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iQuestions Faculty, Dr. Tim & Darcy Kimmel 
 
 
Question: 
 
My grandchildren live with me. How can I create boundaries in my 
home and still preserve my relationship with them. 
 
Answer: 
 
DARCY KIMMEL: There are a lot of reasons why children and 
grandchildren have to move in with parents and grandparents, and 
some of them are good. Maybe you’re getting a house built, and you 
have a temporary situation where you need to hang out for a couple of 
months. Maybe your spouse is deployed, and you need to hang out 
with your parents and live with them. 
 
TIM KIMMEL: There are a lot of reasons—some good, some bad. 
 
But here’s the good news. There are millions of grandparents right 
now who are actually raising their grandkids or have them in their 
home, and you know that they have done studies on the most 
effective parenting being done out there, and it’s by these 
grandparents. 
 
And you think, “Well, duh! Of course. It’s a do-over.” 
 
I’m a golfer. You know what a mulligan is in golf? It’s where you hit 
one in the lake, and the other people say, “Just tee it up there. We 
aren’t going to count that one,” or you hit it into the woods.  
 
Well, that’s what grandchildren are. They are a mulligan. We knocked 
our kids, you know, wherever, but we think we can hit this one down 
the middle. 
 
 
 
So, they actually bring a lot of wisdom and experience to bear. And 
that’s the cool thing about it. But there are some things you want to 
make sure they do right.  
 
DARCY: Realize that if it’s going to be a long-term situation, your 
parents might have to deal with some disappointment, because they 
may not have planned to have you and your kids in their home. They 
are going to have to put aside some of those dreams and plans that 
they had. 
 
So, give them the freedom to deal with that disappointment. Make 
sure you acknowledge that, “Hey, Mom and Dad. Sorry about this. We 
didn’t plan on this. You didn’t plan on this. But we would like to make 
the best of it.” 
 
TIM: You want to encourage them. In fact, you just might want to 
send this answer over to them from them to look at, because it’s 
important that we don’t make the grandchildren feel like they are just 
visiting our house or they are guests in the house, but they are a 
permanent part of our house. 
 
And that might mean, for instance, that they have access to the 
refrigerator, just like they would at home. They can decorate their 
bedrooms the way they want to. This is a good thing. And they are 
going to have their friends stop by and their friends come in—and you 
have to have a fairly high gag threshold, but that’s OK. 
 
DARCY: [laughs] 
 
TIM: That’s good. And you want to give them access to the computer, 
maybe their own place with their own files, things like that, so that 
they feel like, “I’m at home in this,” and they don’t always feel like 
they’re going to be in trouble. 
 
 
 
And then there’s the music . . .  
 
DARCY: [laughs] Yeah. 
 
I mean, it’s going to be a compromise situation, at best. Your kids 
need feel at home, and yet you do have to respect the fact that this is 
your parents’ home.  
 
So before anything blows up, talk about the rules, talk about the 
boundaries, give and take a little bit. Make sure that everybody feels 
like their needs are being addressed. 
 
TIM: And then as a grandparent, you don’t want to make the 
grandkids feel guilty, like, “If it weren’t for me, I don’t know you kids 
would be, or how you would have solved this.” No, no, no. Once again, 
it’s an honor, it’s a privilege, it’s a sacred trust that we get to have.  
 
You could reach out to them, but of all the mistakes we can make in 
this situation, here’s the one you don’t want to make, if you’re the 
grandparent. Don’t become the parent. Maintain your role as a 
grandparent. You’re always going to be a grandparent.  
 
There might be a lot of reasons why those parents aren’t in this 
situation right now, but they might come back into it. For instance, 
they might have gone to prison, or they’re in some kind of trouble, or 
they’re addicted to drugs. There are a lot of reasons, but you 
ultimately want those parents back in the kids’ lives. 
 
So, you keep the role of grandparent. But that might require that they 
have talked about, “What are we going to do about discipline?” and 
that’s where the rules can be established between the parent and the 
grandparent. 
 
 
 
DARCY: It’s a workable situation.  
 
TIM: It really is. 
 
DARCY: It may not be the best situation, but sometimes that’s the 
only option. So, I’d talk things out first, communicate, respect each 
other, and make the most of it. 
 
TIM: It’s going to be the ride of your life. 
 
 
 
 
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