Why Grandparents are Essential in the Modern Family with Gramps Jeffrey

When Gramps Jeffrey, a baby boomer with over 6 grandchildren, discovers that 30% of grandparents are considered "remote" and not involved in their kids' lives, he sets out on a mission to inspire them to become actively involved and teach the greatest generation of kids how to find the glass that is half full. Show Notes | Transcript "It takes a village to raise a kid. We as grandparents have got to help step into this and offset this great information that they're learning. We've got to balance their lives with things that, these things that we grew up with." Gramps Jeffrey Gramps Jeffrey (otherwise known as Mark Joseph) is an author and entrepreneur who has written a children's book, "I Don't Want to Turn Three", and books for entrepreneurs, such as "The Secrets of Retailing: How to Beat Walmart". He is passionate about baby boomers becoming more involved in raising their grandchildren. Gramps Jeffrey learned about the importance of grandparents involvement in raising grandkids first-hand after he spent 6 weeks with his 6 grandkids during the pandemic. He learned that it takes a village to raise a kid, and that grandparents must provide love and guidance, empathy, respect, positive thinking, and most importantly, fun. Gramps Jeffrey realized that the Baby Boomer generation, although diverse, shared important experiences that can be used to raise the next generation of kids. In this episode, you will learn the following: What is the true role of parents in today's world? What are the shared experiences of the Baby Boomer Generation? What are the reasons why small businesses fail? Related Live. Love. Engage. episodes you may enjoy: Ageless Living with Ruth Yunker: Paris, Kids, and Modeling After 70 In this episode, Ruth Yunker shares the challenges of communicating with adult children. Raising Children that Listen with Debra Kocis Parenting expert Debra Kocis explains what disrespect towards a child looks like and how to teach them respect. Spiritual Parenting with Randy Rolfe In this episode, Randy Rolfe shares what parents should be modeling for their children and why parents today face a greater challenge than previous generations. Resources: Connect with Gramps Jeffrey here Email Gramps Jeffrey here Join the Baby Boomer community here Join the Soulful Women's Network here Send me a message here ☕ Support the podcast here ❤ Love this episode? Leave us a review and rating here Connect with Gloria: LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter TRANSCRIPT Gloria Grace Rand Namaste. I am Gloria Grace Rand, and as always, I like to say that I'm delighted to be with you, because I am, and this is one of my favorite things to do in the whole world is to host this podcast. And I'm so delighted that you are here joining us, whether you're watching on YouTube or listening on your favorite podcast platform. I've got a very multi talented guest with us today. His name is Gramps Jeffrey, otherwise known as Mark Joseph, who is an author and has written a children's book called "I Don't Want to Turn Three," which explores what goes through a toddler's mind, parents so desperate to understand and it's based on true experiences he's had with his grandchildren. And he's also written books for entrepreneurs as well. His first book was called "The Secrets of Retailing - how to Beat Walmart" and was picked up by Huffington Post. Area on Huffington Reddit So not every day that somebody can say that. So kudos to you for that. He's also involved with baby boomers as well. So we're going to try to see how much of this we can cover in our talk today. So I want to welcome Gramps to live, love, engage. Gramps Jeffrey Thank you very much for inviting me. Gloria Grace Rand I'm glad to have you. We connected a little while ago and I think we'll stick with our main topic for the bit. But I might want to branch into some of these other things. And I know that I believe that a lot of our audience are if they're not grandparents yet, they may be. And I know I'm not yet. I'm not holding out hope, frankly, to be one. But you never know, maybe my kids will surprise me. We'll see. But you have said that you feel it's really important that grandparents need to be more involved in raising their kids. So why do you think that? And let's start from there. And then I want to get into maybe you can share a little bit also about why you wound up writing this book too. Gramps Jeffrey No problem. Today's baby boomers, because I'm talking from a baby boomer standpoint our site is babybloomer.org, but too many parent grandparents just don't care. 30% of grandparents are considered remote. Remote means they're just not involved in their kids' lives. And when we think about that, that's one out of every three of us. That means if you look left and look right, you know, whatever, you really don't care about your grandkids. And that that is caused by many different reasons. One of the reasons is caused by us as grandparents. First of all, we may not like the spouse our kid married, okay? So all of a sudden there is a problem between you and the kids. We may be giving our kids too much unsolicited advice about telling them how to raise their kids. And they look at us and they say, hey, you raised us, you got to trust us. You know, we're going to raise our kids. Trust us, we got to do that. So we maybe give them too much advice. We may be exceeding our boundaries just by showing up at their house. Just showing up. We cause a lot of this. We undermine our children's authority by challenging what they're teaching their kids. Grandparents question the parents' values and the family structure, how that's all put together. We as grandparents, tend to play favorites. I've got six grandkids. I have a favorite. But I can't tell you, I can't tell them. We, we gotta think we got to treat them all the same. You know, we manipulate the siblings of a lot of the kids. You know, the transactionally. We, we influence our grandkids. We give them money, we give them gifts, we take them on vacations. That causes strife. That really parents may not like a lot of that. We may not, our generation may not have the empathy it takes for these little kids, their feelings and so forth. That causes problems. We may demand that the grandchild comply and respect us. That causes issues. So a third of us just aren't involved. We said, we've got enough. I'm not getting involved. And that's wrong. We have all got to get involved in raising these grandkids today because as far as I'm concerned, this is the greatest generation this country has ever produced of kids from one to ten years old. I mean, when you think about it, they come right out of the womb. They're on the Internet, they've got their cell phones, they're learning electronically. I didn't get on the Internet until I was 40 years old. So this is a whole different way of raising kids. And so we as grandparents have got to help step into this and offset this great information that they're learning. We've got to balance their lives with things that, these things that we grew up with. And so that's why we have got to be involved as we're raising this new generation of kids. Gloria Grace Rand But it seems like you're also saying though, is that we've got to be also mindful and respectful of our children, though, in this process. Because if we're undermining how they raise their kids or we're stepping on their boundaries by showing up unannounced, then they're not going to want us to be involved even if we want to be involved. So I think we're going to have to kind of find a good balance there. It seems like in being able to say, here, I'm available to offer you some advice, but try to be able to not get it ignored. So what do you recommend? I mean, how can someone who, let's say they would like to be more involved in their grandchildren's life, but they don't want to piss off their kids, let's put it that way in the process, how do they go about doing that? Gramps Jeffrey Well, why don't we first look at what are parents' responsibility in today's world? Let's take a look at what are they responsible? In today's world of instant information, Uncertainty. Cruelty. Definitely cruelty in today's world. Differences and ideas. I mean, how many differences and ideas does this world have today versus it forever? What really is the true role of parents? They're supposed to provide their children with food and clothing and a place to live, obviously. They're supposed to provide financial support, making medical care, all the opportunities that they can to receive an education. That's really the role of parents. And they're there to protect their children they're from harm and provide them with a safe environment. In today's world, in schools, it's a scary thing. They give them supervision, give them control. And they're supposed to be in charge, but they're also there to teach them all kinds of traits. They're there to teach them honesty. They're there to teach them responsibility and kindness, independence, respect. That's a parent's job to teach their kids, respect. Respect their grandparents, positive thinking. We've got to make sure that what these kids are doing is looking for the glass that is half full rather than half empty. Creativity, that's so important in today's world. There's so many different kids with so many different talents. We've got to encourage all that. We've got to encourage healthy eating. You got to teach them how to eat right, how to exercise. They got to get off the cell phones and out into the sports fields, get them to exercise. We also have to teach them that you can learn and have to be successful from failure. You can fail. And that's something that we can teach them what to do. But one of the most important things and one of the most important things grandparents need to do with these kids is