Blog

As the season of Hallmark celebrations of Mother’s Day and Father’s Day envelops us, it is important to acknowledge the sacred role so many grandparents play in their grandchildren’s lives. As a child, I was lucky enough to go to elementary school a block away from my maternal grandmother, who provided us with scrumptious lunches doled out daily with hugs and kisses to recharge us for the second half of the school day. In the decades since, the role of grandparents and their image have undergone a dramatic makeover.      According to census data in the United States 2.7 million grandparents are raising grandchildren. Unfortunately, the reason is not thoughtful, delayed parenting, but rather the consequence of parents who are unable or unwilling to care for their children due to substance abuse, disease, incarceration, death or abandonment. Twenty-nine years ago a lovely couple, “C” and “L”, in their early 60’s came to my office desperate to protect their precious ten year old granddaughter, “M”, who had been left in their care five years earlier, when their older daughter, “D”, and son-in-law’s lives were overwhelmed with addiction issues. Their granddaughter M had flourished in their loving care, coupled with the deep connections they had fostered between M and their other grandchildren, daughter, son and son-in-law. Suddenly, M’s entire world was threatened by the intervention of Social Services, who wanted to remove the little girl from the only real home she had ever known and reunite her with her mother and half-siblings, […]