Grandparents day stories: Nadia and Colin Withers

_{Grandparents to Anthony (9 years) and Leila (8 years).}

“As grandparents, we think it’s important to teach our grandchildren about our cultural backgrounds. Nadia speaks to them in Arabic and we’ve told them that she was born in Sudan of Syrian descent, whereas Colin is a fifth generation Australian. We share stories from our lives when we were young children to give them a sense of what life used to be like. They have also interviewed us for school projects on our family backgrounds.

Now that we are retired we have more time to spend with our grandchildren. During holidays we take them to museums or galleries or on short trips. We attend their swimming lessons and Grandparents Day at their school. We have also been on family holidays to Fiji, Thailand and the South Pacific together.

We like to spoil them – but not too much! It is interesting to observe a younger generation growing up. They use computers for school work and are very involved in today’s world of information technology."

"Our perfect Grandparents Day would be taking our grandchildren and their parents to Nowra for dolphin watching, to the Science Museum and Planetarium in Wollongong, or a weekend in Orange to go cherry picking."