Video Transcript

Hi. I'm Doctor Roberta Marowitz, Florida licensed marriage and family therapist and CEO of The Digital Academy Sane Games, computer mental health games and resources for parents and professionals at WWW.AcademicGamers.com. Today we're going to discuss how to communicate with your grandchildren. Grandparents love being grandparents. I don't know a grandparent on the planet that doesn't say that they absolutely adore being a grandparent to their grandchildren. And there is a way that grandparents get to communicate with their grandchildren differently than parents get to. And very often a piece of that is sharing wisdom and teaching with a great amount of patience because they're not taking care of the day to day activities and lives of their grandchildren. So, what grandchildren need from grandparents is they need a lot of comfort, they need a lot of warmth, they need unconditional love, they need to know that grandparents are just there for them. So, what can you do as a grandparent to communicate well with your grandchild. You can listen, listen, listen. Grandchildren love to talk and they love to show grandparents what they can do and how they can do it. It requires a lot of patience on the part of a grandparent. But it's one of the greatest roles that you can play in terms of communicating with them. One of the other roles that you can play, and one of the ways that you can communicate well with them is to talk to them. Show them things, take them places, explain things, how different things work in the world. If they happen to be young, getting very close and teaching them about colors and flowers and all kinds of things that are new for them but not new for you. Sharing with them all different kinds of experiences that you've had from the time that you were little until your age at this particular time, whatever that may be. They like listening. They like hearing stories. They like the sharing of experiences back and forth. And so, that kind of communication with grandchildren, is really a winner. The other thing that grandchildren like, particularly if they're younger, is they like to communicate through books. As young children, they like reading the books with you or they like having you read to them, and then having you ask questions about things that have gone on in the book. But as an older grandchild, and if you are a grandparent to them, you can also read the same book and it can be a book for an older person, and then you can share information about that or have conversations about that at an age level that works for them. So, I don't want you to think that it's only smaller children that you can be with as grandparents and there's only one way to communicate with them. But you can pull that in to older grandchildren and even adults as well. So, what you want to do as a grandparent I think, as much as you can, you want to limit their TV time and really share more time with them. Great to be able to do art projects with them, great to be able to listen to music with them, great to be able to go on adventures with them, where you are talking, talking, listening, listening as much as you possibly can. The more involved you are in their lives, the more they think that you do understand who they are. And you do. And the more they want to communicate back with you. I wish you well. It's really a joy to be able to do that with your grandchildren.