Dear LPG,

I am in my mid 70s and I assume that most readers of LPG are somewhere in that age group.  So what I have to say will resonate with some, and others can relate to the situation if they are honest to themselves. 

How many grandparents see their grandchildren (whatever their age) regularly enough to be able to say that they have a personal relationship with them?   If you do you are among the lucky ones.  I am not that fortunate even though they all live in the same country and the same city though not in the same borough.

The Grandmothers are the ones that do the babysitting and so get close to the little ones, but this often gets forgotten very quickly once their services are no longer needed.  I personally think that most men are nowhere near as sentimental as women.  We tend to be more objective and view situations like this with more realistic eyes.   Men of all ages tend to acknowledge the facts about our children, good or bad, and live with them.  For a man, not seeing any of his children (no matter how old) or their offspring as often as we would like to, is something   we can live with.  We accept that children can be very ungrateful regardless of their backgrounds and upbringing.

It is likely that a few of the individuals reading this letter will be smiling to themselves in the knowledge that their situations are quite different, because the generations that they have produced still have that closer relationship which puts them in a category which is opposite to that which I have described.

I offer respect to them and their more considerate families who are a credit to their parenting.  Whatever you did right needs to be passed on to your children for their own good when it is their time to be pensioners, and perhaps we could ask any more fortunate readers who have learned the secret component to bringing up more caring adults to share it so that it can be passed on through these pages. 

Rudy Morgan