Why Grandpas are more affectionate with grand children and grand children are also affectionate with Grandpas?

Question

Nowadays I find many Grandmas and Grandpas are very affectionate with the Grandchildren. When compare to parents , these children prefer to approach the grand parents. I wonder what is the reason behind that, and I am expecting a good answer from the grandchildrens.

Answer 1

My grandmother has lived through everything before. She has so much insight and love and patience. She loves me unconditionally like my parents do, but has had many children and has lived all the way through all the same issues that I have (and even ones my parents have). She is an unbiased 3rd party. My parents continue to have their set of expectations from me that we don't always see eye to eye on. They don't know the outcome of the affects that their arguments have long term on their children. My grandmother has been there and done it many different ways and can tell me the best outcome. She has much simpler answers than my parents do. My Grandma is the best.

Answer 2

Wow! You have a lot of good answers already, but I put in my 2 cents worth.

Truly, I believe that most grandparents are more affectionate that parents because they are so proud that their children, your parents, have continued the family line and that, in one sense of the word, they will continue to live on through their grandchildren. (This was a common biblical belief many years ago but it still has some truth today)
Secondly, grandparents have far less of the worry and raising of the grandchildren than the parents.
Third, in the intact family, grandparents can say good bye at the end of the day or weekend or however long the grandchildren have stayed.
Now...for some realism.
Most children are raised in broken families or what is called, extended families. In these circumstances many grandparents become the parents for extended periods of time, if not permanently. This is most unfortunate. It sounds like you have the intact family and some wonderful grandparents. I hope they don't spoil you too much and I hope they pass on to you the wisdom they have learned. They were parents of your parents, they know they made many mistakes. Now, they have a chance to make up for those mistakes by helping you to grow up like they wished their children had grown.
I do wish you all the best. When you see you grandparents, give them a big hug for me.
Jim

Answer 3

What you are going to get is a pretty good answer from a Grandmother. First of all, our children don't "always" remember how affectionate we were with them as children, but yes in all likelyhood we do show more affection towards our grandchildren. Why? We don't live with them. We can spoil them rotten and as soon as they get bratty, give them back! We have been waiting for this opportunity for a long long time, and yes, we will take advantage. Besides, as Bill Cosby once said, "Now we are old ppl trying to get into heaven" so we are much nicer now.

Answer 4

If you can take no responsibility for the consequences you can be as indulgent as you like.

If children are spoiled and indulged by an adult they will end up going to them for everything because they will always get what they want. Children are at an age where they have no authority to enforce their will so an adult who supports them will draw them to himself.

Grandparents are at an age where they dont have to care about anybody because they are elder to their children and society regards them indulgently because of their age. At their age they cant get the attention of an adult child and hence focus on grandchildren who have lots of spare time and can easily be pleased just with small tokens of love like candy etc. The problem starts when the grand children start maturing and start demanding things which the grand parents cant give.

As long as you are giving you will get all the attention you want.

Answer 5

Grandchildren is the source of motivation for the grandparents. After lot of struggle in their life for stability, family, education, marriage, etc etc, now it is the time for them to relive of all those burdens to a very large extent and play like kids with them. Most of the cases where grandparents do not live with grandchildren the love seems to be more overflowing. On the other hand kids get more attention, love and freedom from grandparents than what we give.

Answer 6

It is probably due to the time the grand-parents can spend with their grand-children and spoil them rotten ! LOL Parents usually are both working hard and have more to take care of beside their job, so the children turn their attention to their grand-parents, who love it and this creates a special bond between them.

I had such a relationship with my grand'mother. I took her for a ride on my bicycle when she was 75 years old because she had never been on one! And believe me we had a lot of fun!
She is gone now but I'll always remember all the fun we had. My mother was more serious but my grand'mother loved to laugh just like I do! She was more like a sister to me!

Answer 7

Great observation. My brother in law never paid any attention to his kids and he falls all over his grandchildren. I think it is a combination of being very busy working when they were a dad, having to be the tough guy to enforce order and respect, the responsibility of raising/protecting kids (let's face it there is no parent training course), and a little bit of knowing I missed doing it right when I was a dad now I can do it.

Answer 8

Because grandparents understand, accept and enjoy the vibes grandchildren generate more than parents who are nothing more than big children attempting to handle the world around them, making lots of mistakes in the doing.

Answer 9

Father son relationship gains tension as the son grows. He will be pressurized for education, employment etc. By the time he falls in love, the father-son relationship stretches to the maximum. It terminates as the arrival of daughter-in-law.

The entire exercise is reversed by the new comers, the grand children to re-establish the ties again.

Answer 10

this is because the hectic life after material pursuits for the grandpas are already over and they have all the time in the earth to attend to their grand children. besides they also need somebody to engage with. the grand children deprived of their parents affection and attention, who are currently doing what their parents did for material pursuits, go in line with the sources of afection and attention.