At what age did your grandchildren have an independent relationship with you?

These days it is very easy for GC to have an independent relationship with you if you use a smart phone. I am in constant contact with GD aged 17. We Whats Ap a couple of times a day at least. She has Factime calls with her auntie every week to discuss her problems. 11 yr old GD also Whats Aps me and comes every Friday after school. 50 year old DD spends every Sunday with her grandmother.

If you’ve built a good relationship with them then it shouldn’t be too difficult for it to survive the teen years.

3 of my g/children contact me by txt,the 4th doesn`t have a mobile as of yet.
We have a lovely relationship,fingers crossed it stays that way.

I agree with these comments. Once my own children were old enough for mobiles they did keep in touch with family members including GPs. My older GC can communicate with me via email, text or FaceTime and they sometimes do! My weekend was made happier by 2 FaceTime calls. One was to ask for help
with homework and the other was to ask for the name of a word game I had let her play on my phone recently. Technology has made all this so easy and convenient.

Neither of my children had mobiles being pre "everyone has a mobile" times. But they maintained their relationship with their grandparents, with phone calls, visits and, when their grandmother was in a home, visiting her weekly whilst they both worked full time. It all rests on a relationship built over years I suppose.

Thanks for your replies.

I was slightly surprised to read on another thread that a parent had complained about a grandmother sharing information with her 18 year old grandchild. I had no idea what my children were sharing with their grandparents by the time they were in their mid to late teens.

My 3 adult daughters have one Grandmother still with us. They see her fairly regularly . They all took her away for the weekend of her 91 st birthday.
My 20 year old DGS keeps in touch with us by texting and calling and visiting when he can independently from his Mum and always makes an effort to come to family occasions.
We see the two little ones regularly so hopefully they will do the same.

My own children had independent contact with grandparents from early teens. My older grandchildren started seeing me independently when the went to high scool

Four of my five GC have independent relationships with me and the fifth, still just 14, will probably have contact once he emerges from his gaming computer!
DGD has always been close and still is, now that she is a mum herself and her beautiful baby has my name as part of hers. We go to lunch together (all three generations) and she is full of good advice on the design and equipping of my new flat.

I dont have any children or grandchildren so I can only answer in respect of my relations with my grandparents. I never knew my paternal grandparents. My own parents did not want me to have a close relationship with my grandmother for reasons I will not go into. However in those days (1950s) children were far less supervised and from the age of 10 I began to sneak off to see my grandmother without their knowledge. The fact that most of my visits were a "secret" added to the enjoyment of it because Ive always enjoyed subterfuge and psychological games.

My grandmother was not a "huggy huggy kissy kissy" person and has some very fixed Edwardian views. However I had a very deep and loving relationship with her. It was she from whom I sought advice as a young woman and not my parents. The older I grew the further out of the loop my parents dropped.

My almost 40 year old son had quite a lot of virtual contact with my father, his grandfather. He would send him texts and on rare occasions emails. My mother didn't do that. Son probable was about 15 at the time ? My father just loved it

Mine are too young yet but like to join in Facetime and will answer it and talk until their parent comes. Hopefully, they will learn how to use it themselves when a bit older.

Our 151/2 year old granddaughter moved in with us in September following safeguarding issues . It is certainly lively sometimes. I had a very close relationship with my grandparents.

I was very close to my maternal grandmother, as were my siblings. We were all three at different schools and used to meet at Grandmas house for tea and spent many school holidays with her as our parents both worked.
She wouldn't tolerate any back-chat or nonsense but was kind and generous.
Our paternal grandmother was a totally different character who we didn't see quite so often; she held the belief that children should be seen and not heard - we never liked visiting her much.

this may be depressing, but ive found my 4 gc have more of a relationship with their tablets, or any other gadget,they are 7,6,4 and 3.although they are given screentime,at the least chance they will be on them. what of the future? a lot of people i talk to folk who share a similar story,very sad ,what about climbing trees etc?

I look after my 4 GC a lot they are aged 3,6,9 and 12 which is hard finding things to do to suit the ages, one thing I started doing to get us all out and about is Geocaching, they all love searching for the treasures, and the older ones use the gps on my mobile to track the route to the treasure, I have a bag of small tiny items to swop toys in the bigger caches. Their parents sometimes join in as well. I'm also known as the best ever puddings nannie..