Overdue recognition came Saturday for some of New Haven’s lesser-known heroes: the thousand-plus grandparents who raise their grandchildren. A terrific group called Grandparents On The Move shared the annual Morris Wessel Prize for “Unsung Heroes” at a ceremony at the Educational Center for the Arts. These grandmas have plenty to teach other grandparent-parents — not to mention a reporter.
(Click here for a story on another one of the Wessel Prize winners, Ellen Andrews.)
Ten of the grandmas active in Grandparents on the Move taught me a lesson the other day when I interviewed them in the basement of Beulah Heights First Pentecostal Church on Orchard Street.
We gathered to discuss the growth of the group since its formation nine years ago. Back then schools superintendent Reginald Mayo noticed how many of the parents he encountered were actually grandparents raising their grandchildren. He had a parent coordinator at the Board of Ed named Carolyn Jackson (a grandparent-parent herself) start a support group. According to the 2000 census, New Haven has 1,600 children being raised by grandparents because their own parents are out of the picture. The group Jackson started blossomed into the largest of dozens of such organizations in the state. Between 40 and 100 grandparent-parents attend monthly meetings, go on trips together, help each other out informally, run food drives, tell politicians that grandparent-parents need the same kind of help from the system that foster parents receive. Together grandparent-parents wrestle with the exhausting emotional, financial, bureaucratic and health pressures of a job that requires, as one woman put, wearing “the armor of God.”
I asked the women in the room to describe how they came to take over their grandchildren’s care, and how Grandparents on the Move helped them do it. They told wrenching stories. About a middle-of-the-night call to rescue children in a drug house. About showing up in court with the grandchildren to watch their father appear in court on charges of murdering their mother.
It was during the telling of the latter story that I learned a lesson. I pressed the woman telling the story for details, the kind of details reporters need to flesh out a story. She was focusing on the pain she felt that day. What kind of hearing was it? A plea? Jury selection?
The woman looked uncomfortable as she scanned her memory for details. The other woman looked uneasy, too.
Finally Carolyn Jackson asked, “Have you ever interviewed grandparents before?”
Another grandma spoke up. The details hurt, she said. We’d rather not have to relive every detail. Too often the grandparent-parents end up fielding batteries of these detail questions from outsiders — “bureaucrats, social workers — “instead of having a chance to say what they need or want to say.
The woman telling the story didn’t need to reconstruct the confusing details of an old court date. She wanted to make the point simply that it was a horrifically painful day, that she couldn’t get out of bed, and that there was a crucial role for fellow grandparent-parents to play.
In this case that fellow grandparent-parent was Margaret Thomas. Thomas has been active from the start in Grandparents on the Move. She also happens to attend church with the woman telling the story about the court date. Thomas noticed the woman hadn’t been leaving her house. Thomas knocked on the door. “I’m not going to let you give up,” she said. She brought the woman to a Grandparents on the Move meeting, where a doctor spoke about how to find help for dealing with trauma. The woman spoke with the doctor afterwards for more advice.
She and others in the room proceeded to speak about the support they give each other. They also spoke of the fun they have traveling, without their grandchildren, for a needed break.
And, amid choruses of “uh-huh” assents, they spoke of the lessons they’ve learned about how to be a grandparent-parent:
√¢ — ? “When you’re a grandparent raising a grandchild, you’ve got to give them double love,” Frances Days said. That means recognizing how badly the children miss their parents and giving them those extra hugs and reassurance. At the same time, Carolyn Jackson added, “You have to be the parent. You can’t be the grandparent. You can’t be the one they run to let them get away with what mommy and daddy wouldn’t. You are mommy and daddy.”
√¢ — ? Get a bigger apartment when the kids come to live with you.
√¢ — ? Accept your new role and get on with it.
√¢ — ? Recognize that kids today face more peer pressure than ever, especially to fit in with a culture of violence.
√¢ — ? Speak with teachers and school administrators who tend to respect grandparent-parents less than parent-parents.
√¢ — ? Take care of yourself. Faced with tight budgets, grandparent-parents too often they fail to make time for themselves or take needed hypertension or diabetes medicine, feeling they need to reserve the money for rent or the children’s food instead.
Above all, Carolyn Jackson says, seek support, from groups like Grandmothers on the Move. “Know that you’re not alone,” Carolyn Jackson says. “You can make it.”
For information about Grandparents on the Move, or to donate money, call Carolyn Jackson at 203 – 946-7444 or e‑mail her at carolynojackson@yahoo.com.