By Curtis J. Smothers

It’s 2:37 a.m., and I’m wide awake. My grandson is 14—tall, smart, sharp with a screen. I imagine him curled up in bed, the glow of his iPad casting light under the door. I should be sleeping. After all, I’ve already raised my kids. But these days, parenting doesn’t end with your own children. It extends—quietly but insistently—into the next generation.

What keeps me up at night isn’t just fear. It’s watching my son try to raise a boy in a world that looks nothing like the one neither of us grew up in.

My grandson is a denizen of a world I barely understand. Social media, online friends, and messages in apps that disappear before I learn their names. I ask him what he’s watching, and I get the kind of vague answer a teenager gives when he knows you’re not in his universe. His universe does not thrive in articulation. If you have to ask, you don’t belong.

My son tries to stay on top of it—he reads up, sets screen limits, has “talks.” But I can see it’s exhausting. Parenting has always required vigilance. But this? It feels like swimming upstream in a current you can’t see. While he’s swimming, his son is off in some tributary walking in the weeds.

In my day, if I wanted to know what my kid was up to, I just had to keep my ears open. Now, everything’s encrypted, curated, and filtered through a dozen layers of irony or distraction. And my fear is that some of the most important conversations are happening in silence—online, unmonitored, and unmoored. Kids don’t get bullied in the locker room. They are shamed and slandered online, which leaves invisible emotional wounds.

What also keeps me up is seeing how much harder it is to parent when the world is watching. My son can’t scroll social media without being reminded of what other families are doing better—more wholesome meals, better grades, less screen time, more travel. Better opportunities for success.

Back when I raised my son, our benchmark was the neighbors. We’d compare summer plans over the fence and get over our insecurities by Monday morning. Today’s parents compete with edited lives online. They’re not just trying to raise decent kids—they’re trying to look like they’re doing it effortlessly. It’s like a digital version of the Brady Bunch where instant gratification is even quicker than this week’s episode.

And I see it in my son. He worries about falling short. Worries if he’s too strict or too lenient. Worries about what other parents will think. That kind of pressure wasn’t part of my job description. All I had to do was ground him and silence his boombox. Back then, grounding meant isolation. Not so nowadays.

There’s a lot of talk now about calm parenting—being mindful, present, gentle. And it’s beautiful in theory. But when you’re raising a teenager who’s being shaped by forces you can’t always see or understand, staying calm takes more than a deep breath.

Sometimes my son confesses that he’s scared he’ll mess up. He wants to respond to his son with patience—not panic. And I nod, because I remember that feeling. But the world he’s parenting in now? It’s more complex.

When we were raising kids, we feared drunk drivers or bad influences. Now it’s school lockdowns, mental health crises, online predators, and social media-fueled self-doubt. My son’s trying to manage all that—and still make it to bedtime with a clear conscience.

What does safety even mean anymore? We used to measure it in curfews and bike helmets. Now, my grandson has lockdown drills at school. He knows to stay away from windows, to stay silent.

My son uses an app to track his son’s location. I understand it. I’d probably do it too. But sometimes I wonder—what does that do to trust? To independence? Is being “always connected” the same thing as being close? Has our concern for safety deteriorated to a blip on our smartphone map?

What I struggle with most as a grandfather is the urge to step in. When my grandson’s hurting, I want to fix it. When my son is second-guessing himself, I want to reassure him. But this isn’t my parenting journey—it’s his.

I’ve learned that my job now is to witness, not control. To listen, not instruct.

One afternoon, my grandson came home crushed because a friend had ghosted him. (Who knew that there was such a verb as “ghosted”?) I watched my son sit with him, quietly. He didn’t rush to solve it. Didn’t offer advice. Just made cocoa and asked, “What do you want to do about it?”

I saw my grandson think, shrug, and say, “I guess I’ll just hang with someone else for a while.”

That moment stayed with me—not just for how my grandson handled it, but for how my son did. With patience. With trust. That’s parenting, too—not solving, but standing beside someone while they solve it themselves.

Grandparenting is a strange kind of distance parenting. It’s like a second chance without the penalties for failure. You love deeply, but without the daily details. You offer wisdom, but not instruction.

And you lie awake, like I do, wondering if you taught your children enough to carry the torch forward.

I sometimes want to text my son after midnight: “You’re doing great.” Because he is. He doesn’t always see it. But I do.

His son feels seen and loved. He’s awkward and funny and curious. He pushes back and asks hard questions. That means he’s thinking. That means something’s going right.

It’s now 3:19 a.m., and I’m no closer to sleep. But I’m no longer restless. My worry has softened into something else—something closer to awe.

I raised a boy who became a father. A thoughtful one. A tired one. A hopeful one.

What keeps me up at night is love—sprawling, imperfect, generational love. The kind that stretches backward to my own parents and forward into a future I won’t fully see.

My grandson will grow up in a world filled with uncertainty. But he’ll also grow up with parents—and grandparents—who care enough to lose sleep for him.

And maybe, just maybe, that’s enough.

Curtis J. Smothers is a retired Navy officer, Spanish tutor, and grandfather of five. He lives in Colorado with his wife of 60 years and writes occasionally on parenting, history, and the shifting rhythms of family life.

Like what you are reading at Motherwell? Please consider supporting us here. 

Keep up with Motherwell on Facebook, Instagram and via our newsletter.