Effective grandparents represent one polarity on a spectrum of complex grandparenting behavior.  On one end of the spectrum is the effective grandparent.  The middle range encompasses the majority of functional

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Biology, psychology and external family and social systems all affect grandparenting identity and activity.  One biological event, the birth of a grandchild, initiates the basis of grandparenthood, the “grandparent drive.” 

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Grandparenthood and great-grandparenthood may be viewed as mature stages in a lifelong developmental process.  Grandparents are formed by the interaction of many biological, psychological, interpersonal and social forces.  These forces

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Start before you grandchild is born by gardening your child’s marriage. Parents are the linchpin of the relationship between you and your grandchild: It’s important to support the couple from

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Paying for college has never been easy, especially for families with competing financial goals. To further the challenges posed to parents, the cost of attending college is accelerating at astonishing

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Everyone is different, and it is important than grandparents learn to understand the  individual differences that can either be complementary,  or cause  friction between grasndparents and their loved ones. Personality

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Parents Air Their Feelings, Offer and Request Advice and Enlighten Grandparents (Anonymity Preserved) Trouble With Grandparents I have been reading all the articles on your site. I’m horrified at the

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How are today’s parents raising their children differently from the way grandparents raised them? Do you know what attachment parenting is? Do you think that children should sleep in their

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Diplomacy My grandson spends summers in California with me. I had gained quite a bit of weight after taking some medication since he had last seen me. One day, he

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In the past, the legal system defined a family as “intact” if both parents were married and living together. But can a family with no grandparental involvement truly be classified

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Long distance grandparenting is quite a challenge, but there is so much you can do to over-come the challenge. Today, millions of American families are separated by distances that are

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What is “The Lacuna Effect?” According to the dictionary, a “lacuna” is a “hole,” a blank space or a missing part.  How does this term apply to grandparent/parent relations? In 

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Laura and Paul Smith suffered two terrible losses in quick succession.  For years, the Smith’s had lived down the street from their daughter, her husband and their children.  They were

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Nature sometimes creates a child in the image of one of their grandparents.  The resemblance may be physical or temperamental.  A grandchild can have a similar personality to a grandparent

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Over the years, the Foundation for Grandparenting has received  thousands of  letters from parents asking for suggestions on ways to help foster a meaningful relationship—fostering the “Vital Connection”  between their

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Shocking but true. By the time your grandchild graduates from high school, they will have logged in 11,000 hours in school, but more than 15,000 hours watching TV and sitting

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Grandparents often freely indulge their grandchildren. It seems that spoiling is just a built-in part of the grandparent-grandchild relationship. However, some parents complain they’re not treated as well by their

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Since the dawn of the human species, grandparents were an integral part of the family system. One of their most important functions was caring for the young while parents were

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No one reading this article will question that the life of a grandparent can have a profound influence on the life of a grandchild.  But how does the death of

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As family dynamics continually shift in response to social changes in this country, new interpretations of traditional family structure are constantly being explored. One of the fastest growing of these

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