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‘Parenting the second time around’

New support group at YWCA of Steubenville to help grandmothers raising grandchildren

REACHING OUT — Sophie Spencer, left, executive director of the YWCA of Steubenville, and Bernadine White of Steubenville, a grandmother raising two grandchildren, look forward to a new support group the YWCA is organizing. It’s called “Parenting the Second Time Around.” -- Janice Kiaski

STEUBENVILLE — A grocery store experience was Sophie Spencer’s inspiration.

The executive director of the YWCA of Steubenville is launching “Parenting the Second Time Around,” a support group for grandmothers raising their grandchildren, all because of an encounter she had in a checkout line.

“I was in Sam’s Club last month, and a lady was in front of me,” Spencer began the story. “She had one of those big carts, and it was stacked with food, and then she had two shopping carts, too, so I was behind her, and I said, ‘Well, I think I’ll go home with you because you’re having the family reunion at your house!’ and she turned around, and she said, ‘I just inherited seven grandchildren, ages 18 to 2’.”

Spencer paused then, taken aback, and then again during the retelling of the incident, thinking afterward how things ultimately happen for a reason, in this case the springboard for the support group.

“It knocked me back, and I stood there, and she said, ‘I just hurt my back on my job. I can’t work, and my husband just retired,’ and she said, ‘Now we have nine people living in a two-bedroom house,'” Spencer said of her conversation with the grandmother from West Mifflin, Pa., who suddenly had found herself in a whole new uncharted, life-changing role.

Spencer continued with the story.

“I just stood there, and she started crying right there in the line, and I was just amazed. I was so overwhelmed myself,” Spencer said of her conversation with the grandmother, who had told her the children had been abandoned by their mother. “We don’t know where my daughter is,” the woman shared with Spencer, also telling her of her fight to get food stamps, a battle not easily won.

“So I stood there, and I started crying with her, because I was so overwhelmed that this poor woman was going through this, and she said, ‘I don’t retire for two or three more years to get Social Security. I hope I get disability,” Spencer said of the checkout line conversation.

“I said, ‘Listen, all I can do is pray for you, so I prayed with her in the line — I’m good for that — so I prayed with her and then she finished checking out, and then I checked out, and I got a man in the parking lot to help with the groceries,” Spencer said, adding that she and the woman exchanged a hug and a promise before they parted ways.

“I said, ‘I’ll be praying for you.'”

The experience dominated Spencer’s thoughts on her trip back to Steubenville.

“On the way home, I’m coming down (US) 22, I’m like. ‘Lord, we have to help these women. They’re outside the child welfare system, they’re struggling, trying to stretch dollars, space and time. How do we help?'” Spencer explains to the reporter how she went from checkout line experience to the drive-home thought process to the support group startup.

“God gives me good ideas,” she assured.

“He said, ‘Bring them to the Y,'” a suggestion/idea/command that, on the surface, seemed the wrong one to Spencer, but then oh so right.

After all, Spencer reasoned, the YWCA has at its very core, the mission to empower women, from girls to teens to mothers and beyond.

“I got out of the car, and said, I can bring them to the Y. It’s giving women a place to feel empowered, and they can support each other, they can network with each other, they can discuss the challenges and the rewards, they can discuss their stress and their anxieties. It’s the perfect place,” Spencer said of the setting for the support group that she envisions to have food, door prizes, entertainment, speakers and maybe even a local field trip with a pampering element to it.

Such is the framework for the “coffee and conversation” kickoff to the “Parenting the Second Time Around” support group. It will be held beginning at 8:30 a.m. on Sept. 7 at the YWCA of Steubenville, which is located at 320 N. Fourth St., Steubenville.

“Drop the kids off at school/daycare and walk, drive or saunter over to the YWCA of Steubenville to informally gather with other grandmothers raising grandchildren and discuss your experiences and challenges of parenting the second time around,” reads the information on flyers being circulated to generate interest.

There are no residency restrictions to participate, no cost, and push come to shove, grandparents can bring their grandchildren if they need to, according to Spencer, who can be contacted for information at (740) 282-1261.

The initial gathering of participants will be at liberty to democratically decide when they want to meet and with what frequency, be it monthly or every two weeks, for example.

“The Y deals with pregnant women and moms with kids, but in the past, no one has given thought to the fact that there are other women doing this kind of thing that need support, too, and a whole lot of this is happening now,” Spencer said, adding, “If you can get an hour just to refurbish your mental stability, just an hour among women to talk about your needs, it would really do good.”

Grandparents raising grandchildren is no novelty locally or nationally, according to Spencer.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are 2.4 million grandparents raising 4.8 million grandchildren because the grandchild’s parents cannot or choose not to care for the child. In the past 30 years, there has been a significant increase in the number of grandparent-headed families, according to information Spencer provided.

Common reasons for custodial grandparenting run the gamut from substance abuse and neglect to incarceration, mental or physical illness and abandonment.

The mother of seven children, Bernadine White of Steubenville is a “Nana” with more than 32 grandchildren, as young as 9 months and as old as 30.

She had been accustomed to what was a more traditional grandmother role in which she was often “the in between,” meaning she babysat grandchildren, caring for them in the gaps between finishing school, for example, and being picked up by their parents at the end of their workday.

White enjoyed spending time with grandchildren, having fun doing “all those wonderful things that you may not have gotten to do as a mom, you can do with your grandkids.”

In recent years, however, a traditional role became not so traditional as White assumed custodial care of two grandchildren, both younger than 5.

White’s bucket list plan to take a trip to Venice and ride in a gondola — something she’d been saving for and dreaming of — went from a clear, some-day-soon goal to a blurry back-burner status.

For the past three years, the 62-year-old widow’s role is a sometimes confusing, conflicting mix of both parent and grandmother.

“They are my responsibility all the time, and this is a new experience for me,” said White, who is looking forward to being involved in “Parenting the Second Time Around” for the support she hopes it will offer.

“It’s good to know that you’re not alone, to be in the company of other people in the same boat with you, dealing with the same problems, maybe not in the same way, but the same problems,” White said of the group’s potential value. “Having people who understand what you’re going through and you understanding what they’re going through and being able to support and encourage one another and let them know maybe it’s rough right now, but it gets better as you take care of them, the situation does get better. It does,” White said.

Being a grandmother raising grandchildren has its pros and cons, according to White.

“I am enjoying it because it keeps me active for one thing, and it keeps me with the mindset that life just goes around in circles,” she said. “You start out with your kids, and then we come back around, and we’re dealing with our kids’ kids, and if we’re blessed enough, we’re dealing with our kids’ kids’ kids,” she said with a smile, “so it’s very invigorating to me to have young people in my life and being active with them.”

It’s rewarding, too, she says, to offer a nurturing environment, to use her experience as a parent to be a custodial caregiving grandparent.

“There are such rewards to know you’re helping another person be all they can be, to be in a safe place, to be in a place where they can thrive and grow and come to be a mature adult and be an asset to the community,” White said.

The down side?

“I’m not going to Venice,” White said with a chuckle, adding, who knows, “… they may be the catalyst for me to get there maybe when they get older because you had to give up a trip for us we are doing this for you — here, go to Venice and ride on a gondola.”

She laughs, then turns serious.

“If they just grow up to be kind, loving individuals, helpful to people, that would be better than Venice to me, because I made an impact on them that made them have an impact on others,” White said.

The commitment comes at cost, though, financially, mentally, physically, socially.

“It takes a lot to take care of a 3- and 4-year-old,” she said. “They were in diapers when I got them, and I had to go through all of that again, and that is part of the process. You have to give up a lot. I was telling Sophie you have to change your mentality, go back to the mentality of care all of the time now. It’s not like grandchildren come and just stop by, give them some food, talk and laugh, and they go back to their parents,” she said.

“This situation is you know you have to be in that mode 24/7. You have to realize that you just can’t turn it off, turn it on because you don’t feel like it. You have to stay in that nurturing caring mode 24/7,” White continued.

“Most people retire, and when they come to a place in their lives where it’s just them and their husband or just them, they sort of like relax emotionally and mentally, but once you inherit children, you can’t do that. That is the down side — you’re revved up again,” she said.

“I love being with them. People comment how beautiful they are, and I’ve had several people tell me I’m doing a good job, and I’m here to tell you it’s only by the grace of God. I couldn’t do this without him. I couldn’t because the demands of being wrapped up 24/7, I need his strength to do it. I don’t have it,” White said.

“It’s a challenge, definitely a challenge, and anyone who steps up to the plate to do this, you need to be prepared, and most of the women who are in this position are not prepared, because like I said, we have come to a place where now it’s time for me, let me do some of the things I didn’t get to do,” White said.

White said she is happy to be able to do it, though.

And she’s excited about the support group.

“I am eager to meet the other ladies in the group, and when they come, I’ll be here, and we’ll see what happens,” she said.

Spencer believes the support group will help its participants if only by offering some quality time just for them.

“These are women who don’t have time to take care of themselves, to realize their dreams, dreams have been put on hold, their expectations for what this life will be. Parenting the second time around was not in the plan, so I wanted to do something to just help them along this journey and to know that the YWCA is here for that,” Spencer said.

One plan is to help the women learn about social media — from Facebook to Instagram and Snapchat — so they can understand and be savvy about technology embraced by the younger generation in their care.

“I am praying that it is a place where they will feel welcomed and warm and trusting, and I am going to create that environment,” she said.

“I want this group to be very empowered, to have them decide what they want to do for those couple of hours, but some topics are guardianship, how to deal with stress and anxiety and how to deal with depression, how to recognize signs of it in you or your grandchildren; taking time for yourself, how do you do that, and then we’ll have some meditation exercises,” Spencer said of the possibilities.

“We’re just going to have fun. There’s a whole gamut of activities we can do and then my goal is like at the end of the year, toward the spring, that I’m able to take them out, and we can go out on a field trip, a grandma’s field trip,” Spencer said.

(Kiaski can be contacted at jkiaski@heraldstaronline.com.)

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