Being a grandparent is one of the richest, most joyful and most heartbreaking experiences we can have. It is unique because being a grandparent isn’t straightforward. It involves not one relationship but three. How easy it would be if we could simply bring our grandkids to our homes, do what we wanted, and then send them back to their parents. But we can’t. The grandkids don’t belong to us but to their parents. Therefore, if we want to be with our grandkids, we need to first work hard on our relationships with their parents. They are the doors through which we see our grandkids. And this is the tricky part.

In one generation, the role of many of us grandparents has dramatically changed. Some of us babysit regularly while our kids work, some only occasionally, some are raising their grandkids, and some are estranged. Each of us wants a good relationship with our grandkids and the most important place to begin to get there is to focus on how we relate to their parents.

My new online resource The Dos and Don’ts of Good Grandparenting just went live in my Parenting Great Kids online community. This ebook focuses on how…