Underneath
What's going on underneath #
Three things that tend to sit under the words.
A picture carried for years before the first child arrived can harden into something like an agreement in the mind, with terms your parents may never have seen.
For some people it grew from their own childhood: a grandmother's veranda in Thrissur, summer holidays at a grandfather's shop, a nani who let the bedtime rules slide.
Underneath, a rule can sit: “Good grandparents show up the way I imagined,” or “If they loved my children, they would do it my way.”
Reactions
What people often do #
- Hand over a long list of rules before every visit
- Watch each visit closely for the moments that fall short
- Compare them, in private, with a friend's parents who seem to do it all
- Plan fewer visits, so there is less to be let down by
- Say “it's fine, they're busy”, and feel the gap each time anyway
The deck
The story in 6 cards #
Six short cards, from the moment to letting go.
The drawing they barely looked at
Sunday video call from Toronto. Your daughter holds up a drawing for her grandparents, so proud. They glance at it, say 'very nice', and turn to ask you about the house. She lowers the paper slowly. You keep talking, but part of you is watching her small face, and an old picture you'd carried for years quietly cracks a little at the edges.
The grandparents you pictured
Underneath sits a rule: 'My parents should be the grandparents I always imagined.' It sounds harmless, even sweet. But look at what it does: it holds every visit up against a picture painted long ago, maybe from storybooks or someone else's family. Real afternoons, with their ordinary moments and small kindnesses, keep falling short of a scene that never actually happened.
Why we want this for our kids
We hold it because we want our children to have something good, maybe something we had, or something we missed. Maybe you remember your own grandmother's kitchen and its smells. Maybe you hoped your parents would be softer with the next generation. Either way, the picture you carry isn't foolish. It comes from loving your children. That deserves kindness, not blame.
The ache of each visit
Each visit that doesn't match the picture adds a small ache. You start watching your parents with your children, scoring every moment. You feel let down on your child's behalf, sometimes before your child even notices. You arrange visits and then dread them. The time together, which could be simply what it is, turns into a quiet exam that nobody passes.
Is the picture worth it?
Ask yourself honestly: has comparing them to the picture ever made the visits warmer? Or has it mostly made you tense in the room? Grandparents show care in many ways, some quiet, some clumsy, some invisible to us. Nobody can say what each visit means to them. Either way, the picture isn't the measure of the real afternoon. Is holding this rule so tightly worth it?
Real visits, good as they are
Letting go doesn't mean you stop wishing for warmth between them. It means the visits no longer have to match a painting to be good enough. Your children can find their own way with their grandparents, or not. You can watch with softer eyes. That's where some peace comes back: real afternoons get to be real, and you get to enjoy them too.
If raising things at home has ever brought a reaction that frightens you, that is worth taking seriously, and keeping the hope to yourself can be the safe choice.
The flip
The old rule, and a new one to try #
The old ruleThey should be the grandparents I always pictured.
A new rule to tryReal visits can be good without matching the picture.
For next time
Try it next time #
- Step 1
Notice one small kind moment at the next visit
- Step 2
Let your child show you how they see their grandparents
- Step 3
At the next visit, try not to compare it with the picture
Want to talk it through?
“What did you picture your parents doing with your children, long before your first child arrived?”
Free and private. No sign-up to start. The chat opens with this question.
Everything this deck knows
Go deeper #
What it sounds like, where it comes from, what it costs, and other ways to see it. Every question opens a chat on it.
How it lands
What was said
A picture drawn before the first visit #
A video call freezes mid-wave, or a toddler is lifted out of your arms at the door a little faster than you'd like, and a quiet sentence surfaces: “My parents should be the grandparents I imagined.”
Mostly it is a picture, drawn long before the first child arrived: the stories, the songs, the slow afternoons, your parents on the floor with the building blocks. When real visits look different, the picture quietly keeps comparing.
When did this thought about your parents as grandparents last cross your mind, and what were your children doing at the time?Talk about this ›
The first few seconds
The tightening when the baby changes hands #
Some parents notice it as a tightening when the baby is taken with a brisk “let me”, or a glance at the clock when a promised hour of play turns into the television on and the grown-ups talking in the next room.
Others feel a flush of heat at a remark made in front of the children, “in my day kids listened”, “all this spoiling”, and a defensive answer forming before any thought about what was meant, or what the children even heard.
The last time a visit with your parents and your children didn't match the picture, what did you feel straight away, before anything was said?Talk about this ›
Why it lands
Hoping for it has real sense in it #
Hoping your parents will be warm, present grandparents is a fair thing to hope for. For some people the wish is less about their parents than about their children: wanting them to have the stories, the laps and the patience remembered, or wished for.
A picture carried for years before the first child arrived can harden into something like an agreement in the mind, with terms your parents may never have seen. When it isn't met, it can sting like a broken promise.
If the grandparents you imagined spent one afternoon with your children, what would they be doing together, hour by hour?Talk about this ›
The voice inside
The voice that keeps the comparison #
“They had all the time in the world for my cousins.” “Other grandparents would love this.” “I only wanted them to read to her.” The voice tends to speak on the drive home after a visit, or while tidying away toys nobody played with.
A comparison like this can point at something worth knowing. Some parents find it isn't the hours they miss most, but a picture of their children folded into a family story that reaches back past them, to the people who raised them.
When the voice compares your parents with the grandparents you pictured, which single moment is it hoping to see?Talk about this ›
Where it comes from
Where it can come from
Where the picture of grandparents comes from #
For some people it grew from their own childhood: a grandmother's veranda in Thrissur, summer holidays at a grandfather's shop, a nani who let the bedtime rules slide. For others it grew from the opposite: a grandparent barely known, and a quiet promise to give their own children more.
Pictures also come from around us: a friend's parents who collect the children every Wednesday, photos of grandparents at school concerts, adverts full of cardigans and baking. Some people trace a picture like this back to early years; some don't.
Whose grandparents first gave you the picture of how a grandparent should be, and what did they do that you still remember?Talk about this ›
The belief under it
The quiet rule under the picture #
Underneath, a rule can sit: “Good grandparents show up the way I imagined,” or “If they loved my children, they would do it my way.” The first sentence is the one people hear; the rule underneath decides how each visit, each call and each gift gets read.
It rarely registers as a rule at all. It feels like ordinary love for your children, and the love underneath is a warm one. That is exactly what makes it worth looking at, beside your parents as they are today and your children as they actually are.
Some people trace a rule like this back to early years; some don't. Either way, it can be looked at.
Which parts of family life today does the rule about how grandparents should be still fit, and which not?Talk about this ›
What it costs
What it costs
What the picture can cost in a year #
It can mean visits spent watching rather than being in them, a birthday afternoon remembered mostly for the grandparent who left early, a sharp word at bedtime about the extra cartoons. Nothing dramatic, and still heavy to carry home in the car.
Some good moments can go unseen as well. When each visit is measured against a picture, the moments that do happen can slip past: a grandfather teaching the wrong words to a song, a grandmother's terrible jokes that somehow make the children laugh.
Thinking of this year, which visit was coloured most by the picture you carried, and what did your children seem to enjoy in it anyway?Talk about this ›
If it stays as it is
Five more years of packing the instructions #
Picture one ordinary Tuesday on a day when “my parents should be the grandparents I imagined” is loud. What is in it: the call, the plans for the weekend, the messages, the things left unsaid? It's only a picture to look at, nothing to fix.
Perhaps packing the children's bags for their grandparents' house with a list of instructions folded on top: bedtime, screens, which words to use. A call that afternoon spent going over the list twice; an evening spent wondering how it went.
None of this is a forecast, and nothing has to change because of it. Looking at that Tuesday, what, if anything, stands out?
What fills that day, and what waits?Talk about this ›
Another way to see it
Another way to see it
Grandparents, in which shape? #
Children can be close to grandparents in more than one shape. A grandmother who sends voice notes from Kuwait, a grandfather who only talks cricket, one who is strict and one who is silly: children can find their own way into each, sometimes a different way than the one pictured.
The picture you carry and the one your parents carry may not be the same picture. That doesn't make yours too much, or theirs wrong. It makes it two pictures of the same children, drawn from two different lifetimes.
Of everything in the grandparents you imagined, which part matters most for your children, and which part was for you?Talk about this ›
What is already there
What already passes between them #
Beside the hope that isn't met, some parents look at what already passes between their own parents and their children, however slight: a nickname only one grandparent uses, a silly game at the door, a story about you at six told to a giggling audience.
Seeing this repays nothing and cancels nothing; the picture still unmet and these small moments can both be real. Unplanned moments can be the ones children carry home, which is one reason to keep an eye out for them.
A visit can pass with nothing much to point to, and that's fine.
What do your parents already bring to your children that the children themselves seem to enjoy?Talk about this ›
Making peace
Peace with the picture, care for the children #
Making peace with this expectation doesn't mean deciding the picture was too much, or that it is owed. It means the gap between the grandparents you imagined and the ones who visit stops deciding how each afternoon together feels.
What is fair in it can stay: wanting your children loved, your way of raising them respected. Anything about a child's safety, the car seat, an allergy, who they are left with, is never part of what loosens. And if a child seems uneasy with a grandparent, that is worth noticing, not smoothing over.
Basic respect and safety, for you, for your children and for your parents, are never “expecting too much”. What can ease is how tightly the picture is held. If raising things at home has ever brought a reaction that frightens you, that is worth taking seriously, and keeping the hope to yourself can be the safe choice.
Picture packing for the next visit at peace with this: what would you be looking forward to?Talk about this ›
A truer sentence
A truer line for the next visit #
Instead of arguing with “My parents should be the grandparents I imagined”, some people keep a line like this ready: “I pictured something else, and my children can find their own way to them.” It doesn't need to win, only stand beside the old one.
It can sound thin the first time it's said in the head. Some people find a line in their own words gradually makes a little room; others find it doesn't, and that's fine as well.
What would a truer sentence be in your own words, one that keeps the hope for your children and makes room for the grandparents they actually have?Talk about this ›
What to let be
Some pictures can go back in the album #
Not every picture of family life needs to be settled this year. Some can be looked at, held for a moment and put back, like an old family photo in an album in Mysuru or a framed print on a hallway wall in Slough.
This hope doesn't have to be raised at the door at all. If raising things at home has ever brought a reaction that frightens you, that is worth taking seriously, and keeping the hope to yourself can be the safe choice. It stays yours either way.
Putting it down for the evening doesn't mean it was fine, or that it's settled. It only means the next visit doesn't have to carry the whole picture on its back.
If it loosened
And if the picture loosened, even a notch #
Imagine, only as a picture, the expectation a notch quieter. The hope for your children is still there, but a visit is a visit, not an exam the grandparents sit. What is the first thing that feels different, even slightly?
Small things can be enough, such as packing the bags with the instructions that matter most and a snack for yourself, an afternoon of your own while the children are away, or hearing about the visit with curiosity instead of a checklist. What would your first small thing be?
Nothing here needs to be said to anyone. Whatever comes up belongs to you and is worth noticing. Next, a look at what making peace with this could mean, and what is already there.
Small things to try
Something to try
A few small things people try #
- Before a visit, notice which moment you already hope to see
- During a visit, notice one moment your children seem to enjoy
- Notice one small thing you wanted today, however small
- Ask yourself quietly: is this hope for my children, or for me at their age?
- Notice which is louder: the visit happening, or the one you imagined
Small, private and all optional. Try whichever feels doable.
Pick a question
Talk it through #
Tap one. A chat with Dr. Thoughts opens on that question: free, private, no sign-up to start.
- What did you picture your parents doing with your children, long before your first child arrived?
- Which visit with the grandparents are you still replaying, and what exactly happened at the door?
- What did a grandparent do for you as a child that you hoped your own children would get too?
- On a day when the grandparents you pictured feel far away, what would you still be putting off?
- What do your children already seem to love about their grandparents, just as they are?