Caring for grandchildren: Chris and Collin’s story
It’s early evening and the Leaves family’s comfortable bungalow in Peterborough is full of life. Laura, aged two, visiting overnight, busily sits her doll in front of the television set in the sitting room to watch cartoons In the kitchen, Clare, 23, is preparing spaghetti, since it’s her turn to cook. Her sister, Helen, who is three years younger, is due home shortly from her job with a mail-order company. All three are the grandchildren of Colin Leaves, 65, a retired financial services manager, and his wife Chris, 64, a former social worker. But ever since Clare was 10 and Helen seven, the Leaves have been both grandparents and “parents” to them. “The girls always say, ‘We keep you young, nan,’” Chris smiles. “I tell them, ‘Sometimes, you make me feel 90!’ But they are absolute loves.” The Leaves have three children of their own, Clare and Helen’s mother, Tina, now 48, David, 47 and Jason, 40. Laura is Jason’s child. “We’re blessed because we’ve got an 18-year gap between grandchildren,” Chris says. “Many grandparents in a similar situation find it much tougher because their other grandchildren can feel left out.” Chris has helped to set up three support groups for the increasing numbers of grandparents who, at a point when they expected to be enjoying a life free of day-to-day child care, find themselves instead nursing babies or trying to deal with teenage emotions, full-time and flat-out as “parents” the second time around. “Our huge reward is to see how the girls have blossomed. We love them to bits,” Chris says, “but you do lose the special relationship that a grandparent has. I had to say to the girls when they were younger, ‘No, granny can’t play with you all day like she used to.’ We had jobs and the house to run. Instead of spoiling them, you have to set rules, make sure homework’s done and try to keep up with their world of texting and computers. “I tell other grandparents, just because you’ve done it once, doesn’t make it easy the second time around. Life is so different from when our own children were young. Sometimes, the adjustments have been an absolute killer.” At no point, Chris says, did she feel she was a surrogate mother to the girls. “But, as a grandparent, I did feel even more responsible. I’d often think, ‘Would their parents approve of this?’” The Leaves obtained a residence order for Helen and Clare after a long and testing legal battle during which, as is often the case in disputes involving grandparents, the father had legal aid while the Leaves’ spent thousands of pounds from their savings. The residence order meant that they shared parental rights with Clare and Helen’s parents but no one could remove them from the Leaves’ care without going back to court. The background is complicated, but Tina suffered from such severe post-natal depression that she was unable to take a parental role, so the girls had to be looked after by her husband; the couple eventually divorced. Clare remembers it as a difficult time. “Dad had a woman friend and eventually we moved in with her and her kids. There were four of us sharing a bedroom. It was really hard.” Their father has since remarried. He has two other children now and lives nearby. Their mother lives a few miles away and visits them every week Chris says bringing up the girls had its challenges. “Sometimes, the teenage ‘attitude’ thing could be irritating but, on the whole, they have been really good girls.” Do she and her husband ever long for the moment other grandparents say they treasure – when the grandchildren are handed back to their parents? Chris smiles. “Yes, often. It’s not that we would do anything amazingly different. It would just mean having time to ourselves. Now that the girls are older we plan to catch up with friends we’ve seen too little of – and take more holidays.” The Leaves were planning a five-week trip to New Zealand – visiting other support groups for grandparents. The UK has only eight support groups. By contrast, New Zealand has more than 360.
This article was created: 13 July 2006.
This article was last edited: 14 December 2006.
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