Visiting With Our Son-In-Law

Tripp’s book is in the photo above. He is a recognized author and minister. Not a parent. My son-in-law started his conversation with how he has been thinking more lately about writing a book about parenting.

He said, “The problem is I can think about writing a book, but I never have time, as I am too busy with the kids.”

Then he said, “We have eight kids, and who knows better than we do about parenting.” “Lately, though our worst stories about parenting are parenting our adult kids.” He said that one of them wanted to disown them because of differing political beliefs.

Oh, and don’t forget the other parent with similar political beliefs was tied up and couldn’t go with her to a doctor's appointment. To be fair, she has a diagnosed mental illness that I was sure affected her during her pregnancy and for a while after. That is their child, who has 3 children now.

He then said, “She is coming around now as she is moving again. Time to drop everything again and move her. The good news is that this may be the last time to move her, as she is buying a home.”

“This is the daughter, mad about politics and Dr. visits, so we didn’t get to see our newest grandson until he was six weeks old.” They live just 30 minutes or so away from them.

Of course, my daughter is 51, and tells me all about these things when her heart is hurting. So, I already knew most of what he was going to tell us about parenting. She cried when she was telling me about not seeing their grandson for six weeks.

Then he said, “If I had known how great grandchildren are, I would have skipped children and adopted grandchildren.” All eight of their children and six grandchildren live close by.

We have seven children, and only one lives close. The others are a good 3 hours away. Only a couple of grandchildren live in other states, otherwise we have 30 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren.

My son-in-law and daughter have a yours, mine, and ours family. The oldest is her husbands step son from his first marriage, then his two girls, her son, their three boys, and their daughter.

Her son and their youngest daughter were adopted. They both had the same bio mom and are both on the fetal alcohol spectrum (FASD). Then their youngest sister became my daughter's granddaughter when their oldest daughter and her partner adopted her.

My daughter married a man from Alaska. They lived there for a few years while two of their babies were born. Then they moved to Minnesota. That was hard for me, but we were in touch, and I was up there once each year for the 3+ years they were there.

Lucky me, I get along with all my children and grandchildren currently, but it wasn’t always that way.

I always tell my daughter that if she needs to blame me for anything, feel free, as I can handle it. I raised three teens at the same time, and I know what that is like. She has always had teens, and the last two are fast approaching their teen years.

When she married her husband, he had a daughter mentioned above who was a new teen, and his stepson was a teen. At the time, the teen boy didn’t live with them. The family entered counseling because of the teen girl. The entire family.

She grew up with a mother who had no issue with taking the whole family to counseling when needed. The best thing for them when blending families, I would say. Then, with mental health issues, another good thing. Substance abuse is certainly important for the family to get help.

A book about parenting from parents is the best book you will read. Parenting changes over the years, too. Some children were hit, but probably not as often as their parents. Today, this doesn’t happen as much. And when it does, it is trauma that counselors/therapists hear about in therapy.

My daughter mentioned getting hit by a wooden spoon. I automatically said, " Who did that, as I knew I may have wanted to but never did that. She said, “Grandma.” I have no memories of my mother hitting me. I was the oldest child and helped my mother with the younger ones, so that may be why.

My ten-year-younger brother remembers the glammor stretcher used on him by our mother. He said he would take off running and just laugh.

My son-in-law kept us laughing with all his parenting tales, and we shared some of our favorite stories about our grandchildren as they were growing up. It was a good time.

We laughed about all the people in our life that have so much advice about parenting, who aren’t parents, and as soon as they have children, there goes the advice.