Welcome back to “Ancient Wisdom,” our Sunday series in which writers over 70 tell us how they are aging gracefully. Last week, Steve Blier, 73, wrote about why his musical life is richer today than when he was accompanying Renée Fleming at Carnegie Hall. This week, Julie Rose, 74, who has four granddaughters and one grandson, gives us the dos—and don’ts—that make for good grandparenting.

As I aged into my 70s, I had settled into the idea that my three adult kids would not have children. We enjoyed each other’s company, and I very much liked their spouses. I traveled with them to Cape Town, Havana, Paris, Auckland, and the Grand Canyon. During the summers we gathered at my lake house for blissful family idling. It was clear that time was marching on, mine and theirs, but as they approached their mid-thirties, and various fertility treatments were tried unsuccessfully, my kids and I settled into our adult-oriented family.

Still, there was this constant low thrum of my friends’ stories about their grandchildren. The must-see cute pictures. The stories of this toddler doing something hilarious. I felt left out of some kind of geriatric sorority.

Then, in the span of two years I went from having zero grandchildren to having five. In rapid succession two out of my three kids had little girls—cousins born three months apart—and the third and his spouse became the legal guardians of two more little girls around the same time. A year later, my daughter was shocked to find herself pregnant again, this time with a little boy. 

I was nervous about whether I’d rise to the challenge of being a grandmother. If I listened closely to my friends, in between the squeals of delight over chubby cheeks and first steps, I also heard complaints about how their children were dealing with their own children’s sleep issues, or eating issues, or tantrums, and how the new parents did not want to hear advice about any of it. Even worse, there was grumbling over being criticized for everything from putting a bib on a baby the wrong way to giving too many gifts. My friends would huff that they had managed to bring up one, two, three children and everyone had grown up okay. Sure, it was some 30 to 40 years later, but weren’t babies still the same? It would seem so, but the babies’ parents were not...