I'm not revealing anything if I highlight the special character that usually permeates the relationships between grandparents and grandchildren. It seems as if, as we "get older", we allow ourselves some emotional licenses that we couldn't or simply didn't know how to develop at other times in our lives, even with our children.
The relationship with grandchildren is stripped of those "permanent supervisory obligations" that enrich it in emotional areas. Grandparents become "partners in adventure" for the little ones. While parents, solemn guardians of our children's care, insist on giving that point of exaggeration to everything regarding their well-being, without allowing ourselves to enjoy them more.
In a framework of unprecedented collective confinement, relationships between parents and children become difficult due to the absence of total privacy for both parties and/or social breaks (school, extracurricular activities, family gatherings, etc.).
Despite selling an apparent "normality" with routines that we offer children through a programmed order, the day, mischievous and long, imposes tedious spaces. The only certainty, as of today, regarding this crisis is its extraordinary nature. How do you explain to a child that they cannot go outside, enjoy the sun, take a family walk, or play outdoors? If we (adults) are unable to accept this situation, even less so the children?
But this confinement has also brought wonderful things. A friend told me about the admirable "dedication" that his son gives to his grandfather. In his house, the "same ritual" is repeated every day.
Around mid-afternoon (sometimes it's more intense and extends to other time slots), grandfather and grandson begin what they call the "chat of the day", in which they talk about various issues, although, basically, they tell each other how "much they miss each other" and how "much they want to do things together" when this is over?
The significant thing about the case is that "these chats" are becoming a small "emotional refuge" for both of them; a way, like any other, to escape for a few moments from so much pessimism, from so many doom-mongers of others, from so many "envious" statistics.
A fantastic "therapy" that gives us clues on how we should face the collective difficulties that we will have to go through together as a society after this preventive lockdown.
In short, we must take care of each other, with generosity. In a muddy terrain like the current one, vulnerable to love and illusions, it is necessary to strip ourselves of "egos", face the future with the solidity and selfless dedication of a grandfather with his grandson.
Approaches are needed! To family and friends, to nature, to others in general. Without bitterness, without reproaches, in good harmony? We have to return to the "good old customs", interrelate in a healthy way.
Agustín Enrique García Acosta
President of Hay Proyecto en Tías (HPET)