Do Grandparents Really Know Better?

There’s a very specific kind of confidence that only grandparents have — particularly boomer grandparents. One evening after a family picnic, my two kids were still running around after the sun had set, and I could see we were quickly approaching the point of no return.

My mom looked at them and said, “Oh, they’re going to sleep well tonight.” Excuse me? No, they will not.

As a millennial parent, I know what happens when my kids get overtired. They don’t collapse into a peaceful, restorative sleep. They become monsters. My 20-month-old daughter fights bedtime like it’s her job, complete with screaming, back arching and an Oscar-worthy performance. My mom, meanwhile, remained completely unfazed.

This confidence extends far beyond sleep.

My mother-in-law once ran across a room to block a cold draft coming through the doorway with a blanket because she was convinced it would make my baby sick. Yet mention wake windows, screen-time limits or today’s car seat recommendations and suddenly we’re the ones worrying too much.

Eventually, some version of the same argument comes out: “Well, you survived.” And she’s right.

Our ’90s childhoods were full of things that would probably make today’s parenting experts nervous. We drank Five Alive by the gallon, ate Fruit Roll-Ups like they were a food group and disappeared outside to play while our parents drank coffee inside. If they wanted us home, someone eventually yelled our name from the front porch.

We sat too close to the TV. We rode bikes without helmets. We were told to “go play” when we complained about being bored. At the same time, leaving the house with wet hair was apparently a direct route to pneumonia.

There were fewer rules — although some of the rules we did have were questionable.

Now we’re raising children with more information than our parents could have imagined. We have safe sleep guidelines, developmental milestones, parenting podcasts and Instagram accounts warning us that saying “good job” too often might destroy our children’s intrinsic motivation. No wonder we all sound insane to each other.

Grandparents wonder why everything needs a rule. We wonder why they’re trying to block a draft like we’re living in a Victorian novel.

Of course, some things are better left in the past. Babies don’t need whiskey rubbed on their gums, no matter how many people insist it “worked back then.”

But somewhere between knowing better and trying to do everything better, I wonder if we’ve become a little less confident in our own instincts.

Maybe that confidence is the part worth borrowing from our parents. Not the whiskey. Not the questionable car seats. Definitely not the belief that wet hair causes pneumonia.

But the willingness to let kids be bored, to send them outside, to accept a little mess and noise without wondering whether it requires a parenting strategy. Our parents didn’t get everything right, and neither will we.

One day, our kids will probably be horrified that we used white-noise machines, cut grapes into quarters and packed emergency snacks for a 12-minute outing. They’ll roll their eyes and say, “I can’t believe you raised us like that.” And finally, we’ll understand our parents. “Well, you survived.”