The Greatest Gifts to Give a Grandchild

These are excellent excerpts from Creative Homemaking for Happy Living, Relief Society Homemaking Booklet, published by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah, 1984.  Barbara Winder was the General Relief Society President and her counselors were Jay Evans and Joanne Doxey.  This article was written by Elma S. Bradshaw.

• Get down on the floor and talk to them face to face at that eye level (it helps to see things from that point of view).
• Make it a habit to attend the events in which the grandchild participates, such as: swimming, baseball, football, cheer, gymnastics...
• Let your grandchild practice a speech or instrumental number before you prior to the big performance.
• Grandchildren love to show you how far they can jump, how fast they can read, or how high they can climb--be interested!
• Listen--really listen--with your ears, eyes, and heart to a teen grandchild who has a problem.

Give the Gift of Self-Worth

They like to feel important and to have evidence that what has been done or said is of value:

1. Display drawings on the refrigerator door or kitchen wall.
2. Compliment them in the presence of others.
3. Hire them to wash your car and then lavish with praise for their efforts.
4. Provide opportunities to succeed in a variety of tasks and activities.
5. Write your grandchild a letter on their birthday and list all the special qualities they have for which you admire.
6. Share useful skills such as sewing and building, cooking, etc.

Give the Gift of Heritage

Everyone wants to know who they are and who they belong to.  Grandparents are children's bridges to the past:

1. Write letters (or prepare a taped message if they live in a distant city).  Tell them what you did as a child when you were their age.
2. Write your life story.  Give copies to your married children with instructions to share your story with their children.
3. Share your old photo album with a grandchild--tell about the people in the pictures and encourage him/her to start keeping a picture album.
4. Help your young teen-aged grandchildren to prepare their Books of Remembrance.  Be sure you are also preparing yours so that you can be an example to them.
5. Take them with you to do research--help them to find themselves and their parents on familysearch.org--the church personal history website (or www.ancestry.com).
6. Write the histories of your own mother and father (their great-grandparents); then hold a Family Home Evening with your married children, at which time you can read the history you have compiled.
7. Take your grandchildren with you to decorate the graves of their relatives and ancestors.  A short meeting at the gravesite can be used to explain the relationship of each person buried there.

Give the Gift of Teaching

Most grandparents have a little more discretionary time than the parents of their grandchildren, so:

1. Teach a child to tell time.
2. Teach a child to tie his shoe.
3. Teach a child to count his money and figure up the tithing owed the Lord.
4. Teach a child to spell new words.
5. Teach a child to pound nails into a block of wood.
6. Teach a child to plant a garden.
7. Teach a child how to cook his favorite food.
8. Teach a child a new art or craft.
9. Teach a teenage grandchild how to shop wisely in the supermarket.  Compare brands, prices, quality, and sizes.
10. Teach a child a new song.
11. Teach a child to recite a poem, a nursery rhyme, or to repeat a special story.
12. Teach a child that Heavenly Father loves him.

Give the Gift of Creativity

Creativity begins with the stimulation of the brain at a very early age in children.  Giving even a small baby a variety of interesting things to look at, listen to, touch, feel, and manipulate helps him to store many different images and ideas in his mind which he can draw on in later life.  It's worth the time, mess and expense to have creative memories with grandchildren.

1. Many creative experiences cost little or nothing.  Many art museums are free to the public.  Look for activity books in the local library and choose activities that use many of the items found in a kitchen.
2. Discuss how things look, feel, sound, and smell by stressing details and differences in color, shape, texture, and size, and by giving simple explanations of how things work.  Encourage discovery and curiosity.  Children need lots of different experiences to expand creative potential.

More Good Grandparenting Tips

Here are few more not found in this article from Creative Homemaking for Happy Living:

• Let children's ideas be expressed in a non-threatening atmosphere.
• Help children to accept change and be flexible.
• Help children learn that some problems have no easy answers.  Be willing to say, "I don't know."
• Teach children how to solve problems and look for more than one solution--to brain storm ideas.
• Reward children for being creative, however, they must learn that good work is sometimes its own reward.
• Help children find joy through their creative efforts and problem solving--It is fun!
• Allow children to be "an original."  This makes them authentic.  It's okay to have your own style, ideas, opinions.  We are more interesting when we are allowed to be unique.
• Appreciate children who stick with a project when everyone else has moved on.  Find ways to encourage this behavior and identify it in the student's work.

They Shall Call You Blessed

Nothing on earth can make up for the loss of one who has loved you. ~Selma Lagerlog

My grandma was a great lady!  No matter what others did, Grandma always held fast to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and to her church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  I was very lucky to grow up in Grandma’s neighborhood.  Grandma always made sure we grandkids had a ride to church.  I loved rides in her big car, and she always took the most scenic route to church.  Regularly, Grandma would take us to McDonald’s for an ice cream cone.

After Aunt Wynette died, we often went home a different route from church, stopping off at the cemetery for Grandma to tend Wynette’s grave.  When my sister and I started taking piano lessons, we took them with Grandma’s piano teacher.  Grandma was retired, but she made sure that she never stopped learning and doing.  She always had a garden of some sort, and she was quite proud of her azaleas. 

Grandma always had cookies in a jar on the kitchen table, and ice cream in the icebox whenever we came to visit.  There was always candy in a jar on her coffee table.  When I think of Grandma, I will always think of the eggshell blue walls of her living and dining room.  I will never forget the hours my sister and I would dress up in Grandma’s prized costume jewelry she kept organized in egg crates in a dressing table drawer.

Grandma never forgot our birthdays and when Grandpa died, she made sure his tradition of a silver dollar each birthday, and later when the silver dollars were gone, a paper dollar was sent by her.  Through the years, during Sacrament meetings, though I might have been far from Grandma, I would feel her near as the congregation would sing songs that I could still hear her sing.  I knew exactly how she would sound if she were sitting next to me, and I would start to cry and I would miss her.

Grandma gave me some of her old Relief Society manuals that I cherish and read often because she must have served as a Relief Society teacher and she had planned out her lessons in the book.  Grandmother loved church.  Her home was filled with many things she learned from church such as family history.  She served as a faithful visiting teacher and fed the missionaries regularly.  She helped with mission funds of family members.  She was obedient to the prophet and many a Saturday when I came by, she would have her scriptures out on her large dining room table and be studying for the next day’s Sunday School lesson. 

Grandma is always the example I use when I have friends at church whose husband or children are not active.  I always say that Grandma did everything possible so that when she was finally able, she received her endowments and attended the temple as often as she could, though she was quite elderly by then.  She never let others’ behavior keep her from living the restored gospel of Jesus Christ.

Grandma never sold her large house--she wanted everyone to have a place to go for the holidays.  She truly cared for her family.  She always had her camera ready to take a picture and capture that moment.  I have plenty of these photographic mementos in my albums.  Her hall was littered with a time capsule of photographs and genealogy.

A year before she died, I spent the night with Grandma.  She had not been eating.  I made her a breakfast of things that she could swallow easily.  I got ready to wash up the dishes while she ate but she didn’t start to eat.  I asked her what was wrong.  She said she wanted me to sit down and eat with her, so I prepared a plate and sat with her.  She bowed her head and blessed the food.  Then she ate everything on her plate as we talked quietly.  I was humbled.  How often do we treat the elderly as children and not give them the dignity and respect that they deserve as our elders.  She did not want to be waited on, she wanted to visit.  Grandma taught me how to help the elderly as I visit teach or assist them, or check on them, or help them through the funerals of their spouses.

It has been a privilege to know my Grandma; perhaps that’s why I chose in the preexistence to be born into her family.  I don’t know what went on before my 42 years on this earth, but as long as I have known Grandma, though flawed she may have been, she lived her life beyond reproach.  I often try to emulate her and I know she has been accepted into God’s presence.  When I knew she was gone, I took out a book she wrote of her personal history. I wanted to look at pictures of her.  Of all the pictures in there, the one that looks most like I remember her was of her on her 81st birthday in her beautiful home.  She is wearing a lovely all-white dress.  Yes, I thought, with tears streaming down my face, Grandma is with her God, she is with my God. God bless you Grandma.

A house needs a grandma in it. ~Louisa May Alcott

8 Traditions To Add To Your Christmas Bucket List

I have known many people with Christmas tree traditions.  My grandmother, for instance, always liked to have a small cedar tree cut out in the country (usually a family member's land).  Her tree never looked like most peoples, but I learned that it was an old fashioned custom.  One year we actually cut a tree for our Christmas from a relative's property.  It was probably the nicest I remember.  The cedar tree shown is covered in clowns because I had just finished my teaching internship and the kindergarten class (whose mascot was a clown) made clown ornaments for me.  This was great since I was newly married and had few ornaments at the time.  My husband and I also strung popcorn.  I remember him being much better at it than I.

A Real Cedar Tree

Another friend always got a real, flocked tree.  All of her ornaments were "Santa" inspired.  A beautiful tree I once saw was covered in a huge collection of teddy bears.  I wish I had taken a picture (that might be a nice tradition)!  Here is a picture of a similar tree.

But the tradition that made the most impact on me was my neighbor Debbie's tree.  She always had it shipped in from up north, and every single ornament was home made.  So of course, I have spent the last twenty-two years making home made ornaments for my trees (some have been given to me).  This blog is on the importance of traditions which is described as the following:

"Traditions are a strengthening influence.  They are the supporting 'beams' in a family built to last forever.  What a family feels together will mold them in an eternal way.

Traditions can be information, beliefs, or customs handed down from one generation to another by either word of mouth or example.  They can be enjoyed in all seasons and for many reasons.  Good family traditions can teach good principles.  

A special time for traditions is Christmas where we anticipate the festivities, observe the birth of the Savior, and share expressions of love through giving."  (Creative Homemaking for Happy Living, Relief Society Homemaking Booklet, 1984 The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, p. 146-148)

Here are eight Christmas traditions from Creative Homemaking for Happy Living that our family has tried and made a few of them lasting traditions.

1. Organize a notebook into sections for spiritual Christmas stories and poems, beautiful Christmas cards showing the nativity, pictures of the Christmas trees from past years, and stories and pictures of memorable occasions.  Then leave the book where everyone can look through it and enjoy it.
2. Have an "Old Fashioned Christmas"  by stringing popcorn and cranberries for the tree.  Go caroling to friends and neighbors.  Cut your own tree, (maybe on a friend's property).   Make a fruitcake.  Give handmade gifts.
3. Learn about "Christmas in Other Lands" by learning customs of other countries which are a part of your heritage.  Incorporate these customs which are appropriate into your celebration.  Decorate with various items acquired from other countries.  Prepare recipes of foods that are traditional in other lands.
4. Observance of Christmas can (and should) include the story of the Savior's birth from the scriptures.  Display a beautiful nativity scene and/or act out the story, read by Christmas tree light, and listen with soft Christmas music by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir in the background. 
5. Give a gift to Jesus.  This can be a renewed commitment written down or an expression of gratitude for blessings received.  Place these in a wrapped box under the tree as the first gift.  On Christmas eve open the box and have each person tell about his gift to the Savior.
6. Make a birthday cake for Jesus.  On slips of paper write different acts of service or love that could be shown to individuals.  Wrap each slip in waxed paper and insert in the baked cake.  Frost the cake and decorate.  (I like the idea of baking charms in the cake to represent these).  When the cake is served, each person tells how he can perform the particular one he received.
7. Choose a "secret friend" to do things for during the holidays keeping the giving anonymous.  This was done for our family one year when we were "dirt poor."  We didn't plan on having a tree because our children were still babies and we couldn't afford it.  We came home to find a real Christmas tree with some decorations already on it on our front porch.  Some treat or gift was left for us during the days and weeks leading up to Christmas day.  It helped restore our faith during such a hard time.
8. I love to hear my husband tell stories from his childhood.  I always say he should write a book because he did some hilarious things!  Recording these conversations, especially memories of Christmas' past can be a special gift to give your children.  My grandma's personal history is extensive enough to be published and she had the most interesting childhood to read about.  This would be a great gift for grandparents to give as well.