Turns out breaking all the rules is my favourite part of being a grandparent

As a parent I was occasionally a naysayer. I’d veto ice-creams before breakfast. I had strong views about using crayons to draw rabbits on the living room wall. And I’d suggest that one game should be thoroughly packed away before another was opened.

Now, though, I’m a grandparent. Standards have fallen. The naysayer has become the yea-sayer.

Within half an hour of the grandchildren’s arrival, toys are spread over every surface of the house. A tricycle is being ridden at high speed up and down the corridor. A plastic chicken that squawks when squeezed has been enthusiastically pressed into service. An art project, involving glue, is under way on the couch. The dog’s water bowl has been upended. Soft toys lie scattered as if distributed by a hurricane.

The naysayer has become the yea-sayer.Credit: Getty Images

It is complete chaos. I’ve never been happier.

I now see the whole world through the lens of being a grandparent. A trip to the shops no longer involves just the supermarket, the butcher and the vegie shop. No, no, no. First I must dart into the two-dollar shop for craft supplies. Glittery pipe cleaners, coloured ice-cream sticks, plastic baubles with which to decorate those pipe cleaners, and double-sided tape that will prove crucial to the production of a fantastical butterfly.

Oh, and PVA glue with which to make slime, which also means a visit to the chemist to buy some contact lens solution, which – I now find myself knowing these things – is the key ingredient in slime. This stuff – plastic and chemical rubbish – is terrible for the environment. I don’t care.

It is complete chaos. I’ve never been happier.

Then, at Colesworth, the main thing on my shopping list is a luridly coloured packet of Aeroplane Jelly, which, after four hours in the fridge – “Four hours, Pa! Can’t it be quicker?” – will be decorated with raspberries, blueberries and chocolate drops and then eaten later in a frenzy of deliciousness.

True, the resultant dish is chock-full of sugar and additives, and the raspberries and blueberries cost so much that, if the kids start asking for them at home – “Nanna and Pa always have some in the fridge” – it will send the young family broke.

I don’t care. Maybe my son could take a second job to cope with the extra expenses. It’s all about my little mates. Pip likes making jelly, and Sweetpea, his little brother, likes eating it. The jelly, it’s true, won’t set until 5pm, which means all the sugar and the colouring will kick in just as their father arrives to drive them home.

It’s unfortunate timing, that’s true. Could it be that I’m a terrible grandparent? I don’t care. We’ve had such a fun day.

“You have no standards at all,” says my son, somewhat playfully, when he arrives to pick them up, stepping gingerly over the Lego, the twisted pipe cleaners, the plastic animals and the recently consumed bowls of jelly. “You’d let them do anything.”

At this point Pip emerges from my office with a handful of what he calls “craft supplies” but which look suspiciously like the contents of my desk – file cards and folders, a stapler, sticky tape and notebooks.

“I think Pa might need those things,” my son tells his son, but I wave away the concerns. “I can get new supplies. Don’t worry about it. He can have anything he wants.”

Pip starts turning my file cards into a sarcophagus for an Egyptian mummy – the role of the mummy to be played by a koala soft toy, which he intends to wrap in bandages. “Pa, can you find some bandages? I really need some bandages.”

I hop to the task.

My son, surveying the chaos, says: “Is there any circumstance in which you would say ‘no’ to either of my children?”

I think about it for a moment. “Yes. I mean no. Well, maybe.”

“You’d let him take anything, wouldn’t you?” says my son, warming to his theme. “If he came out of your office with the certificate for your second-tranche Telstra shares, the purchase of which was, by the way, a huge mistake, you’d say: ‘Take them, they’re yours. Use the dividends to buy more raspberries, blueberries, and chocolate drops.’”

I attempt to maintain some dignity in the face of this attack. “The Telstra shares,” I sniff, “will come good in the end.”

My son rolls his eyes and then, as a thought experiment, describes a situation in which Pip, through some misadventure, manages to break my right arm.

“You’d tell him, ‘No problem at all.’ You’d say, ‘I have a perfectly decent left arm with which to help you with your craft project, so how about we plough on with that sarcophagus? Don’t worry about my arm, I’ll go to the hospital once your father picks you up.’”

I look at my son. He looks at me. The trouble is: all his accusations are correct. But it’s now the turn of his generation to produce another crop of fine human beings. It is for them to ban the eating of jelly just before dinner, and the drawing of rabbits on walls, and the theft of office supplies.

And my role? To always have the ingredients for making slime.

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