How many of you looked after the grand kids over the school holidays and next question have you recovered yet?

I’ve spotted lots of grandparents over the last two weeks looking a little frazzled, a little tired. They're pushing prams or they're lugging around toddlers. Some are sitting in cafes trying to coerce littlies to eat something, anything, or they're doing what they can to attract the gaze of teenagers whose eyes seem to be in a sort of permanent 'lock down' on their phones.

Hard as it may be, grandparents are life-savers.  There is no-one on the planet who you’d rather have looking after your children, then your own flesh and blood either your parents or your in-laws. You know that your children will be safe and well-loved, and while the kids will probably run rings around poor old grandma and granddad, your mind can rest easy. Grandma and grandad have got this. 

The one area where there is the potential for conflict, though is how the different generations approach parenting. The world that your parents grew up in is so different to the world that your children are growing up in and that makes inter-generational child care tough.   

I was reading a story in the British Times that was written by a flabbergasted grandmother who didn’t know how to deal with her granddaughter. She was rude, she said. Her parents spoilt her. They gave in to her demands. There were no boundaries, no discipline. She was always on some form of screen a phone, an IPad, a laptop. And what should she do? Well, what indeed?

If I think about my childhood compared to Finn's childhood, it's very different. I was raised by a baby boomer so you eat what's in front of you and you don't get down from that jolly table until you've finished, whereas with Finn, he's a pretty good eater so I let him portion himself. If he's full, he's full. I don't try and force down another half a dozen forkfuls of pasta.  What for? Why teach children to eat to a point of uncomfortableness. Finn can have some fruit after dinner and he's done. 

Finn has organised playdates. It's all arranged in advance what time they'll be dropped off, what time they'll be picked up. What do they need to bring? Will they be heading out to play mini-golf, or ten pin bowling, or do they need bikes? My childhood was pretty organic. Our parents didn't talk about the need to stimulate their children's minds. Instead, we made our own fun or we biked off to a neighbour's place to play. Just as long as we weren't in Mum or Dad's hair complaining about being bored. 

I don't recall having toys. A few board games, yes. But I had horses so I was that kid. Pony-mad. And I was always outside in the paddocks, or probably pretending I was a horse around the house. But I don't remember having a room full of toys whereas Finn's room is like a shrine to Lego, Star Wars and dinosaurs. 

The TV didn't go on until the 6 o'clock news. And we didn't argue about the remote because there wasn't one. You had to get up to change the telly, but we watched he 6 o'clock news and the Mainland Touch with Rodney Bryant. Finn, meanwhile, doesn't watch TV. He'll watch a kid's movie on Netflix and he likes David Attenborough, but there's nothing on regular TV that he watches. TV's not his thing. He loves Minecraft and he'll connect with his friends on there and they build stuff and judging by the noises I hear sometimes, I think they knick stuff off each other too. 

And so I parent very differently to how I was parented. And when I look at all the grandparents on school holiday duty over the last couple of weeks, I wonder how they coped with inter-generational childcare. Is it hard work? And do you discipline your grand kids in the same way their parents do? Can you get the kids to eat, and how do you manage their screentime? 

I imagine it's exhausting but you do play a vital role. Where would we be without grandparents?