The soccer grandmas

By Rebecca Cook

Associated Press

RENTON – When Indiana Allen’s grandchildren perform in a music recital or play in a football game, she makes sure they see her watching.

She has to, she says. She’s all they’ve got.

“You have to be there for them. You’ve got to be the soccer mom. You’re the person,” said Allen, 53, who is raising her drug-addicted daughter’s six children. “When they look out in that audience, there’s no one else to look for but me.”

Allen is one of a growing number of grandmothers, and to a lesser extent grandfathers, who are raising their grandchildren. A little over 35,000 Washington grandparents are in the same situation, according to the 2000 Census -about 5 percent of all families with kids. The 2000 Census was the first to ask about grandparents taking responsibility for grandchildren, an attempt by the government to shine a light on this group of often overlooked and overburdened caregivers.

As the oldest of 11 children, Allen is used to playing Big Mama, as she sometimes calls it. But some of her grandchildren, who range in age from 6 to 17, spent their formative years in drug dens and homeless shelters or suffered abuse by foster parents. They have problems she has never encountered before.

“They are a different breed. They’re pained so deep inside, not having a mother or a father,” she said.

The children act out past traumas and insecurities in different ways. One went through a phase where she stole strange things like loaves of bread, which Allen would find weeks later moldering in the back of a closet. The youngest boy is constantly picking fights, getting suspended from school or being kicked out of summer programs.

So she takes them to psychiatrists and counselors. She reads and she prays. She disciplines and she rewards.

But mostly she just loves them, and hopes that’s enough.

“It’s a day-to-day struggle. You’re hoping you make the right decisions,” Allen said. “Believe you me, there’s a lot of days and nights I lay in bed and cry.”

At least she’s not alone. She helps run a support group for grandparents raising grandchildren, one of dozens of such groups around the state. The groups provide vital information: how to navigate the legal system to obtain custody, how to apply for state assistance, what documents they’ll need to enroll children in school. Just as importantly, the groups give them a place to talk.

While they love their grandchildren, they also have to deal with feelings of resentment and loss – they’ve lost the carefree retired life many had anticipated. And their grown children often put them through the emotional wringer, showing up one day clean and sober and promising the moon, only to disappear and disappoint again the next day.

“He says he loves his daddy, and then he asks me what his daddy’s name is,” said Ann Philips, 51, who’s raising her daughter’s 3-year-old son. “I don’t know what to tell him, or how much to tell him. … It breaks my heart.”

Philips, executive director of the Tri-Cities Chamber of Commerce in Kennewick, founded a support group in October. About 40 grandparents attend monthly. She said she and the other group members had no idea of the support services available. Washington state has something called a non-needy relative grant for grandparents raising grandchildren. Regardless of income, they can receive $350 a month to help cover expenses for the first child, plus $96 per child after that. It’s not much, and not nearly what foster parents get, but every little bit helps when their financial world is turned upside down.

And not only the financial world. Philips, who has been widowed twice, said dating is pretty much impossible for a 51-year-old single mom.

“I’m good for a first date, then they find out I’ve got sole custody of my grandson – it’s like, let’s skip dessert and just get the check,” Philips joked. She’s made her peace with it now.

It’s nothing new for grandparents to help with child-rearing. But experts say grandparents are increasingly becoming the primary caregivers, and drug abuse by biological parents is fueling the trend.

Allen, Philips and others like them will get official recognition on May 22, which is Relatives Raising Children Day in Washington. That’ll be nice, the grandmothers say, but the children are their real reward.

Allen laughs when she tells about the time her 6-year-old stretched her arms as far as she could around “Granny’s” ample waist and bragged to a friend, “This is mine, all this big thing here.”

That’s right, Allen told the girl. No matter what, “Grandma is always in their life.”

Resources on the Net for grandparents raising grandchildren:

AARP: www.aarp.org/grandparents

Washington State University’s Relatives as Parents program: parenting.wsu.edu/Relative/index.htm

State Department of Social and Health Services: www.wa.gov/dshs

Generations United: www.gu.org