‘It’s not normal for grandpa and grandma to babysit all the grandchildren for one fixed day a week, is it?’

My parents have been babysitting every week since Bodi and Daaf were born. And no, that’s not normal.

The nursery will be 10 percent more expensive next year. But as working parents will you also earn 10% more? Probably not.

And so we think more and more about our family: grandpa and grandma can easily take care of the grandchildren one fixed day a week, right? Some mothers around me find that ‘very normal’. Other mothers I know don’t have a social safety net. Sometimes grandpa and grandma are still too busy with their own lives, or they find it too hard to take care of several young children all day long. Or they don’t want to be tied to their own day. I am very grateful to my parents for looking after my children every week. In the play basement where I once sat with my sisters with sixteen Barbies, my sons are now sweetly building with pieces of train tracks.

When I tell my parents I’m so glad they’re babysitting, they look at me a little strange. ‘How so? You’re doing us a favor by bringing the little ones here.” It’s their favorite day of the week. The bond with their grandchildren is more than strong, those four always talk about each other and have their own jokes that I, as a mother, don’t even get into. My parents relive their own children’s youth, but, my mother says: ‘Now I enjoy it even more, because when you are in your thirties yourself, you are always busy with work, life and friends. Now that I’m a grandmother, I can be so touched by those smallest children’s comments. I have all the time for that now. And I have the wisdom that it is over so quickly, that young, young happiness of a child. Before we know it, they no longer want to play with grandpa and grandma with the train track, but prefer to be with friends.’

And just as my mother enjoys spending time with her grandchildren, I enjoy their special bond. Let that last for many more years, that attention from all their grandfathers and grandmothers. Because the older I get myself and the older I see my parents getting, the more I realize that that isn’t forever either.

Tessa Heinhuis (33) is the mother of Bodi and Daaf and pregnant with the third. She is editor-in-chief of Mama Magazine and lives in Bussum.