Dear Kerry,
I take care of my little granddaughter Laura several days each week while both her parents work. Her parents and I don’t always agree on how to deal with things like bedtime and eating at the table. But my son says I can’t talk about anything to them because my daughter-in-law feels criticized. I am frustrated and worried about my granddaughter who often cries and fusses. What should I do?
-ES, Texas

Dear ES,
Laura is lucky to have a devoted and available grandmother — that can be a rich relationship for both of you. It also sounds like your son and daughter-in-law value and depend on your help, but don’t always find it easy to accept.

Parenting has never been an easy job, and people from different generations can have quite different expectations. One thing we do know is that children do best when all the grownups in their lives have roughly similar approaches. As in many aspects of development, variation within a predictable range generates the best growth. It enriches a child’s life to have two parents and other trusted adults, since this offers them different options; it broadens their perspective on what is possible and acceptable. But it confuses and stresses children if the options are contradictory — for instance, if one person insists she should cry herself to sleep and the other runs in to pick her up at the first peep.

So I think your wish to discuss approaches with your son and daughter-in-law is a constructive one. Your goal is to smooth Laura’s experience. Then she will know what to expect and can get on with learning and growing in the context of predictable routines. She can put her energies into moving ahead instead of constantly fighting with or adjusting to different demands.

You and Laura’s parents are members of a caretaking team. If you were part of a management unit in a business or a therapeutic team in a hospital, you would meet regularly to set goals, plan next steps, and assess effectiveness. Perhaps you can present the need from this perspective to your son and daughter-in-law. Teams have leaders and the parents are definitely in charge and ultimately responsible. At the same time, their jobs will also be easier and the results better if everyone has input in order to work together.

You might suggest that you each start by writing down goals for the daily routine and share those by email. I imagine that the lists won’t be very different — surely you all hope Laura will enjoy good meals, settle happily for nap, play independently sometimes, want her bath and stories, negotiate bedtime comfortably and sleep through the night. There are also likely to be emotional goals, like being able to wait, managing big feelings, taking turns and so forth, what I call having “emotional muscle.” Having the same goals in common provides a starting point of togetherness in the discussion.

Then you can think together about ways to work toward those goals. Once the discussion is removed from the territory of who’s right or wrong, who knows best, or who is an adequate parent, you have a much better chance of actually considering alternatives. You can try different things as methods or techniques in their own right, rather than thinking of them as “my way” or “her way.”

The current situation may make things a bit harder for your granddaughter or make some steps take a bit longer, but it’s also true that, unless the variations are really contradictory, she will master the tasks of growing up. I think your goal of harmony speaks to your wish that Laura have that extra dimension of inner continuity and that you and your grownup kids can better enjoy sharing the precious experience of bringing her up.

Kerry Kelly Novick is a local child, adolescent and adult psychoanalyst, affiliated with the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute and the Michigan Psychoanalytic Council. She is a founder of Allen Creek Preschool and author, with Jack Novick, of “Emotional Muscle: Strong Parents, Strong Children,” available through http://www.buildemotionalmuscle.com and at amazon.com. She welcomes your email with comments and questions for future columns at . The ideas and opinions in this column are Kerry Kelly Novick’s and do not necessarily represent the views of Allen Creek Preschool, MPI or MPC. Reach her at kerrynovick@gmail.com.