I once wrote, that it was not that unusual in this day and age, to be a stay at home granddad looking after a wee one, a diverse household of family members- aye even one with the ASBO gardener aka papa as its senior member- and meeting all the demands that are made running any normal house let alone mine! You know what I mean, the sort of things woman have done for centuries without too many grumbles or complications!
Woman have, as I said for hundreds of years acted as the household banker, problem solver, nurse, cleaner and of course law enforcer, now that was just for the husbands, add in children, work and many other jobs, in truth too many to list, and over those hundreds of years not a granddad to be seen doing any of them.
I made assumptions when I first wrote that a stay at home granddad was not unusual, firstly I assumed that in this day and age of enlightenment we had moved on, evolved and the traditional boundaries that once separated the sexes were no longer. Add to that, the many parents from my era that helping out their children bring up their children by voluntary means or other. Secondly I assumed, that being the case, allied to the fact that many more woman hold down full time jobs now than ever before, meant that the percentage of probability was on my side.
Aye your right.....wrong, wrong and wrong again!! what is it I always say- never assume!!
So what led me to question my own situation? Why investigate? Why research, if I indeed was a rare animal, aye possibly even on the endangered list of the animal world?
Well it started off simply enough as most things with me seem to do, I was simply having a wee trawl around for some advise. You would like to think that would be an easy enough job, however as a granddad....... Try asking for advise or look for support to bring up your 3 year old granddaughter and you start to feel very alone.
When you are a parent, single or as part of a couple setting out for the first time, there is no amount of people, professional and lay, around you day and night with advice and help-some more useful and welcome than others! There are books and DVDs handed out like sweeties when wanted or not!
Now push past the fact this is your first outing into parenthood and add on a few years of age, chuck in a couple of kids of your own, and suddenly a large number of people believe you are an expert, the result is, the people and the books they give away disappear quicker, than your memory has forgotten, all the advice you were given years ago, by all well meaning and those paid! Aye there are few if any, advice books or DVDs for a granddad on the shelves of our book shops or libraries!
So where do you go?
Going to your own parents can be done, God willing, even if you have forgotten their advice from first time round, aye the very advice you chose to ignore the first time of asking all those years ago! This time you know it will be delivered with that look of I told you so!
So simply looking for advice was the start of the questioning of my status as a normal being in the parental chain.
That was mild compared to my next clue as I investigated a stay at home granddad, unusual or not?
Over the past few weeks, I have been checking out nursery places and the like for the wee one, and to be honest I could feel the looks I was receiving from a number of people as I entered and left the premises.
This Became more than a feeling, when I turned up at a local event for wee ones, and overheard a wee comment or two, leaving me to conclude that as a granddad, you just look creepy going to a mother and toddler group event or the like - in fact you might as well pull out a bag of sweets, and shout who's first if some of the mothers probing eyes, wee comments and ill at ease looks are read properly.
Sadly this all confirmed my status as a rare, endangered species, a species that has not evolved like I had assumed.
As I trawled the web looking for signs that I was in fact a pretty common species- aye the answer for and to every problem we face today- all I achieved was further backing to the case, that I could appear on the telly one day, with a voice over, appealing for money, before my species becomes extinct!!
So it looks like the stay at home granddad is a species that probably has more use for a support group than a members forum!!
I have decided that the next art day that the wee one and I undertake will involve T-shirt painting, this time of the deliberate variety, the designs to be produced, will be of the simple message variety, like
I AM WITH GRANDADD and
ITS OKAY HE IS MY GRANDADD, so no one is left in any doubt.
Now that just leaves problem solving, that one is easy, I will just swallow my pride and ask the law enforcer aka the wife as she always seems to be one step ahead of me, and if she does not know the answer then I always have the web to trawl.
As we all know the answer to this, and indeed any question, is out there on the web , with several answer options depending on the question, aye you can find all you need to know, about everything you are doing wrong, and what a bad parent you were, or are about to be again, by surfing the web, but you will find only one or two stay at home granddads!!!
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