Building lifelong memories with her grandchildren is Des Moines grandmother Sylvia DeWitt's top priority. According to her son, Matt, who nominated her in our Extraordinary Grandparents contest, Sylvia, 61, a business broker, spends a day each week with one of his two daughters, Hayden, 5, and Makenzie, 2. She always arrives with goodies, but it's the nonmaterial gifts that make a real difference to the girls. Sylvia has taught Hayden and Makenzie to bake, bought a sewing machine to teach them to sew, and works with them on reading, writing, and arithmetic skills.
The girls each get their own time with their grandmother, something both they and Sylvia cherish. "I like one-to-one relationships, because it's when you get to know each other really well," Sylvia says.
Sylvia's son Cory's children, Owen, 6, and Aubrielle, 2, live locally with their dad part-time, and she spends as much time as possible with them, along with offering support and babysitting to their father.
Two years ago, through the charitable group Compassion International, Sylvia sponsored a child in Indonesia, the same age as Hayden. This became an opportunity to expand her granddaughter's understanding of the world, of geography, and of the importance of giving to others.
But perhaps the most valuable gift she's given her grandchildren is the gift of her creativity. "Instead of reading storybooks," son Matt says, Gramma encourages his girls to use their imaginations by making up elaborate adventure stories about them. Whenever they want to hear stories, he says, she asks if they want her to read one or make one up, and "they always want her to make one up." Hayden has started making up her own stories, which she likes to turn into handmade books.
Sylvia also keeps a diary of her time with each girl, recording in it what they do and talk about together, and adding pictures of her family from when she was young, as well as recollections of her own childhood. The goal, she says, is to create "an amazing record they'll have as a lifetime memory."
Her drive to be the best grandmother she can be is a direct result of the great relationship Sylvia had with her own grandmother. "She always loved me to death and she was so proud of me," she says, "I wanted to pass that on to my grandchildren." Mission accomplished.
Meet the other winners of our 2011 Extraordinary Grandparents contest now
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