It happened during her grandson’s few seconds of panic, that moment when Gail Engel knew she would not send the toddler back to live with his mother, Engel’s daughter.
To relieve that young mom, who had been struggling with alcohol addiction and her mental health, Engel occasionally cared for the boy, Bryson. But often, what was to have been a one-day stay at grandma’s turned into three days. A few days turned into weeks, then months.
Although just a toddler in 2008 when Engel wanted to send him back to his mother, Bryson could say what he wanted.
“Please don’t make me go with her ever again,” Engel recalled the 2-year-old telling her, while also grabbing onto her.
Hearing those piercing words, Engel concluded that her daughter’s drinking and mental state had worsened. So, together, the two women decided it was best for Bryson to remain with his grandparents. Bryson’s sister, a newborn then, also started staying with the couple most of the time, too.
Engel, her husband Joe Engel, and those little ones formed what’s often called a “grandfamily,” headed by grandparents who are primary caregivers for their grandchildren, sometimes obtaining legal custody of them.
As “kinship caregivers,” grandparents or other relatives are raising a reported 2.4 million children, including what experts say is an uncounted number of youth grappling with mental trauma and those with physical disabilities. But that U.S. Census Bureau tally likely is an undercount because those types of living arrangements often are not reported, said Jaia Peterson Lent, deputy executive director of Generations United, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit organization providing resources, advocacy, advice and programming for intergenerational families.
“Grandfamilies and kinship family arrangements have happened for decades and even centuries,” Peterson Lent said. “It’s a long tradition of relying on extended family in times of difficulty. And it’s an important tradition because we know that children, when they cannot remain with their parents, do best in the care of grandparents or other relatives.”
Increasingly, in recent years, she added, kinship caregivers are being sought for children in favor of foster parents who had no blood ties to those youth.
“Where we still need to make more inroads,” she said, “is providing those relatives adequate support … Children are often coming with unique challenges. And, so, [grandparents] really need additional support when they’re stepping in unexpectedly to take on the care of a child that they didn’t plan to raise.”
Older adults’ challenges raising young ones
For Gail Engel, yielding to her grandson’s desire to continue living with her came with some pushback.
“My mother said, ‘You can’t do this. You’re getting older,’” recalled Engel, 68, of Loveland, Colorado. “Well, what was my choice?”
Compounding the situation were growing Bryson’s behavioral issues. In addition to appearing unable to connect emotionally with his relatives, Bryson’s extreme irritability and acting out eventually got him expelled from kindergarten.
“There were times I completely shut down because I didn’t know how to handle this — with his behaviors, with my daughter’s behavior, with not being able to find support,” said Engel, a retired bookkeeper. “There were days my husband and I would go to bed and just cry. We didn’t know what to do.”
But they weren’t idle, either. When Bryson was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, Engel pressed for specifics to explain why. A later evaluation she got for Bryson resulted in several additional diagnoses: Autism; fetal alcohol spectrum disorder; functional cognitive disorder, or difficulties with memory and thinking; and oppositional defiant disorder, whose symptoms include irritability and aggression.
“Well, that answered all of our questions,” Engel said. “OK, now we know what it is. It’s not just him being a defiant, little brat. There’s a reason he’s acting the way he is.”
Being an advocate, Engel said, is key to parenting a child with disabilities. “It is completely different,” she said. “You will never be able to parent these kids the same way” as other kids are parented.
Engel sought answers she needed through kinship programs, the Colorado Department of Human Services and other grandparents who were primary caregivers for their grandchildren. The organization Engel co-founded, the Grand Family Coalition, has brought together grandfamilies that have become her closest friends. “And,” she said, “I don’t know what I’d do without them.”
Although Engel has navigated the emotional, physical and psychological struggles that come with loving and worrying about her daughter, while raising Bryson, she is grateful that her intervention kept him out of foster care. She’s also thankful that her proximity to her daughter has let Bryson, now 16, foster a relationship with his mother.
“I’m grateful that my family survived,” Engel said. “And I could not want anything more in the world than that.”
Respite care for caregiver grandparents
While caring for their grandkids, grandparents also need to take time strictly for themselves.
To give grandparents and other caregivers that reprieve, Michigan State University’s Kinship Care Resource Center, for example, enrolls kids in sports camps and summer and afterschool activities. ARCH National Respite and Legal Center lists respite providers.
“Caregivers that are caring for multiple children unexpectedly or caregivers that may have their own health challenges [need] an opportunity to take a break where another trusted individual can care for the children for a period of time while that caregiver rejuvenates and then comes back, refreshed to provide care,” Peterson Lent said.
Engel, whose spina bifida and osteoarthritis require her to use a walker, said her ailments have made it challenging for her to care for Bryson as she wants. But now that he’s older, she added, he’s often the first to leap up and help his grandmother.
“We have a truck, so he gets me a step stool,” she said. “We take him on travels, and he’s grateful. He’s more grateful than any atypical kid you’ve ever met.”
Formal, legal kinship care
Children often come into kinship care without a formal legal arrangement.
“That presents a number of challenges in terms of consenting to health care for the child and enrolling the child in school and in a whole range of decision-making authority,” Peterson Lent said.
When the grandmother didn’t have legal custody of Bryson — she and her husband adopted him in 2016 — Engel said she was constantly anxious.
“After that many years, it was, like, ‘We’ve been his parents, we’re not just his grandparents,’” she said. “We are so connected with this kid. I was living in fear that someday, child welfare would come and take him. And if they did, they would place him in foster care. Or his mother would come and take him, and I would never see him again. I was literally scared all the time.”
Bryson’s adoption forced some complicated conversations between Engels and her daughter, who agreed to the adoption, realizing, her mother said, that“just because my name is not on his [parental] documentation doesn’t mean he doesn’t still love me.’”
Facing kids’ trauma and child-rearing costs
Generation United’s 2023 State of Grandfamilies report, released in November, concluded that the experiences that often land children in grandfamilies put them at risk of mental health problems. Before going to live with kinship caregivers:
- 28% of kids reported that they experienced neglect.
- 26% had lived with parents who were drug or alcohol abusers.
- 11% had been physically abused.
“It’s important for caregivers to have information and enrichment training for understanding trauma and how to respond to the challenges that young children bring,” Peterson Lent said.
Local kinship navigator programs, which offer grandfamilies resources, information and follow-up care, also sometimes provide trauma-informed care. The Grandfamilies & Kinship Support Network provides a state-by-state list of such programs. Another program, GRANDcares, offers free, trauma-informed webinars.
Engel said she and her husband drained a substantial part of their retirement savings when they chose to care for Bryson and, though they’ve not adopted her, his younger sister.
“Often, these grandfamilies step into this caregiving role without planning to do it,” Peterson Lent said. “Who of us can just take on the expense of an additional child without planning for it? It’s a big thing, right?”
She pointed out that kinship caregivers can apply for Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, welfare assistance funded by the state and federal governments. But, until September 2023, what numerous grandfamilies were eligible to receive in welfare benefits didn’t equal that of other families receiving such aid.
That month, a U.S. Administration for Children and Families rule change gave kinship caregivers, including grandfamilies, access to the same amount of financial support as foster families that are not blood relatives of kids for whom they care. Those funds may be crucial for grandfamilies relying on Social Security, disability payments and/or retirement savings as they try to provide for their grandkids. That will relieve some families of the financial hardship the Engels endured early on, as they also were managing the emotional toll of caregiving.
“We all have come through the other end,” Engel said, “maybe with some struggles and scars, but we are grateful that we have each other. And I would wish that for every grandparent.”
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Erin Chan Ding is a Chicago-based, award-winning journalist. She covers fitness, health, parenting, travel, politics and is passionate about exploring the intersections of identity, race, gender and justice.
