I love reading self-help and advice columns like “Dear Abby.” I’ve got a lot of work to do on myself, and the only one who can accomplish anything on this fixer-upper is me.

Dear Abby’s been around for decades, and the daughter, Jeanne Phillips, now pens the column after her mother, Abigail Van Buren, passed away.

I thought about what I knew as a mother versus what I know as a grandmother, and realized my thoughts and beliefs about what’s important and what’s not important have changed as my boys went from Matchbox cars to their own car notes.

So in no particular order, here’s my own take on what I knew as a mother and what I know as a grandmother:

Your face will freeze like that. If I said that phrase to my sons once, I said it a million times. The phrase was a way I thought I got their attention. That’s wrong.

As a grandmother, I know to break into a huge smile when I see that face and then sincerely compliment them on their comic ability. Then I should ask how many more impressions they can do and they should start with me.

You’re going to spoil that baby by picking him up too much. As a mother, I thought I needed to raise my sons to be self-sufficient. If they were overtired, they needed to go to bed and tough it out until they fell asleep.

As a grandmother, I know nobody likes to cry themselves to sleep. Nobody. So why would I let a child lay in bed for an hour crying? Instead, rock that child to sleep, hold and rock and sing quietly to them until they quiet down.

You better straighten them out. As a mother, I thought I had to bird dog my sons every minute. If I didn’t pay attention to their every move, monitor their friendships, go through their backpacks – yes I did that on a regular basis – and make sure I knew what they were doing every minute, I was a failure as a parent.

As a grandmother, I still think parents need to bird dog their children but allow them to make minor mistakes because that’s often how we learn best. I wouldn’t let my grandchildren run out into the street, but a little dirt and grime didn’t hurt anybody.

There are starving children in China, so you need to clean your plate. As a mother, I thought I was instilling a sense of guilt into my boys so they’d eat their healthy dinner and not sneak into the pantry at night for a Pop Tart.

As a grandmother, I know children do not equate the Brussel sprouts on their plate with starving children in China. They’re not ever going to eat Brussel sprouts. There’s a huge range of vegetables out there that kids like so I fix those.

If they want a bowl of Cocoa Puffs before bedtime, I’m good with that. And instead of guilting them about cleaning their plate, we talk about ways to support hungry children, like offering to share their lunch with a hungry classmate.

Have you lost your mind? I used that line every single day when my boys were young. Of course, when you’re looking at the entire bathroom covered in soap, a mother’s thought is that their child was either possessed by the devil or they’ve lost their minds.

As a grandmother, I tell them how thoughtful they are to try and make sure all the walls in the bathroom are cleaned. And then I sing to them as they get the soap off the walls. Sure it’s a mess, but nobody’s crying at the end of the bath.

They say with age comes wisdom. I don’t know about wisdom coming with age, but patience and not sweating the small stuff sure does.

 

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.