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To hear them, one might think that grandparents have never had problems managing their children, their bedtime, their tantrums… (And that they obviously do better than you). In reality, these model grandparents would be struck by a selective amnesia recently called “gramnesia”. We explain.
“At that age, you were already sleeping through the night.”“With me you never had a crying fit.”.. Did our own parents know how to handle parenthood better than we do? To hear them tell it, it’s a certainty. But in detail, after multiple testimonies on the web, another explanation would emerge: they are mainly struck by “gramnesia” (a portmanteau word formed from the words “grandparent” and “amnesia”), a sort of forgetting of what very early childhood was like and the challenges it imposed.
This is Allie McQuaid, a mom and therapist known as @millennialmomtherapist on Instagram who seems to have caught on to this trend after hearing “a ton of stories from his clients — many of whom are millennials — about the “ridiculous and unhelpful” comments they received from their own parents after spending time with their grandchildren.”
“I just heard this term called ‘gramnesia’ when grandparents forget what it’s really like to have young children and I can’t help but think how accurate that is.”
According to HuffPost, common examples of Gramnesia from our parents might include:
- “Oh, you slept through the night as soon as we brought you back from the hospital!” ;
- “You were potty trained at 1 year old, and it only took one weekend!”;
- “You’ve never had tantrums like that!”;
- “You were never this picky. You always ate everything that was put on your plate.”
Sound familiar? You’re not alone: His video has reportedly been viewed over 4.4 million times and received thousands of likes.
Why do grandparents forget?
Rest assured, however: you may have had very good parents, there is little chance that they never had to doubt, like you. But then why this forgetfulness? For Allie McQuaid, several theories are possible:
- On the one hand, it is natural to have “a more blurred memory of the reality of things” as we get older, “s“especially if the experience we have lived through has been particularly difficult, even traumatic.” There is even a psychological phenomenon known as euphoric memory where we tend to remember past experiences, especially negative ones, more positively than they actually were at the time.
- Additionally, child-rearing recommendations have evolved over time as new research and best practices have emerged. So the advice a pediatrician might have given a parent in the 1980s or 1990s may not be sound today (even if they promised silence…)
- Another factor may be that in older generations, parents – and mothers in particular – did not have the same space to talk about the difficulties of adapting to parenting and raising children, the therapist says. Today, however, mothers are less stigmatized when they “talk about the realities of motherhood”.
Why is this amnesia still a problem?
So what does it matter if grandpa and grandma’s memories are imprecise? Not really. Because behind these little comparisons (“With me, you slept through the night”) hides a message that is not very pleasant to hear: “you are not capable”.
“Parents say they feel frustrated and devalued by these kinds of offhand remarks,” confirms Allie McQuaid.But if they do express their frustration, they worry that it will feed into the negative stereotypes that many people have of millennial parents, that they are spoiled, conceited or whiny. It makes these parents feel like they can’t share their struggles or emotions with their parents — the grandparents — or that they have trouble setting boundaries with them,” she adds.
Moreover, it doesn’t help: if your baby is crying, the fact that your parents didn’t know about the problem with you doesn’t give you any solution.
React or let it go?
So what to do about these sterile comments? The therapist does not have the perfect answer: respond or ignore, it’s up to you.
If you want to answer it, make sure you have the time or energy to do so (not easy with a toddler), and perhaps you can turn things around to your feelings”When you say that Elliot always misbehaves at restaurants and I never did that when I was his age, it makes me wonder if I’m a good parent.”
You can also decide to smile and ignore the comment (knowing now that it is probably false may help) and talk with your spouse, a friend, or a therapist to relieve yourself?
Finally, if you are the grandparent in question, and you are reading this article, the therapist advises restoring balance with very simple words: “We had to forget what it was like to be a new parent. You’re doing a great job, and it’s getting so much better that you might forget how hard it was back then.”
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