Are your grandchildren interested in you as a person?

DD1 has ended up living in the city where I grew up so DGS1 (aged about 8 at the time) and I went to see the various places I lived and went to school and where my grandparents lived. He and his sister think it's really funny when I say things like 'This road didn't go here when I was young' or 'Where my granny and grandpa had a hotel is an underpass now!'

Where we live now is close to the train line that DH used to get to and from school and which is now a Heritage Trust line. All the grandchildren like seeing Pa's house from the train.

No! because they are still quite young and I deeply regret that I wasn't interested in mine until it was too late and they weren't there anymore. However, when I embarked on Genealogy with the help of my mother who was still alive at the time, I managed to unearth so many fascinating facts about both sets of grandparents' lives. How shallow I was in my youth to think they hadn't done anything interesting. I'm lucky insomuch as I have a raft of information and photographs, via extended family. I even found one, of a set of paternal great grandparents in their youth looking all Latin and lovely, knowing that when my grandfather settled in Britain he never got the opportunity to see them again and my father and his siblings weren't able to meet them. I know that my maternal grandfather was in the navy and at some stage was involved in the evacuation of Armenians fleeing Turkish persecution. I know my paternal grandparents met in France just prior to the 1st World War, my great grandfather had a business there. Similarly my maternal grandfather's paternal family were French and I've only got sketchy information on them. I wish I had had conversations with all my grandparents about their lives, their grandparents and what they remembered about their growing up years.

I do perceive from my step granddaughters, now late teens early twenties that they could not perceive a life without mobile phones, one actually said once "but how did you manage" us "we just did, life was almost better without them" except in an emergency of course!

Sometimes they're interested. I remember the amazement of one at 4 when she realised that I was a teacher!
The older ones can't necessarily appreciate that my experiences of relationships weren't so very different from theirs, lack of mobiles notwithstanding!

My grandson was, for a time, very interested in DH’s life in the Army, especially when he discovered and got to wear the regimental hat! DH just told him that he only squirted his fountain pen at the enemy, so he lost interest after that! I do give forth snippets of information about my childhood, which he thinks must have been awful (mostly because Lego had not been invented then - what on earth did we DO??), with no bathroom, inside toilet or tv. We went to the mining museum once and they have a mock up of a miners terrace with a tin bath hanging on the wall outside the back door. Until then, he thought I was joking! His other grandad, now sadly deceased, was a very interesting and clever man, but I don’t know whether GS knows much about his life. If he doesn’t, he should.

our smallest age 6 had a project for school about "the olden days" we had a great laugh telling her silly stories before we told her the truth..the last thing we wanted was the teacher to believe was we told her the world was REALLY black and white .She still asks about stuff and loves to hear how we shared a phone with a neighbour or that there was only 3 channels on TV and that GF used to drive motorbikes up mountains for fun and run marathons.We've always talked to the older ones about ourselves as my Gran did with me and my sisters ..I only had one granny though and some of my GC have 2 and 2 GG and a stepgran

My 4 year-old GS is more philosophical. He asks me about my dreams and if I had scary dreams when I was little. He asks me about dying and whether I miss all the people who have gone from his (and my) life. He wants to know about books I liked and games I played as a child. We sing songs and nursery rhymes from my childhood which mostly make him fall about laughing, particularly any variations of a (slightly) more scurrilous variety. These questions are all related to his experience of life so far, which is fair enough. Maybe we shall move on to other things as he grows older.

I remember being endlessly fascinated by tales from my own grandmother who, by all accounts, was a bit of a rebel in the days when being a rebel was not the done thing

My own gc ask me lots of questions about myself in the course of conversation. I suppose it depends on what sort of relationship you have but I too value the time I spend chatting with them

My gc have always been fascinated by my life (not that it is very fascinating but I suppose it feels impossibly long ago to them)

We have always enjoyed our "little chats" and as they have got older this has not changed and I hope it never does. I do think that sometimes they find it easier to share with grandparents rather than parents - that one step of removal can be quite helpful.

Mine are still quite little but we do tell them little bits about our lives when appropriate. I think it's good for them to see you as a 'whole' person and they know their grandad used to be a policeman for instance. Not sure if they know I was an administrator - tricky to jazz that up as very interesting for little people! Maybe they'll be more interested when they get older. Maybe not. My DGD loves our wedding photos that are up and asks about those. To be honest, I'm more interested in their lives anyway so I'm not too bothered at the moment anyway.

My grand daughter us only little, so at that age too young, but my teenage grandson and I have lots of conversations. He knows about the jobs I did and places I worked, and shows interest in the days before mobiles and technology. He tells me I'm "quite a modern grandma". He tells me about his friends, his school work, his exams, his feelings about lots of things like family, the world , his fears and frustrations and often confides in me. If I haven't seen him he'll text to see how I am. I feel lucky to have him.