Richard Eyre, one half of the celebrated parenting-consultant team that includes his wife Linda, has just published what he calls “probably the funnest book I’ve ever done.”
That’s saying something, considering that the 60–plus books he and Linda have written over the past 46 years, mostly together but sometimes solo, have sold millions of copies and taken them on speaking tours around the world.
But never before has Richard gotten so much help doing the writing.
And from his favorite people, no less.
A good share of the content in “The Grandparenting Blueprint: How to Teach Your Grandchildren Life’s Most Important Lessons,” released this month by the California publishing house Familius, comes from Richard and Linda’s grandchildren.
For the past few years, the Eyres have pivoted from writing and speaking about parenting to writing and speaking about grandparenting.
“It was a big life change for us — and a good one,” explains Richard. “We looked around and realized we’re speaking to parents who at their oldest are in their 40s, and we’re in our 70s. How much longer are they going to want to listen to us? Let’s transition to grandparenting, it’s like an open field. Grandparenting is sort of where parenting was 50 years ago.
“People are starting to say, ‘Wait a second, it’s not that easy. How do you be a proactive grandparent without stepping on the toes of your kids doing the parenting? How do you give money to your grandkids and not spoil them?’ There’s a million questions, and there’s hardly any books on it.”
Not only that, he adds, “but you do your best writing when you’re writing about the things you’re doing right now. The best parenting books we wrote were when we were right in the throes of parenting. We had issues and we had problems the same as the people we were writing to.
“Now, we are right in it on grandparenting. We’ve got 34 grandkids, so it’s like a full-time job, and you don’t want your kids to hear it, but it’s not the same as raising them, it’s really better. You don’t have the stewardship the parents have. You don’t have to feed them and clothe them and educate them and correct them. You’re a grandparent, you’re their champion, you’re their cheerleader, you’re their encourager. You never have to discipline them. It’s just all good stuff.”
Which leads us back to Richard doing a Tom Sawyer on his grandkids and getting them to write part of his book.
He wanted the heart of “The Grandparenting Blueprint” to be about the “secrets” that Richard regularly passes on to his grandchildren — little nuggets of wisdom accumulated in his 80 years of living that will help them negotiate their own lives.
But first, he needed permission from the grandkids to include these principles in the book — because they are, after all, secrets.
There was some reluctance.
“A couple were like, ‘No, you can’t share those, they’re secrets, they belong to us, it’s our stuff,’” says Richard.
So he had some negotiating to do, which went something like this:
Richard: “Why don’t you guys help me write the book and I’ll give you part of the royalties?”
Grandkids: “Wait, what’s a royalty?”
Richard: “Well, every time you sell a book you get a certain amount of money. How would you like to have little royalties every time a book sells? You might only get one penny for every book, but what if it’s sold 1,000 times?”
Grandkids: “OK.”
With permission secured, Richard assigned the grandkids to write about the secrets in their own words.
“Pick your favorites,” he told them. “You can only do three secrets, because there’s a lot of you, but pick your favorites, and it can’t be something you make up. Think about where you applied that in your life and what happened as a result.”
He didn’t change a single thing that anyone wrote. Spelling, punctuation, it’s all in the kids’ original voices.
“That’s by far the best part of the book,” he says. “Those parts are in italics. People are going to just flip right through to the kids’ stuff in italics and skip all mine.”
In the book’s preface, Richard appeals to grandparents “to develop your own set of ‘secrets.’ They will not be the same as mine. Far better, you will come up with the secrets that have shaped your life. You will have personal stories about them, and those stories will lead to questions and discussions — and to meaningful communication with your grandchildren about important ideas. Your secrets will become your legacy in the minds of your grandchildren.”
“I think all grandparents, but particularly grandfathers, at some point realize, these kids are my legacy. Nothing else is my legacy. It will all go away. What do I want to give to them? What do I want them to remember about me? What have I learned in my life that I hope they will learn?”
“The Grandparenting Blueprint” is available at familius.com, Amazon and wherever books are sold.