By Dan Cuda

We celebrate Grandparents Day on Sept 7, just one day a year. But grandparents know the daily care of a child can be an enormous, all-consuming, exhausting task. Daily? The reality is sometimes minute to minute - a dirty diaper, another bottle, car seats and leaving for an appointment in 15 minutes. Everything, everywhere all at once is a reality of child rearing. Grandparents and parents know that reality. They know too the sweet moment when parents and grandparents read the children to drowsy sleep and peace returns to the home….until the next day.

Second only to parents, grandparents take part in the most important work in all our communities: the care, love, example, and first teachings for the child. It is inside these actions that children come to see themselves as part of a family, and as they grow up, learn to see their families and themselves as part of something larger. Grandparents can provide trusted relief for their children and continue the love and affection they first practiced as parents.

There are no guarantees in any of this, parenting and grandparenting can be done well or done badly. Even when done well, there are unknowns that confound the best of intentions. But what is the alternative? Social reformers, sometimes even with the best of intentions, believe the child’s exposure to the right books, the right play groups, the right day-care, or the right schools can be a full substitute. The impulse often seeks to replace education and professionalism for the instinctive affections of family. We’ve seen the extremes of these experiments over recent years and decades as the reforming impulse has taken hold and sometimes sidelined the child-parent-grandparent relationship. We see these alternatives play out in the tug of war between schools, parents, and grandparents for the prerogative to guide children into adulthood. Does parenting get easier as the child grows? Apparently not.

Parents and Grandparents deserve more than this one day of recognition for their commitment to this commitment to the child. The Montgomery County Republican Party commends all parents and especially Grandparents for their commitments to this work that benefits us all.

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Dan Cuda is a former candidate for County Council (District 2) and current member of the Montgomery County Republican Central Committee.