Giving a new spin to old school

“What do you mean, ‘I can’t hold him in my lap? I’m not strapping him into the back seat alone while we sit up front. Are you trying to teach me about babies?’ Umm yes, granma, she is.

There was a time when grandparents were as necessary to a child’s growth as sunshine. They sang to you as you lay in your pram, fed you at the right time without needing even a signal of a wail, and rocked you to sleep at night with customized ditties. As you grew older, they cooked your favourite meals, taught you funny old games and got you the expensive toys that your parents refused to buy. If you didn’t live together anyway, you went to them every holiday for weeks of laughter, magical stories and buckets of hugs and love. They taught you new skills and helped you with your holiday homework. When your parents arrived; they joined the self-help classes too; turns out, there were many tricks up the old people’s sleeves that the middle generation didn’t know.

But that was then. Now, with the rules of engagement all changed, grandparents are lucky if they can put their foot through the nuclear family door. Young parents, boosted by their self-importance, the Internet and specialists, feel they can bring up their babies by themselves just fine. Indeed many of them seem to believe that their own parents lived in ancient times and the best ways of raising children have been discovered only since they themselves turned parents.

Savvy grandparents know that all the convincing in the world won’t help; even small suggestions or the tweaking of a schedule will be perceived as interfering and dominating. So, determined not to be left out of the child-rearing process, they’ve opted to go back to school to learn the new way of bringing up babies.

Yes, back to school. In the last few years, hospitals and community centres around the developed world have begun offering crash courses in baby raising for expectant or new grandparents. Not because the babies have changed, but because what the world knows about them has. The routine is no longer about feeding, changing and sleep. Indeed, the senior students find that everything they learn at grandparenting school is in stark contrast to their parenting knowledge.

It’s no longer wise to let babies snooze on their tummies; they have to be put on their backs instead in spartan cribs that have been stripped bare of blankets. Bottles are no longer boiled for sterilization and the famous oil massage is discouraged. The schools haven’t opened in India as yet; but it’s only a matter of time.

For her album Ceremonials, titian-haired songstress Florence Welch wrote a song titled Only If for the Night inspired by her grandmother, an art historian who committed suicide when Welch was 14. Welch said she did the song after her grandmother appeared in a dream while the singer was on tour in Germany and told her to ‘concentrate on your perfect career’.

Welch wants her grandmother back only if for the night; the little ones whose grandparents have gone back to school for their sake, should have them for longer stretches of time.  shampa@newindianexpress.com