Don Schmitz:
Former Teacher Becomes
Advocate for Better Grandparenting
 One quarter of Americans are grandparents; 60%
of grandparents live more than a day’s drive from their grandchildren; 13% of
grandchildren are being raised by their grandparents.
Former elementary school teacher and
business owner, Don Schmitz, 55, has immersed himself in these statistics, for reasons
personal and professional. As the grandfather of three granddaughters who all now live in
Sweden, he understands the challenges (and heartache) of long-distance grandparenting. As
the owner of a brand new business, Grandkidsandme.com, he aims to do something to improve
the current state of grandparent- grandchild relations. Grandkidsandme.com combines
Don’s years of experience as a primary school teacher with a new found passion to
"raise the impact that successful grandparenting can have on today's modern
family." Grandkidsandme.com uses two main avenues to accomplish its vision:
Grandparent Groups and Grandparent Camps, both designed to help grandparents focus on
their important role.
Don credits being raised in a large
farm family with providing him with the foundation for his new work. He also helped build,
with his then wife, an office staffing business that has become a leader in the industry,
and in which he continues to serve as director for training. An admitted "career
change artist," Don learned to "recycle" his life, sifting through his
skills and interests to help him discover what he really wanted to do. Along with
uncovering a talent for the guitar, he recognized that working with children would
continue to be central to any new endeavor. Don is a former "Teacher of the
Year" of the South Washington County Public Schools and winner of "Citizen of
the Year Award" by the Cottage Grove Chamber of Commerce. Here is his story.
I was born on a farm in Southern
Minnesota and have lived in Minnesota all of my life. I was raised is a very traditional
German Catholic farm family, the third child in a family of seven.
Against my father’s wishes, I left
the farm and graduated from Mankato State University in 1967 with a degree in elementary
education. I met my former wife during college and we were married that same summer. I
taught school for one year in LeSueur before moving to the Cottage Grove the following
year. After teaching sixth and fifth grades for five years, I made a major change and
switched to first grade -- the first man in the district to teach first grade.
These were some of the most productive
years of my life and some of the most enjoyable. I continued my post-graduate work while
teaching and completed two advanced degrees in elementary administration and general
administration. All this was accomplished while my wife, Mary, was working and we were
raising our three sons.
In 1984, Mary had a chance to buy her
business in the staffing industry and in 1988 I joined her to help grow the business,
using my skills in training and management. (Today, the company has a staff of 70 and
revenues of $18M.)
When my two oldest grandchildren were
born, my son and daughter-in-law lived in a neighboring community, I was the happiest
grandparent around. I could stop in and visit and leave when I wanted. Life was grand! A
year later, they moved to Sweden and a third grandchild was born. We were unable to even
see her for three months! How was I possibly going to be involved in my grandchildren's
lives when they lived 9,000 miles away? How was I going to have an impact on my
grandchildren? How was I to share in my son's life? This wasn't the way I was brought up
and it was not how I pictured being a grandparent. Life as a grandparent was no longer
grand!
In 1998, I left the office staffing
business and returned to school, completing another advanced degree in human development
at St. Mary's University. While there, I talked to many others who were concerned with the
similar questions about where their lives were going. The following are some of the big
questions that helped me align my values and change the direction of my own life.
1. What is my reason for being?
2. How do I want to be remembered?
3. What heritage or family values and
traditions do I want to pass on?
4. What stories will my children know
when I am gone?
Through this experience, I became
interested in questions of family heritage and legacy. Our attorneys remind us that every
few years, we should update our financial wills, but most of us never think of an ethical
will -- writing down the memories of one’s life -- as part of our will. The cost of
an ethical will is the time it will take you to write it, and it may become your most
precious legacy.
These ideas also helped me formulate
the goals of Grandkidsandme.com. These include:
1.To awaken an appreciation for an
increased role grandparents can play in the family.
2.To redefine the traditional role of
grandparents
3.To create opportunities for
grandparents to spend time with their grandchildren
4.To afford opportunities to share
values in a value-deprived society.
5.To encourage positive role models for
youth.
In the past two months, I made the
biggest change in my life, ending my 33-year marriage. Slowly I'm starting to rebuild my
life again through friends, family and prayer. My life has had many stages of recycling
and I believe the best days are yet to come. I believe my new business will play a large
part in bringing out new talents as well as building on some of my past strengths.
Grandparenting needs to make some dramatic changes in order for our families to survive. I
will help make it happen.
Getting Started
Check out the website for a schedule of
Don's Grandparent Camps in Central Wisconsin, 75 miles from the Twin Cities of Minneapolis
and St. Paul. The Grandparent Weekend will provide grandparents and their grandchildren
with the opportunity to connect amidst the pristine lakes and forests of Central
Wisconsin. The entire weekend will focus on play and learning in the great outdoors.
Activities include canoeing, hiking and crafts.
Grandparent Groups meet throughout the
Twin Cities. Each group meets for six sessions and ends each meeting with coffee and
homemade pie. The Grandparent Groups are dedicated to having fun and learning the skills
of grandparenting in the 21st century.
Don Schmitz is working on a book, God
Knows Grandparents, in the God Knows series. For more information about Don Schmitz’s
speaking and workshop schedule, check out his site: www.Grandkidsandme.com
For more books on Grand parenting, see
authors Arthur Kornhaber (several book), Irene Endicott (Boomer’s Guide to
Grandparenting) and Lillian Carson (Essential Grand parenting).
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12/13/2006 |
