How our kids are interacting with their grandparents during COVID

Grandfather and grandson, Photo by Johnny Cohen on Unsplash

In this episode of the Papa est Fatigué podcast, Dave and Jim discuss how their kids’ grandparents are staying in touch with them during COVID. Dave and Jim start off talking about what the kids’ interactions were like with their grandparents pre-COVID, and how they’ve adjusted since. Then Dave and Jim discuss some ideas that have been successful for them.

Transcript:

Dave: Today on the podcast, Jim and I will be discussing how our kids are interacting with their grandparents during COVID and we'll give you a couple of new ideas that might work for you.

Hi, everyone. This is Dave from the Papa Est Fatigue podcast, the podcast for dads by dads. On the show today, Jim and I will be discussing how our kids are interacting with their grandparents during COVID. Then we'll give you a couple ideas on how your kids can interact with their grandparents. Before we get started, here's a little bit about us. I'm a father of two. I have a seven-year-old daughter and a four-year-old boy.

Jim: I'm Jim and I've got a seven-year-old daughter and a five-year-old daughter.

Dave: Why don't we get started by discussing what our situation was pre-COVID to establish a baseline, sort of how often your kids saw their grandparents, how far away they live, all that stuff.

Jim: Sure. I'll go first. We've got two grandmas and she's about an hour away. Then the second is my mom and she's down in the peninsula. She actually lives just around the block from my brother and his family. My niece and nephew are the same ages as my kids. When we go down there, it's a family event. We see my mom and then see my brother and his wife and his kids. We tended to go down to see my mom a little bit more frequently because the kids could play together.

I'd say we went down at least once a month to see my mom and probably twice a month up to see my wife’s mom. My mother-in-law, she's got a big house, huge yard, kids can run around and that's been helpful in COVID, but even before COVID on nice summer days, we'd get up there, escape the city fog and spend some time. About once a month for my mom and probably twice a month at least for my mother-in-law.

Dave: On my side, my in-laws live abroad, so we obviously don't see them that often, but my parents live about five minutes away. Pre-COVID, we used to do weekly Friday dinners after school. My mom would pick the kids up, actually the oldest one up and then we just head over there for dinner. Last year, she actually used to pick up our oldest daughter from school every day, if I remember correctly and we had planned for her to do that this year because they're in different buildings.

She was supposed to pick up our son this year. It was going to be a nice way for them to bond and obviously that never happened. That was the plan going into things.

Can you talk a little bit about how things have changed now that we're all still in the shelter in place and how often your kids are seeing their grandmothers right now?

Jim: What's interesting, I was thinking about this over the week. My kids have very different relationships with their grandmothers than I did. It's been interesting to see how emotionally attached they were. My grandmothers were maybe it was a different generation, a little bit more stoic, a little bit more standoffish, but the relationships my daughters have with their grandparents are very close. In COVID and in the shelter in place when we can't see them as much, or even when we can see them and there's not a lot of hugs or physical affection and we try to keep social distancing, it's been really hard to see that, how that has affected my daughters.

In some ways, it's been really heartbreaking. We've done what we could to stay in touch. When the weather was nicer in the summer and even early fall, we'd go up to the North Bay and enjoy the large yard, we'd have outdoor dinners and it felt safe. We had masks on when we were close to each other, certainly wore masks in the house. If we had to go in to use the kitchen or the washroom and outside, we tried to keep enough distance. Everything I know about COVID it felt safe. I felt like that was a safe thing to do. It was really nice to have. Then obviously the weather got colder and there's more wind.

We haven't been up there in several months and, and that's hard. When my mother-in-law does come over, she'll come over to our house, usually to drop something off. This week was my five-year-old's birthday. She came over with presents and a cake and things like that, but sometimes the girls don't see her. Sometimes I'm the only one who sees her. When she does come over and hang out, we spend time on the sidewalk and put out the chairs and try to visit with each other.

I think I mentioned in some ways that's even harder because then they've got to separate and I think what happens to particularly my older daughter, it just underscores the fact that everything's so weird and that they don't get to spend a lot of time with each other, but I guess it's better than nothing. With my mom, she's in a higher risk situation. My brother-in-law and his wife are both frontline doctors. Now my sister-in-law has the vaccine, but my brother doesn't. Having them go to work and be around COVID every day was high risk, both for us to go down to visit.

Then particularly for my mom, she's older than my mother-in-law. We haven't seen her as much, maybe twice, three times in the last couple of months, just the sidewalk visits or that's pretty much it actually, I think she's just come over twice. It's been hard. The once a month or twice a month were all-day events where we got to spend time with each other. Now, we're down to maybe an hour of just sitting and chatting. It's been hard.

Dave: I'm curious, you're talking about how I think it was your mother-in-law has the vaccine, once both grandmothers are vaccinated, do you think you're going to try and go back to some level of normalcy or are you going to wait. Obviously, the kids will be, I think the last, well, first of all, there's no vaccine for anybody under 16 anyway, but I'm like, "Well, once my parents get vaccinated, do we start loosening up?" I don't really know, we haven't really decided on anything, but how are you guys thinking about that?

Jim: I don't think we will. I think we'll probably keep the same protocols in place. I don't know that the vaccinated people, whether they can or cannot be carriers and if they can transmit it, I don't know. If our kids can, I don't know if we could pick it up from them. I don't know how effective the vaccine is. I should read up on it, but I know it's not 100% and I'd hate to be in that small percentage where something went wrong.

I think in my mind the foreseeable future, maybe the next six months, I can imagine us probably doing the same thing, unless things significantly change in the social mood and the general population seems to be more relaxed and it seems to be effective then I think we probably change our strategy.

You've talked about how your kids interact with your grandparents, and I know that they're nearby. You mentioned that your mom used to pick up your older daughter. I ran into her several times when I was picking up my daughter. I know she was pretty involved. What are you doing now? How is that--I get the impression that you're being very socially distant and sheltering in place probably pretty effectively. Is that something you're going to continue after the vaccine and even before then, what are you doing now?

Dave: In terms of what we've been doing similar to you, I think earlier on it still felt safe. As we were looking at the tiers and how the city itself was doing, things were, relatively speaking, under control. We were still doing the occasional outdoor lunch on the weekends where we're all socially distanced - we're sitting at different tables, but at least we're still together. At our school, the last day of school is always a big deal. None of us were in school at that point. My mom basically came up with a bunch of carnival games and so we went over there and then we still had a celebration of the last day of school.

Prior, we were still doing a few of those things. Then as we started heading into winter and things were getting a little bit worse. We really pared back. We did the Zoom holidays, Thanksgiving and Christmas. For Thanksgiving and Christmas, each family was responsible for dishes and then we actually swapped dishes. When we sat down together, we're all eating the same thing, which is exactly what would happen in normal times so that was nice. The kids would at least come by to pick up the food with me, so a brief glimpse of grandma.

We've done stuff like that, but I think the thing in particular that's done quite well for our oldest is my mom had started a blog prior to the pandemic. It was about doing activities with the kids and teaching them to cook and stuff like that. She pivoted during the pandemic to more arts and crafts type things. She effectively built these little projects and then would prepare all the materials and then I would go by and pick them up. Then she would work on them with our oldest. Her site is Call Me Grandma.

I know one of the things in particular that was easy and worked really well was she made these paper dolls. She cut out all the forms and cut out some clothing and then they could put them together over Zoom. Some of these activities, I remember there were a few of them that went four hours long. It was great. She's got some grandma time, and it gives us a little bit of time to get some work done. It was really great. That's worked out quite well.

One of the things that I noticed that is prior to COVID, we would see them once a week for dinner on Fridays, but there's seven of us and so there's all sorts of stuff going on. You don't necessarily have the one-on-one time. When dinner is over the kids play a little bit, but here with this camp grandma thing, it was one-on-one time, for one hour to four hours at a time where they could just have some time to talk about anything.

For instance, the paper dolls, whatever, it gives them something to discuss and to do, but then from there they branch, "How is school going? What are you doing? What did you do over the weekend? How's your bike riding coming along?" Perversely, having this interaction between the two of them has helped their relationship. Their relationship wasn't bad, but it certainly deepened their relationship, which if we were still doing the every Friday thing, I'm not clear that they would have that same level of relationship.

It's been quite nice. It's now to the point where the oldest she'll just come up to me and say, "Hey, I want to go talk to grandma." I’ll whip out the iPhone and they can FaceTime each other. That happens pretty frequently. At least for our older daughter, I think their relationship has actually deepened because of some of those things and so they're these little projects here and there, but because also my mom prepares everything, there's really nothing that we have to do. It's just, I pick up the project, which is five minutes, and then the two of them go at it and so that's been nice. It really has been good.

Jim: She sounds like an angel.

Dave: She enjoys doing it too. They've done a cooking project as well. That can be a little bit harder where I do have to pull out the stand mix and stuff like that, but still, our daughter's busy for an hour, and all I have to do is put in five minutes to help pull some dough out or something. I'll take that any day. That's been nice. Maybe the other thing that's worked well for us during this period, and I would say at least from the grandparents' side is I got them a digital photo frame.

Again, whereas when we're seeing each other every week, it's easy to bring up these little anecdotal stories, but now that we're not seeing each other as often, just the day-to-day things that you would probably hear about on those Friday dinners, you just don't see them anymore. Our youngest has gone from being on a scooter to moving on to a balance bike and now he's pretty good at the balance bike. I feel like maybe in another month or so he's ready for his first pedal bike.

All of those things, she's not getting any of that. My mom is not getting any of that and so the photo frame, the one that I picked, is one that I can effectively control. It's online and so I can simply allocate which of my Google photos folders I want to show them. It's really great. When it came, I opened it up, I configured it and so all they had to do when they got it was get it hooked up to the Wi-Fi, and then I can proactively push photos to them.

What I've been doing the last couple of years is I make a photo album for the course of the year and so that's the one that I pushed to them for us to see what will happen in 2020. Usually what I like to do just so it's not this massive project at the end of the year, I'll at the end of every month, pull out the best pictures. We're coming up at the end of January here, I'll push those out to the frame and so she can take a look at them and they're in the kitchen where they spend a lot of their time.

My mom in particular, it's been a great way to keep in touch with the kids and then also she sees something that she's like, I don't really know what's happening in this photo. The next time she talks to any of the kids, she's like, "Oh, I saw this photo of you doing this thing, what what's going on?" That's been really great and I think it's in a nice way for them to still feel like they're connected to the kids beyond these one-off calls that we have.

Jim: We got the digital photo frame as well and I think it works that we email pictures to an account and then it comes up, but it's just for ourselves and we intended to get it for the grandmas for that exact same reason, rather than texting photos or airdropping photos or some other way of transmitting it, just to have it show up in their house.

I think that'd be very sweet so I need to get on that project and get it done and that's, as you say, I think that'd be a great way to just have a window into their world. Literally in some senses and have that be more connected.

What's interesting in hearing you talk about your kids' relationship with their grandmas, it sounds so interactive and much deeper frankly than my daughters have with their grandmother. They do get excited about something and they'll want us to videotape something, they'll say, "Send it to grandma. Please, send that to grandma right now," which is really sweet, but a lot of their interactions on the Zoom calls, it's much more conversational and not quite as deep. It's more entertainment. I think sometimes they get distracted with the stickers and the filters and things like that.

The few times that we have had these extended Zoom calls, they've really been with the whole family and it's just not the same. It's just a lot of noise and we get to see each other's faces. I'm not sure jealous is the right word, but I'm certainly envious, which is a different word for jealous of that relationship that you have with your mom and your mom's relationship with your kids, that extended window, that they can connect, that channel that they can have for many hours seems in some ways a different way of connecting that seems to be effective. I'm not sure how we can replicate that, but it's certainly something I'm going to try to integrate.

Dave: I think for me, what I think has been successful about that interaction is by providing these art projects and things like that, it provides that shared experience and so it gives you excuse to linger on the call where the call is not just to say, hi, there's an actual, here's the thing that we're going to do on the call. It allows for I think people just get lost in the experience and then the next thing you know, again, two hours have gone, three hours are gone. It doesn't need to be some massive art project.

A few of the things that they've done, one of the other ones they did, they made Christmas cards, holiday cards. My mom just cut out the shape of the card or she used the cricket and then there's stickers and other things and things for them to glue and that went forever. I think part of what's also helpful is our daughter really enjoys doing things with her hands. Of all the things, she really likes to manipulate things and she does the arts and crafts thing. Right now, she's doing some sewing. We got her a sewing machine. She's had some sewing classes and she's capable of doing a little bit of stuff on her own.

Having that shared experience and - we talked about that earlier too about just when you go on a date with somebody, sometimes people like to go to movies because it gives you some common experience and something to talk about. I think that's what's so helpful about these things, but yes, I think that's the piece that if you're going to focus on how do we broaden the types of interactions that we have. Again, they don't need to be super complicated, but as long as there's that shared experience, I think that's the key.

Jim: I think you nailed it and not only is it the structure about the interaction, but it is that shared experience. It's something that they're doing together. I know a lot of the calls that we have, they just peter out and they stare at each other and then, "All right, we'll see you later, it's time to go for dinner," or whatever it is and to have that structure and that shared experience would be a better way of structuring that interaction. I'm going to see what we can do about that. My mother-in-law is very crafty as well. We'll see if there's something that she can set up. I'm sure she'd be delighted and would give the girls something to do as well.

Dave: My mom posts all her ideas on her Call Me Grandma site so you can check there.

We've talked about some of the other ideas that we're looking to try in terms of being able to have the kids engage with their grandparents. Certainly, one of the things that I've heard that's worked well from some people are Friday night Zoom game nights. I think maybe for our daughters and certainly our youngest ones that might be a little bit more complicated, but I know that my mom has other friends that they've worked with their grandchildren for game nights.

They're a little bit older at like maybe middle school, high school, but those have been really successful. That's something I might see if I can do, you have to find the right game where maybe both sides have the board and then you say, "Okay, well--" Like my chess, right? Chess is fairly easy to do on Zoom, but they're going to be other games like that. I think that's really something that I think would be interesting.

While the ideas that we were talking about are all Zoom-based, I think that to me, I know there's a lot of Zoom fatigue going out there, and look, you can't blame anybody for that, that's tough, but I almost wonder if part of this is by having a fun way of using Zoom. It's the difference between, I think when-- Certainly when I was in middle school and you’re assigned reading in English class, you're assigned Beowulf, that's a little bit different than when you can read something that you want to read for pleasure.

I think that some of these Zoom ideas, again, it's a tool and to understand that, look, it doesn't have to be a drag depending on the outcome and the interaction that you're trying to have, that it simply is a tool and maybe that you don't find the same level of Zoom fatigue with some of these ideas. One of the other things that we tried early on was just some bedtime reading where grandma would handle the bedtime reading over Zoom and just again, a way to interact with the kids.

Can you talk a little bit about the outdoor movie night that you did and what you're planning for that? I think that's a great idea.

Jim: It's something that I've always wanted to do. When I grew up in my town, they did outdoor movies in the summertime and it was a lot of fun. It was a little bit of community and just a fun thing to do on a nice warm evening. It's something that I've wanted to do for my girls. At the end of last summer, I couldn't really figure out how to do it, but we got a new TV. I had an old TV, figured out how to set it up with the Apple TV in the backyard.

We invited our neighbors, friends and some other kids from the neighborhood to come and watch it. It was fun, but it was the end of the summer and starting to get a little bit cool.

I'm waiting for the summer months, the first summer weekends. We'll do that with the friends and also with the mother-in-law. She got me a digital projector for Christmas. That is fantastic.

One of the stated reasons was we're going to bring it up, have an outdoor dinner, set up a sheet and watch a movie outdoors in her big backyard. That's another shared experience, even if it's not so interactive, at least it's people having the same experience at the same time and sharing laughs and things like that. I'm looking forward to that and I'm waiting for the first warm weather to do it.

Dave: I think the other thing about that too is the kids will remember that grandma was there. Again, it's not necessarily they have to interact, but they will have that memory of like, "Oh, COVID sucked, but we got to do this movie outdoors, which was cool. Grandma was there and we did it in our yard." I think those are the kinds of things that'll be fun.

Jim: It's a memory.

Dave: -and still staying socially distance, which I think is still important at this point.

Dave: We hope you got some good ideas for some new ways for your kids to interact with their grandparents. If you'd like to connect with us, head over to our Facebook page, facebook.com/papaestfatigue, that's P-A-P-A-E-S-T F-A-T-I-G-U-E and we'll put all the links in the show notes.

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