Meet the Author

Where to begin? Maybe back in 2000 when I discovered that I was going to be a grandmother...again. And this grandchild would live 157 paces (I counted them) from my front door.

At that time, I hadn’t written the Granny-Nanny quiz, but even if I had, I knew my answer was "yes." I was needed. I had no job. I could still play bridge. What excuse did I have to say no. There were just the two of us rattling around in seven-rooms.

That was then, this is now. Now there are still the two of us, but three of them; and we play revolving cribs. We've converted a utility room into a bedroom, added on a glassed-in sunroom, and haunted every thrift store within ten miles of us.

I won't lie and say Granny-Nannying is the easiest thing I've ever done. It's not. But I have a wonderful daughter-in-law who has a gazillion tons of tact. She wangled a four-day work week out of her employer, so there's a free-day for doctor’s appointments and the like. My fellow granny, Betty, has stepped in whenever there was an emergency. In fact, she took care of Tara while I had a hip replacement and my husband had his knee redone.

And then there is Pop-Pop (aka Arthur Benning, Sr.)!

I couldn't have done it without his help. Being retired, he pitched in to help care for the girls while I was writing The Granny-Nanny and its forth-coming sequel, The Granny-Nanny Cooks. Of course, he has helped with all ten of my books, one of which started a whole new genre of child-care books and was cited by the National Institutes of Child Health and Development as well as the Gesell Institute. (It was, in case you're curious, How to Bring Up a Child without Spending a Fortune.)

What with that book, my own mothering experience, plus my background as a graduate home economist from Penn State, I thought I was fully prepared to be a Granny-Nanny. Was I wrong? You betcha.

Things have changed—not always for the better—since I did my mothering, and some of them are not easy to adjust to, like the fastening of straps on car seats. That takes the agility of a gymnast and the determination of an Atlas. I do not mean that caring for grandchildren is as difficult as rolling a boulder up a mountain, but at times it feels that way.

Which is why I wrote this book: to help clear the way and shoulder some of the burdens of other Granny-Nannies.

Are there times I regret the Granny-Nannying of my grandchildren? Are you nuts? Of course there are. But on balance, it's been a good experience. And so say most of the other Granny-Nannies I consulted about the book.