Dear LPG readers,

Grandmas and granddads, have you ever felt this way? I am a grandma with a message that many other grandparents will have experienced, especially if they were called upon to be more ‘hands-on’.  I suspect that a few will identify with this message.

First, I want to talk to all those grandmas who once found themselves looking around where they lived for the perfect school to send their little one to.   Some 30 years later, doesn’t it all come back as those now grown little one’s conversations around which primary school they will send their children to has you looking at it all from a slightly more objective perspective.

I don’t remember all the agonising about which would be best, starting quite as early when I found myself in that position. Still, you might hear it mentioned during a long-distance parent-daughter or parent-son phone call because you live so far away from them all. However, if you have been involved with their pre-school babysitting regime, it brings back memories. 

For a few weeks, when I realised that my stint as grandma in charge of getting them to school on time was nearly over, I could only think of the positives. I am older now and won’t miss standing around and its effect on my ageing legs.   

I seemed to have been babysitting them forever, but one day last week, I found myself sitting in the playground with my youngest grandchild while waiting for the older one to appear in line with his classmates at the end of the school day for the penultimate time. Next term, the youngest will be a full-time infant, and my services will no longer be required.  

But on that day, just for a moment, my grandchildren could have been my children at that age. The view would have been slightly different, but the waiting in all kinds of weather while chatting with the other parents seemed the same.   When the time warp righted, the classes were lined up, and the children would join their parents and grandparents.  It was then that who had come for which child became so apparent because of family resemblance.  

But most of all, I realised just how much time I had spent telling myself that I could not wait for the day when I would no longer have to honour the promise to drag myself out in whatever weather to be at the school gate rather than watching the worst of the winter cold, the intensity of the summer heat, or all the in-between weather variations from the warm side of my living room window. It suddenly dawned on me that I had passed another era.

It is like coming up to retirement all over again when you look forward to having all that extra time tinged with thoughts of missing your work colleagues.  But you get that feeling when you know that soon when you ask those children the simplest of questions, they will suddenly be too busy or otherwise mentally stimulated for you to command their full attention.

Homework, earphones, earplugs, tablets, computers, their young friends, and so much more will take the place of what parents and grandparents have to say; as they get older, they are likely not even to notice when you call them the first, or even the second time anymore. 

BJ, Lewisham