Adults raising their grandchildren discover new challenges and blessings the second time, despite circumstances.
By MELANIE AVE
Published January 1, 2004
TAMPA - Buttons Croy brings the computer keyboard into the living room and sets it on the sofa.
"Here Julia," she says, handing it to her 2-year-old granddaughter.
"Where's the J?" Grandma asks. "Where's the Q?"
The little girl with long blond curls gazes at the keyboard and pounds her index finger squarely on the requested letters, one after another.
Julia knows most of the alphabet, counts to 10, sort of, and uses the bathroom without help.
Grandma Croy couldn't be more proud.
She may have three grown children of her own, but Croy admits she feels more like a mother to Julia than a grandmother.
And with good reason: Croy is raising her grandchild while her daughter pulls her life together.
She feeds Julia breakfast every morning in her Seffner mobile home, leaves her with her boyfriend during the day while she works as a security guard, plays outside with her in the afternoon, gives her bubble baths at night and tucks her into bed by 8 p.m.
"There's always something to do," she said.
Croy, 43, is one of millions of grandparents who have been thrust back into parenthood. In most cases, their own children have failed as parents, and so they have taken over the responsibility.
More often than not, it's a permanent arrangement.
Advancing age, limited finances and a generation gap all make parenting the second time around a different experience. .
"We backed up and started all over again," said Gulfport resident Neal Tolsma. He and his wife, Judy, are raising two grandsons abandoned by their daughter nine years ago.
"Before, we could come and go as we wished," Mrs. Tolsma said. "Now, it's school, PTA, Boy Scouts, doctors' appointments and youth group. We go around their schedules."
* * *
Buttons Croy never imagined she would end up raising her child's child.
She was like most parents who look forward to spoiling their grandchildren and sending them home at the end of the day.
Then July came and her daughter, newly split from a rocky relationship with Julia's father, asked if the toddler could stay with Croy temporarily. Croy's daughter was unemployed and living with four friends in a one-bedroom.
"She asked me to keep her a couple of months," Croy said. "Two months has become four months."
Croy is not alone.
In 1970, 2.2-million American children, or 3.2 percent, lived in a grandparent-headed household. In 1997, 3.9-million, or 5.5 percent, did.
* * *
This afternoon, the Tolsmas are at home, waiting for the clock to strike 3:30 so they can pick up their grandsons, ages 10 and 12, from school. Their lives are dictated by the boys and their activities.
Judy and Neal Tolsma aren't as free to go out to dinner or listen to music at the American Legion anymore. Because of that, many of their old friends are gone, squeezed out by different lifestyles and priorities.
"Most people our age, their kids are grown," Mrs. Tolsma said.
Money is also tighter. The Tolsmas shop at yard sales and thrift stores. A recent Boy Scout trip to the bowling alley that the boys wanted to make was a no-go with Christmas coming.
"We just don't have the money," Mrs. Tolsma told them.
For the Tolsmas, the difficulties have been compounded by the hard lives the boys endured in their early years.
About nine years ago, the Tolsmas received a call from a child welfare worker asking them to come and get their two grandsons.
"We said, "Two?"' said Mrs. Tolsma, 55. They had only know of the one grandson.
The Tolsmas' daughter had left her sons, then 11 months and almost 3 years, with a friend, saying she was going to buy some cigarettes. The girlfriend gave the children to the mother of the daughter's boyfriend. The mother happened to have a drinking problem.
That's when the state intervened.
The boys had clearly been neglected. The eldest, Lance, refused to be held and had recurring nightmares. He would not allow the Tolsmas to feed him because he thought they would put something bad in the food. He insisted on getting his own food from a kitchen shelf.
Jacob, the 11-month-old, had been given a steady diet of Kool-Aid by his older brother. The Tolsmas believe their daughter sold his baby formula for drugs.
There was something strange about Jacob. He didn't cry. "They said he just gave up," Mrs. Tolsma said.
Jacob suffers from dyslexia and anorexia, Mrs. Tolsma said, and is emotionally and physically delayed.
When the Tolsmas decided to adopt the boys, a child welfare worker suggested they reconsider.
"She said, "Do you really want these children?"' Mrs. Tolsma said. "They've been classified as unsalvageable.'
"I'm like, "Of course we want them. They're my grandchildren."'
The boys now are thriving.
They are involved in Boy Scouts and church activities. Lance is on the honor roll at Thurgood Marshall Middle School and wants to be a journalist. Jacob dreams of being a veterinarian.
The family calendar on the refrigerator is filled with therapist, psychologist and doctor appointments.
The two boys call their grandparents "mom" and "dad." The Tolsmas don't discuss their daughter with the boys. They want them to make up their own minds about her when they're old enough.
"It's really heartbreaking," Mrs. Tolsma said.
* * *
Did the grandparents now raising their grandchildren fail at parenting their own children?
That's a question many people ask, says Brent Elrod, statewide coordinator of the Florida Kinship Center at the University of South Florida, which oversees support groups for grandparents statewide.
"They say, "The apple doesn't fall that far from the tree,"' he said. "Our response is, look at your own family tree. There's usually some history of alcoholism or other problem.
"Ultimately the parents of the children are the ones responsible."
That's the way Anita Williams-Cannon, a 50-year-old Tampa grandmother, sees it.
She began caring for her two grandchildren, Devin, 12, and Destiny, 10, two years ago when her eldest daughter remarried. The daughter said it was to keep the children out of an abusive situation.
Williams-Cannon lives on a fixed income and receives no assistance for her two grandchildren. She requested a subsidy from the state but was denied one since the grandchildren were not placed in her care by the courts. That made no sense to her.
"They'd rather put them in someone else's home," she said. "Where do we fit?"
Williams-Cannon is no stranger to motherhood in difficult circumstances. She raised four children after she and her husband divorced.
Williams-Cannon worked and went to school, volunteered at her children's schools, attended their sporting events. "I was mom and dad," she said.
When they grew up, she devoted herself to her career as an account executive with Estee Lauder. She traveled frequently.
Because of health problems, Williams-Cannon said she cannot be as involved in her grandchildren's activities as she was as a parent.
"When you're raising your own children and having a career, it's a struggle," Williams-Cannon said. "You think when they're grown, it's all over with. Then you'll have time to travel, but you can't do that because you're starting all over again.
"It's like having a baby ... but the bones are not the same."
Williams-Cannon said she is raising her grandchildren the same as her children. But the world is a much different place. The peer pressure is greater for them to break the rules, do drugs, get involved sexually. Music and television shows must be screened.
"It's very challenging, but I won't complain," she said.
She clings to a saying she learned as a child in fifth grade: "It couldn't be done, but I did it."
* * *
Buttons Croy, the Seffner grandmother, says she doesn't look forward to when her granddaughter starts asking why she doesn't live with her parents.
"She's not at the age to say mommy and daddy don't love me," Croy said. "That age is going to be hard."
Her daughter visits Julia regularly. But the 2-year-old always wants to go home with her grandma.
Too often parents, especially those who - like her daughter - had children very young, don't realize the full responsibility of what it means to raise a child, Croy said. They don't see the joy that comes when a child discovers a new word or learns to pick out the alphabet on a computer keyboard.
"They're too much into themselves," she said. "They think it's a job. It's not."
Croy turns to Julia, who has run behind the high chair.
"You love me?" she asks.
"Uh huh," the girl says.
"Grandma loves you. You know how much?"
"Hide," Julia says, giggling.
- Times researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report. Melanie Ave can be reached at 813 226-3400 or melanie@sptimes.com
Parenting as a grandparent
Number of U.S. children who lived in grandparent-headed households in 1970: 2.2-million
Number of children who lived in grandparent-headed households in 1997: 3.9-million
Number of grandparents who were responsible for caring for their grandchildren in 2000: 2.4-million
Percentage of grandparents who had cared for their grandchildren for five or more years: 39
Percentage of grandparent caregivers who live in poverty: 19
