Grandparents and Grandchildren: A Psychiatrist and His Granddaughter Share Their Relationship Implications for Mental Health

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PSYCHIATRIC VIEWS ON THE DAILY NEWS

Introduction by H. Steven Moffic, MD

I wonder, how much were you taught in training and continuing education about the role of grandparents in the well-being of grandchildren and vice-versa? If you are like me, and though I was an academic, I bet the answer is not much. Probably at most inquiring about any family history of mental illness. Maybe more is done in child psychiatry. Otherwise, probably not any requirement or habit about asking about grandparents and grandchildren in the psychiatric evaluation.

This omission seems even stranger in our current times of more focus on positive psychiatry and lifestyle psychiatry. What could be more positive about having a meal at grandma’s house?

Traditionally, grandparents lived near or with the rest of the family. That enabled them to be an integral part of the family, including supporting their children in their parenting and usually providing unconditional and more conflict-free relationships with their grandchildren. They were often viewed as wise elders. That relationship has splintered in the United States in modern times with the dispersal of family members more and more, although there is a bit of a counter trend for some elders to move back to where their children are to live out their lives. And, yes, I know many elders do not have grandchildren or have unremitting conflict with a daughter-in-law or son-in-law. In our family, we live about an hour and a half away from our children and grandchildren.

Still, I thought I was learning a lot about the importance of the grandparent-grandchild relationship in recent years. After all, I had written and spoken about that quite a bit over the last decade as my wife and I were aging and began to have grandchildren. In particular, I focused on the opportunity to transmit (Jewish) values to grandchildren.

However, it was not until one of our grandchildren, Mira Goldstein, recently suggested that we write something together that I discovered how much I really did not know, even if I was used to seeing below the surface as a psychiatrist. I did not really have a sense of what could be in the depths of their minds and memories about us, while at the same time, recognizing that all grandchildren are unique in their self-knowledge and sharing.

I suggested to Mira the topic of what grandparents mean to grandchildren and what grandchildren mean to grandparents, probably because she has come to mean so much to us. Some of you may remember Mira as she wrote some articles as a “cub reporter” for us during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic and then again about a year ago about climate concerns while in Taiwan for summer research. Now she is 20 and is in New Zealand for the summer, a junior at Rice University majoring in chemical biomolecular engineering with a concentration in energy and sustainability. Here is what Mira wrote.

Mira’s Reflections on Her Grandparents and Grandparenting

While the world tries to make women smaller, my grandparents’ home is the one place I do not have to fight for space. I can exist exactly as who I am without doing anything extraordinary to be worthy or being anyone extraordinary to be loved.

In first grade, I learned about the impressionistic strokes of Claude Monet and found myself pulled into the quiet beauty of his scenes. I wandered through lavender fields in my mind and drifted across hazy ponds. My grandparents noticed my fascination and wanted to show me that the world I saw in my art books could be real. They flew me to New York to stroll through gardens modeled after Monet’s own. This was the first moment I started to believe in magic as something other than new worlds of fantasy. I discovered that magic is looking at the world not only as it is, but as what it can be.

The guiding role of a parent is to protect and care presently. Contrarily, like children, grandparents look toward the future and what the world can become. Grandparents and grandchildren alike share the same wonder for the world that connects us beyond years. In Monet’s garden, my grandparents and I shared a wonder of what the world can be.

Words, and even memories like those of walking Monet gardens, may vanish, but the warmth that my grandparents make me feel is that deep, healing heat that lives deep in the soul and forever warms you from the inside. They do not wait for accomplishments to define me. In their eyes, I am already whole. Growing up, they glimpsed my true self before I ever did. My grandmother pushed me to use my voice, which at the time was a jumble of murmurs that only existed in my head. She sang beautifully, loud and piercing, modeling the power of a female voice and the way it breaks through the low timbers of a noisy world. Her voice alone was my lullaby, and her hands held mine like they were built to fix things that hurt. At night, I collapsed into sleep with the sound of her soul, “You are My Sunshine,” echoing between the dark corners of the room. She showed me there is light in darkness and a voice to rise in silence.

My grandfather is patient, waiting on each silence in our conversations for my response. I will always remember his tender tolerance as I found the courage to open my heart and let it speak. My grandfather taught me that justice does not run and yell, but it listens. He spent his life as a psychiatrist listening to those most unseen, treating each person as if their soul was an extension of his own. His knowledge and heart are gentle, patient and unflinching. His steady love taught me that my life can be more than only mine to live, and that it can be shared as part of building something better together.

Part of building a life is weaving through stages of independence and dependence. As children, we need our parents for life and love. With our grandparents, we connect with a care that had once raised our own parents. Just as we grow up and separate from our parents, our grandparents have already experienced the exact transition of navigating when to stay, when to step back, and how to never drift too far. We are simultaneously building a life apart from the same people we both hold so close, a parent to me and a child to them.

My grandparents have shown me that becoming an adult is not just about stepping away from our parents or carving out an independent life. Adulthood should be expanding our circle and learning how to lean on more people, not fewer. If their lives are music, then they have invited me to hear the full orchestra and helped me understand the melodies that make them who they are. Their world is filled with extraordinary people who move them, challenge them and make them laugh. I have met the Rocamoras, a couple with stories that stretch across continents and careers. Everywhere we go, we will bump into fabulous friends who adore them. I have grown close to longtime friends like Arlene, who once posed with lions in Africa, and Becky, my grandmother’s closest companion and the model of what it means to care with your whole self. Meeting the circle of individuals my grandparents depend on has given me the strength to overcome my social anxiety. They have shown me what it means to conduct my own symphony, a community rooted in love, bravery and connection.

My grandparents believed just as much in the power of music and art as in a traditional education. They took me to the theater, where I experienced everything from an avant-garde production of “Cinderella” to a beautifully traditional and romantic performance of “Florencia en el Amazonas.” We wandered through art museums with soaring wings that opened like a playhouse filled with precious treasures. At the Kennedy Center, we marveled at a red carpet runway filled of delicate glass sculptures that led us to performances that told stories of the world. They introduced me to some of the most creative and well-respected minds in history. They also showed me that art is not confined to the walls of galleries or bright lights of the stage. We dined at the Charlie Parker Diner as a key part of a historical tour of Springfield. We returned again and again to Ono Kine Grindz, the best Hawaiian restaurant in the Midwest, where the food stirs on my tongue and dances down the length of my throat. My grandparents taught me that art is everywhere, alive in both grand performances and small, unexpected moments.

As we all do, my grandparents express love in the ways they have learned over time, drawn from their own experiences and possibly from the places where love may have once been absent. Life changes, and with it, our patience and perspective. Even in disagreements, our love has never left. No relationship is constant bliss, but care is patient and always there. With nothing more than their presence, my grandparents anchor love of the past to the future. In the way they support my mother, my grandparents protect me by indirectly offering strength that flows through generations. My grandparents taught me that simple things like a baked chicken, the thump of feet coming downstairs, and a letter with my name on it can be extraordinary. When love and life feel overwhelming, I remember my grandma and the boxes of trinkets she sets aside for me. I remember the emails my grandfather writes me, each signed with a new expression of love, and I am reminded of the beauty of how simple love can be.

Her Grandparents Reflect Back on Being Her Grandparents

My wife and I sat open-mouthed as tears flowed down as we read the drafts of Mira’s submission. As my wife noted, there was probably no other way we would ended up appreciating what was below the surface in her psychology and soul. It was not only the unabashed positivity, but the unexpected depth and insight from the memories of our relationships. Some comments especially had mental health implications, and here are some examples.

“My grandmother pushed me to use my voice, which at the time was a jumble of murmurs that only existed in my head.”

You may have heard Rusti sing introductions to some of my weekly videos. It appears that she directly and indirectly pushed and modeled Mira to be more confidently expressive in a time when sexism is still strong.

“He spent his life as a psychiatrist listening to those most unseen, treating each person as if their soul was an extension of his own.”

This observation and interpretation of what I and other psychiatrists do was something I had never considered before.

“Meeting the circle of people my grandparents lean on has given me the strength to overcome my social anxiety.”

That our friends and our observed interactions, however brief, was therapeutic for Mira’s social anxiety show the power of social contagion.

“In the way they support my mother, my grandparents protect me indirectly offering strength that flows through generations.”

Here we see the importance of intergenerational interaction for family well-being.

In a way, this is just 1 case study, a very positive one at that, for the grandparent and grandchild relationships. Even with that limitation, there is enough for me to recommend more attention to grandparenting by:

• Incorporating grandparenting experiences and memories in a patient’s initial and ongoing evaluation.
• Incorporating grandparenting experiences in lifestyle psychiatry recommendations.
• Widening the grandparent concept to children in general, as in our climate crisis for their future.
• Leaving an ethical will of values for the next generation.

Grandparents generally want to leave some sort of legacy and also have the next generation do better. Mira gives my wife and I that reassurance for the future. We are so grateful.

Dr Moffic is an award-winning psychiatrist who specialized in the cultural and ethical aspects of psychiatry and is now in retirement and retirement as a private pro bono community psychiatrist. A prolific writer and speaker, he has done a weekday column titled “Psychiatric Views on the Daily News” and a weekly video, “Psychiatry & Society,” since the COVID-19 pandemic emerged. He was chosen to receive the 2024 Abraham Halpern Humanitarian Award from the American Association for Social Psychiatry. Previously, he received the Administrative Award in 2016 from the American Psychiatric Association, the one-time designation of being a Hero of Public Psychiatry from the Speaker of the Assembly of the APA in 2002, and the Exemplary Psychiatrist Award from the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill in 1991. He presented the third Rabbi Jeffrey B. Stiffman lecture at Congregation Shaare Emeth in St. Louis on Sunday, May 19, 2024. He is an advocate and activist for mental health issues related to climate instability, physician burnout, and xenophobia. He is now editing the final book in a 4-volume series on religions and psychiatry for Springer: Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, Christianity, and now The Eastern Religions, and Spirituality. He serves on the Editorial Board of Psychiatric Times.

Mira Goldstein is a junior at Rice University.