Sugar-free, with affection: how parents and grandparents differ on raising children today

Tea and juice for the baby are off the menu, baby food should not be a blended mix and sugar can only be offered after two years of age (and look there). Breastfeeding and normal delivery receive more support, with consultants, doulas and pelvic physiotherapy. Spanking and many other physical punishments, which used to be commonplace, have become the object of law and are met with more resistance, despite some boasting about the violence out there.

The list of what has changed from one generation to the next, from pregnancy to education, goes on and on. And the new practices, as might be expected, can cause strangeness, especially among the elderly.

According to pediatrician and mother Luiza Menezes, who offers the Avós Fora da Caixa course to prepare them for the new times and reduce possible friction with the children’s parents, it’s not that today’s grandparents have raised their children wrong.

“They did the best they could in the light of the information they had. But the fact is that science has changed, evolved, and I invite you to update yourself”, he says.

“The biggest bullshit is sugar, which was previously seen as a luxury. Grandparents have this affective memory of candy as a reward, so today, in the face of parents’ refusal, sometimes they want to give the candy hidden. But when the person discredits the caregiver and asks the child to hide something from the parents, two problems are created: one is the exposure itself to sugar, and the other is to normalize that there are secrets from the parents at this age. parents because the abuser asked for secrecy.”

President of the Scientific Department of Outpatient Pediatrics at SBP (Brazilian Society of Pediatrics), Tadeu Fernando Fernandes also sees cultural shock on a daily basis.

“Everything has changed. Before it was OK to give tea, juice with sugar, food with salt, and carbohydrates were privileged. Our problems were malnutrition and infectious diseases. Today it is obesity”, says Fernandes.

The changes are not just in relation to medical guidelines and food. Today, parents become older parents, more financially independent and with access to a flood of information. And grandparents become grandparents later on, with fewer grandchildren, eager and thirsty for them, and generally eager to pamper them and offer a less rigid upbringing than the one they received.

Publisher Elisabete Junqueira is an example of this transformation. She says jokingly that she was a “dinosaur” mother in the face of new times.

“At that time, any help was welcome. I was a young mother and I didn’t have time to read, to prepare myself. I raised my children in the pattern of the old family, in which grandparents gave their opinion and that was considered help, not invasion of privacy. When my eldest grandson was born, I realized that everything had changed and no one had warned me”, says she, who created the Avosas website seven years ago to address the issue, and sees conflicts of all kinds.

There are parents who complain about grandparents who are too permissive, resistant to change or intrusive; there are grandparents who complain about their children being very rigid, with little flexibility; there are difficult relationships between parents and children and also between sons-in-law, in-laws and in-laws. The challenge is to find the way to peaceful coexistence, which always involves frank conversation, without keeping what bothers you to yourself.

“Parents need to make their rules clear, with sincerity and affection, and see grandparents as allies. And grandparents need to respect their parents’ decisions, so that they can enjoy their grandchildren a lot without taking their spotlight as the main caregivers. world wins, especially the child”, says Junqueira.

Menezes, from the Avós Fora da Caixa course, has yet another recommendation: “I advise grandparents to ask: ‘In my time it was like this, is it still done like this?’ instead of imposing”.

Both disagree with the idea that the role of grandparents is to “spoil” their grandchildren. “If you let the child eat junk food and watch TV, it will be an exception, grandfather of commemorative dates. Parents will not trust you to be part of daily care”, says Menezes.

“You can’t do contraband. You have to follow it exactly, especially in the first years of life. Soda is useless, why would it work? There’s a grandmother who tells me ‘but my kids took it and they’re fine’, and I say: ‘It’s good that today we have more information and your grandson won’t take it'”, says Junqueira.

For Edna Maria de Albuquerque Diniz, professor in the pediatrics department at the USP School of Medicine (University of São Paulo) and grandmother, while parents say “no” all day long, grandparents say a little more “yes”, it’s true – especially when the kids are a little older. But she remembers that this contact has the potential to do a lot of good for those involved.

“Grandparents have already raised their children, they are in a quieter phase of life, and they feel an undeniable affection and love for their grandchildren that is difficult to even describe”, says Diniz.

“Grandparents are a safe haven, they are a point of support for teaching and help in the emotional development of grandchildren, who benefit from having other people besides their parents who love them unconditionally and warmly.”