other thing I think grandfathers need to avoid is don't get into a contest of talking about your stress as a young dad versus their stress as young parents. I think sometimes we get into doing that and to me sometimes that's even just sharing and building a connection, right? Like oh my gosh we had such a bad day with our granddaughter at school. She did this and we got hauled into the principal's office to talk to him about disciplinary actions. Sometimes it can be taken the wrong way if you go oh yeah I remember what a big pain in the butt you were and how you got into fights at school and how I had to leave work early and go do this and go do that and sometimes that compare and contrast can really come off as you handle things so much better than they did. Because remember they're not past that experience yet. They don't have that perspective of hey this was a big deal or this was a little deal. Everything that they're going through is a big deal and I think for us to come in and share some of those stories can lead to a little bit of like well my dad my father-in-law they had all their stuff together they handled this so well and then it internalizes with them with why can't I be more like my dad or why can't I be more like my father-in-law handled this situation or whatever it might be we've got to be careful on doing that. There's certainly a time to sit around the the table eating a bowl of ice cream and swapping potty training stories right. Some of that's just a build-up rapport and maybe give our kids a good ribbing if that's you know your style of communication and getting on with people but just be be aware that sometimes as dads in grandfathers we don't need to be jumping in and comparing contrasting what's going on in the heat of the moment with our experiences. We need to oftentimes just be there to listen and to gently provide some guidance with the understanding that that guidance may or may not be taken you know it may just be they need to hear some different alternatives and maybe they've already thought of those and maybe they haven't so I think our gift to them is not getting into a contest of who had it worse as a 26-year-old young father but rather it's more of a case of like oh hey when we were going through something similar here's a couple of things that work for us they might work for you they might not but something to think about you know and having that approach I think shows one that you're empathetic too you're not trying to tell them how great you were but you're trying to share us a possible solution that worked in your case so you got to kind of walk a line a little bit and I hope you enjoyed that this input on these things that I think fathers can help out with when it comes to supporting parents when it comes to their mental health and again I don't want to do too much because I think this conversation that I'm going to have with Dee Dee is going to be a lot more in depth she really specializes on the connections between first-time young parents and first-time young grandparents and kind of building those communication networks building the support networks understanding expectations on both sides so this will you know think of this maybe as a little bit of a teaser hopefully there's some good ideas in here hopefully there's some things where it's like oh yeah I probably shouldn't be doing this and then look forward to probably November December this conversation that I'm going to have with Dee Dee to come out where we're really going to do much more of a deep dive into both the Surgeon General's advisory and her blog and again that blog is a grandparents response to the Surgeon General's advisory on parents mental health so I'm going to have a link for that down into the show notes but you can also go to more than grand.com and you can check that out as well and just go right there so however you want to get to it that's awesome do me a favor when you're listening to this go down into the show notes or I'm sorry the the podcast app that you're watching this on look for the share button if you're on iTunes hit that and then put somebody's email address into this that you know would appreciate not only this episode but the cool grand pop podcast if you're on some of the other podcast apps look for the open-ended triangle with the three little circles click on that that's typically the share button and then you can email this to somebody in your network or you can direct message and sometimes even send it through social media like Facebook or some of the other applications that allow you to do that but sharing this podcast is a great way to help grow the audience great way to help other grandparents and grandfathers in particular know that their relationships and their place within the family is super important and is definitely needed so we we want to encourage all the grandfathers out there to be involved to be proactive to really take their place within the family unit and help those adult kids that we have and then help our our grandchildren as well so that's enough for me I'm going to go ahead and wrap up this episode remember 200th episode is coming out in a couple of weeks and next week we're going to be sharing Patrick Brady's interview and his and learning more about Heritage HQ so a couple of great things coming up in the next couple of weeks and until next time remember to stay cool thank you for listening to the cool grandpa podcast if you've enjoyed this episode please do me a favor and share it with a friend that's the best way you can help us to expand our community as well as get the news out about how valuable grandpa's are in the lives of those kids if you'd like to leave me a comment or shoot me a potential topic for this podcast please go to www.cool-grandpa.us look for the comments tab fill it up hit submit it's as easy as that until next time remember to stay cool
