The Modern Grandad Laboratory Gets Its First Tool

Something new has appeared on the Modern Grandad website.

It’s small.

It’s practical.

And I’m rather pleased with it.

It’s a Grandchild Height Calculator.

[Try the Grandchild Height Calculator →]

This started, as these things often do, with me being curious.

I was sitting on the floor reading a library book with my two-year-old grandson when I came across a line that said:

“You are now half the height you will reach as a fully grown adult!”

Really?

So I went down the rabbit hole.

Is that actually true?

What does the science say?

What about boys and girls?

What about genetics?

And, eventually:

Could I make something useful from all this?

Turns out I could.

So I did.

The calculator lets you put in your grandchild’s current height and their parents’ heights, then compares two different ways of estimating their eventual adult height.

You can even put their name on a little personalised card and send it to their parents.

It’s free.

No email.

No nuffin’.

👉 [Try the Grandchild Height Calculator →]

And this is where it gets interesting for me.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been adding One-Year-Old Laboratory and Two-Year-Old Laboratory sections to Modern Grandad.

They’re where I document things I’m actually trying with my grandson.

And now one of those experiments has produced something other people can use.

A question → some research → a useful thing.

This is the first practical tool I’ve made on the Modern Grandad journey.

It won’t be the last.

👉 Click Here to Try the Grandchild Height Calculator

It’s free. No email, no nuffin’.

I was sitting on the floor reading a library book with my two-year-old grandson the other day when I turned the page and spotted this illustration:

“You are now half the height you will reach as a fully grown adult!”

Really? Is that actually true?

Is the secret to predicting how tall a toddler will grow really as simple as taking a tape measure to a two-year-old and multiplying by two?

Like any curious grandad, I decided to dig into the pediatric science to see if this was just a cute storybook line or a legitimate biological fact.

Here is what I uncovered.

The Short Answer: Yes (With a Catch)

It turns out the old wives’ tale is surprisingly accurate, though pediatricians treat it as a rough baseline rather than an exact scientific decree.

Biological development rates vary slightly depending on a child’s sex:

• For Boys: Doubling their height at 24 months (2 years old) gives a remarkably close estimate of their adult stature because boys tend to grow and mature slightly slower.

• For Girls: Girls mature earlier than boys, so doubling their height at 18 months (1.5 years old) generally provides a more accurate projection than waiting until 24 months.

What About Genetics?

While the double-height shortcut works well for average growth trajectories, it doesn’t account for parental genetics—which drive roughly 80% of final adult height.

To get a more precise forecast, pediatricians often cross-reference the two-year doubling rule with the Mid-Parental Target Height Formula:

* Boys: (Mother’s Height + Father’s Height + 13 cm) ÷ 2 (or + 5 inches)

* Girls: (Mother’s Height + Father’s Height – 13 cm) ÷ 2 (or – 5 inches)

When you compare the 2-Year Double Rule against the Genetic Formula, the two numbers usually land within a few centimeters of each other!

Try It For Your Grandchildren

Because I couldn’t resist putting both calculations together, I built a quick Grandchild Height Forecast Tool over on my other site. (It can’t be embedded directly into this Substack page)

You can slide the numbers to match your grandchild’s current height, input the parents’ heights, and instantly see how the two formulas compare.

Even better: you can type in your grandchild’s name and download a personalised card to text or email to their parents!

It’s free. No email, no nuffin’.

👉 Click Here to Try the Grandchild Height Calculator

How tall is your grandchild predicted to be? Try the tool, download your card, and let me know in the comments if the math surprised you!

This week my grandson and I clocked over 2,000 km together on the bicycle.

Note: the photo shows 3,000 km, but often I’m riding home without him after dropping him off. So we work on two-thirds of the total distance.

2000 kms sounds remarkable, but it’s made up of 1999 unremarkable kilometres. (One day we saw six scrub turkeys on a short stretch of bikeway and we both remarked, wow!)

You don’t have to make every week memorable. Most won’t be.

But over those weeks there will be breakfasts, walks, stories, silly games, difficult conversations, small adventures, mistakes, questions and ordinary afternoons together.

Those small moments add up.

Presence beats presents.

Have you ever felt stuck starting?

Can’t find your voice.

Pieces of the puzzle are missing.

Don’t want to look stupid.

That’s how I feel now with Modern Grandad.

It’s messy. It feels awkward. But it’s normal.

It’s how I’ve felt with every one of my reinventions.

I’m not here to tell other men what they should become.

I’m figuring out what I want to become — and inviting you to figure it out with me.

Modern Grandad is my living laboratory.

So if you know you are capable of more, raise your hand.

I want to share this journey with older men who believe they still have something to contribute.

For most of history, getting older came with an obvious advantage.

You knew things younger people didn’t.

If they wanted to know how something worked, how to fix something, how to grow something, how to get through something — they asked someone who had been around longer.

Grandads were tailor-made for this.

That’s changed.

Google knows more than I do.

AI knows more than I do.

YouTube can show my grandson how to do things I’ve never done.

So what is Grandad still good for?

I’ve been thinking about that question.

Not because I think getting older makes us wiser. It doesn’t.

But a longer life does give you something a child can’t download.

You’ve lived it.

I’ve written about what that might still be worth.

What Is Grandad Still Good For?

Julian

SBS Insight aired this week. (They came to me with the first question… you can see my deer-in-the-headlights look)

I came away with more questions than answers, which is probably about right.

But one question has been sitting with me:

How much time do grandparents really have to matter?

I don’t mean raising our grandchildren or competing with their parents.

I mean becoming part of their idea of what normal looks like.

When they’re very young, they still want to come with you.

To the shops.
To the yard.
To make lunch.
To watch you fix something.
To see how you handle getting something wrong.

Then, gradually, the world gets bigger.

School. Friends. Sport. Screens. A thousand other things.

That window doesn’t close on a particular birthday. But it does close.

And perhaps our job as grandads is simply to make good use of it while it’s open.

No extra grandadding required.

I’ve written about what that might look like.

What If Grandparents Only Get Five Years?

I’ve spent the past few weeks trying to get clearer about the question underneath everything I’ve been writing.

I think I’ve found it.

What are grandads for now?

When I first became a grandfather, my questions were mostly personal.

What sort of grandad did I want to be?

How could I make the most of the time I had?

What could I do that might genuinely matter to my grandson?

I still care about all of those things.

But the more I looked, the more I realised there was a much bigger question sitting underneath them.

The world has changed enormously.

Childhood has changed.

Parenting has changed.

Men have changed.

We’re living longer.

We’re working differently.

Families are different.

And yet our picture of Grandad hasn’t changed much at all.

That started to bother me.

Not because I think grandfathers need another set of expectations placed upon them.

Quite the opposite.

I think there may be an opportunity here that we’re overlooking.

Kids need capable adults.

Parents need backup.

Men need purpose.

And sitting right in the middle of those three needs are millions of grandads.

So I’ve spent some time trying to understand what’s changed, what hasn’t, and whether there really is a case for thinking differently about grandfathering.

I’ve put it all together in a new piece:

What Are Grandads For Now?

The modern grandfather arrived. His job description didn’t.

It’s the clearest explanation I’ve written so far of what I’m trying to figure out with Modern Grandad.

I don’t think I’ve found the answer.

I think I’ve found the question.

Read: What Are Grandads For Now?

I went on as a grandfather with a question I’ve been trying to answer:

What are grandads for now?

Childhood has changed. Parenting has changed. Men have changed. We’re living longer. And many grandads are arriving at this stage of life with years of capability still ahead of them.

Yet our idea of Grandad hasn’t changed much at all.

I’ve spent the past few months trying to understand what that might mean — for children, for their parents, and for the millions of men becoming grandfathers.

This is where I’d start.

What Are Grandads For Now?

The modern grandfather arrived. His job description didn’t.

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When was the last time you actually saw a steam train? Probably a while ago.

What about on a roadside sign? Have you noticed that in Australia, many railway crossing signs still show a steam train? But we don’t have steam trains. We have electric trains.

The old image remains because we all know exactly what it means. It’s cultural shorthand.

I think we’ve done the same with Grandad.

I stumbled onto this realisation when I began writing about my journey as a grandfather. I needed pictures to go with the words, so I did an online image search for grandfather.

I hoped to find images of, well, sort-of-me: an energetic first-time grandad in his early sixties. Instead I found old men. Snow-white hair. Knitted vests. Rocking chairs. Walking sticks.

Is that how the world sees me? Another steam train?

I was offended. I’ve proudly kept up with a world that hasn’t stopped changing since I was a kid. Ducking and diving and weaving and reinventing myself. But does that all account for nothing once you reach a certain age? Am I being shelved? I don’t feel out of date. Suddenly I felt categorised. (Is this what women have been saying all along? This male finally gets it.)

Chastened, a bit deflated, but curious, I started digging. How had the world moved on while our idea of Grandad stayed behind?

Let’s go back to 1950.

Not because 1950 was some golden age of grandfathering. It wasn’t. But it’s a useful line in the sand. The 75 years since are roughly a human lifetime. I can get my head around that. Plus, I can see myself there. The Second World War was over. The postwar economic boom was beginning. The modern Western middle class was expanding. Think cities surrounded by suburbs, families and cars. That still feels familiar.

And somewhere in one of those suburbs was Grandad.

His world looked very different from mine.

As a Dad, he was expected to provide. Women did most of the caring. Children had considerably more freedom to roam without direct adult supervision.

There was no internet. No social media. No parenting influencers. No smartphones. No algorithm competing for a child’s attention.

Knowledge itself was harder to obtain. If you wanted to know how to repair something, grow something, make something or understand something, an older person who had spent 60 years accumulating knowledge could be genuinely useful.

And then there was Grandad himself. He didn’t necessarily become a grandfather much younger than we do or shuffle off soon afterwards. That’s too simple. But he lived in a world where healthy later life was shorter, and retirement wasn’t yet the twenty-year life stage it can be today.

On average, there was simply less life on the other side of sixty.

Then the world changed.

Actually, almost everything around Grandad changed.

Childhood changed.

But not in the way I thought.

I’m wary of romanticising the childhood I grew up in. You know, ‘we started roaming after breakfast and just had to be home before the street lights came on.’ A common story. It’s my story too.

But who’s to say it was better? It’s like the vinyl records vs digital music argument. It’s subjective, nuanced, and there’s no simple evidence that says one childhood was better than the other.

But there is plenty of evidence that childhood changed.

Children became less independent.

Kids once walked to school, rode bikes around neighbourhoods, went to friends’ houses, played in streets and disappeared for hours before someone yelled their name from the front door.

Over the decades, that freedom shrank. Childhood became more supervised, more organised, and eventually, more digital. That’s progress. I’m for progress. But something else quietly disappeared with it.

Children spent less time simply inhabiting the ordinary adult world.

There were once all sorts of adults on the edges of childhood. An informal network of local adults. The neighbour fixing his fence. The woman behind the counter. Someone working on a car. Someone gardening. The neighbour handling everyday situations.

They weren’t trying to teach the kids anything. They weren’t coaching them. They weren’t developing them. No metrics. No testing. No pass or fail.

They were just everyday adults being adults while children happened to be around.

That kind of casual adult contact doesn’t seem to be as common these days.

And while childhood was becoming more managed, something else happened.

Parenting changed.

Parents didn’t become less involved. They became more involved. And the job got bigger.

The basics remain. Feed them. House them. Love them. Keep them safe.

Those things didn’t disappear. But we just kept adding to the list.

Their emotional development matters. Their confidence matters. Early learning matters. Nutrition matters. Friendships matter. Mental health matters. School performance matters. Future opportunities matter.

Worth a special mention is parents’ new job: managing the digital world. Deciding about screen time, smartphones, social media, gaming, online pornography, cyberbullying, online predators, algorithms and now AI.

And there’s a twist. Today’s parents are responsible for supervising an environment their own parents never had to navigate. And unlike teaching a child how to cross a road, the parents themselves are learning the rules while trying to teach them.

All of the above are sensible things to care about. But there’s a cost to an ever-expanding job description. More ways to feel like you’re getting it wrong. Now it seems there’s a never-ending list of things a good parent feels responsible for getting right.

Meanwhile, more mothers entered paid work while fathers became more involved at home. It’s common for both adults to work. Both somehow also have to run the family.

So families became busier, parents were stretched thinner, and the job description of parenting kept expanding.

The job got bigger.

Then something else changed.

Men changed.

I remember my father recoiling from the question, almost scraping the chair backwards over the floor when I asked him if he attended my birth. His exact words have left me, but ‘that’s women’s business’ is close.

By the time I became a father in 1992, attending the birth was pretty much normal. And it didn’t stop at the delivery-room door. I changed nappies, pushed prams, fed bottles. There was bath time, school events and talking about feelings in a way I don't remember doing with my father. It would be unfair to my wife to say I equally shared this part of parenting. But I willingly showed up.

The old expectation that a good man should provide didn’t disappear. Another expectation was added. Provide and participate.

I’m 65 today. Born 1961.

I had a mechanical, analogue, and fix-it-if-it’s-broken childhood. Our TV set had knobs you twisted and pulled, rabbit-ear antennas that required one of us kids to hold on to them. That’s only if we wanted to see Hogan’s Heroes without the snowstorm of dots.

I was an adult when home computers arrived. Then the internet. Email. Mobile phones. Smartphones. Social media. Video calls. Remote work. Now artificial intelligence.

Mine is not a generation of men new to change. We’ve been adapting all our adult lives.

And now, we are becoming grandads.

Longevity changed.

We’re also living longer.

But that’s only half the story. We’re having children later too, which means we’re becoming grandparents later. You might expect those two things to cancel each other out. But for many of us, there can still be decades of healthy grandfatherhood ahead.

Yay! My grandson was born two years ago. I’m already wondering what we’ll be doing together when he’s five. Ten. Fifteen. Twenty. Twenty-five. Maybe even when he becomes a parent himself. It’s possible. I can imagine it.

I’m not planning on guest appearances in my grandson’s life. I’m eating my veges and aiming for a recurring role in his family’s long-running cast.

And then there’s one final change.

Work and retirement changed.

Many grandads today are still working. They may be running businesses, managing people, teaching, building, solving problems, making decisions.

Then, somewhere during their grandad years, work begins to wind down.

Retirement is different for everyone. Some men can’t wait. Some are pushed early. Some never really retire. Some flourish. Some struggle. I’m not suggesting we all retire and immediately have an identity crisis. But I do think work has spent 40 years giving us one message over and over.

You’re useful here.

Someone needs your answer. Someone needs the machine fixed. Someone needs the report. Someone wants your opinion. Someone expects you tomorrow morning.

Then one day, the automatic job description disappears.

But the man doesn’t.

I’m that man. I can see work eventually asking less of me. But I don’t see myself having less to give.

So let’s pull all five changes together.

Childhood changed.

Parenting changed.

Men changed.

Longevity changed.

Work and retirement changed.

Almost everything around Grandad moved. And yet somehow our cultural picture of him is still sitting in the rocking chair.

The picture doesn’t tally with the world I found in my research. It doesn’t reflect the conversations I’ve been having with other grandads. I don’t think Grandad is out of date.

I think the picture is.

So if the old job description no longer fits, what is Grandad for now?

I don’t think the answer is to give him a bigger to-do list.

Quite the opposite.

Maybe Grandad doesn’t need to do more things for the child.

Maybe the opportunity is to let the child do more things with Grandad.

This idea has changed how I think about and approach grandfathering.

I want to be honest about myself for a moment. It’ll help put in context what I’m going to suggest.

I can be overly enthusiastic when I'm interested in something new. I joke that I would be an unbearable religious convert. I also overthink and overdeliver. Ask me the time and I'll happily tell you the history of the watch. I brought all of that to becoming a grandad.

I had lists of ideas. Things to do together. Interesting knowledge to pass on.

Hmm? I’m pausing that for a bit.

In my enthusiasm, I’d overlooked something simpler.

What if we just let children into our lives?

Going to the hardware store? Bring them along.

Cooking dinner? Bring them along.

Fixing the gate? Bring them along.

Walking the dog? Bring them along.

Helping a neighbour? Bring them along.

Trying something you’ve never done before and making a complete hash of it? Definitely bring them along.

Then, while researching this post, something else occurred to me.

Grandad used to know stuff.

For centuries, one obvious role for an older person was information. They were the ones who had accumulated experience. Knowledge was scarce. If you’d been around for 60 years, you’d probably encountered things a child hadn’t. You were a go-to source for information.

Today?

A child can access more information in ten seconds than Grandad could accumulate in ten lifetimes.

Want to know how to fix something around the house?

YouTube will probably explain it better than Grandad.

But YouTube can't let the child watch Grandad struggle to fix something he doesn't know how to fix.

That’s different.

“That’s odd.” “Maybe it’s this.” Nope. Try again. Wrong tool. Gr-rrr. Walk away. Come back. Try something else. Eventually: “Good as new. Like a bought one.”

What did the child just learn? About fixing things? Probably not much. About what an adult does when he doesn’t know what to do. Lots.

I don’t want my grandson to believe that capable adults always know the answer. I want him to see that capable adults find a way forward when they don’t.

I don’t know how to teach him resilience. But he can watch me struggle through.

I don’t want to lecture him about curiosity. But he will hear me say: “I don’t know. Let’s find out.”

I don’t want to tell him to be brave. He can see me uncomfortable and doing it anyway.

I don’t want to pretend I’ve got life sorted. He’ll discover, in his own time, that I haven’t.

I just need to live my life with the door open.

That’s what I’m beginning to mean when I say:

Grandadding can be more than a hobby. It’s leadership through example.

Not:

I know better. Follow me.

Not:

Sit down and listen to Grandad’s wisdom.

Something quieter. Something that shows there’s another way to approach life. And that brings me back to something I wrote before I understood any of this research.

I called it The Pledge.

I pledge this modern inheritance to you.

Not money.
Not words.
But the quiet, consistent example of how I choose to live.

So at ten,
you begin to take life in your stride.

And at twenty,
you’re ready to take on the world
because you’ve seen…

When I’m angry, confused, or scared—
and I don’t know what to do next—

I don’t need to have
the courage of a lion
the wisdom of Buddha
the confidence of a Formula 1 driver.

I just need
a bit of spine
a willing mind
a daily dose of mild discomfort.

And I find a way.

When I first wrote that, I thought the inheritance was something I would have to teach him.

Now I wonder if I just need to let him close enough to watch me live it.

Which brings me back to the steam train.

There’s nothing wrong with that old railway sign. It still works. We see it and instantly know what it means. But we’d be foolish to look at the sign and assume that the next train coming down the tracks looks like that.

Maybe it’s the same with Grandad.

The cardigan can stay. The snow white hair can stay. I’ll even forgive the little glasses.

But the man underneath the symbol has changed enormously.

So what are grandads for now? I’m still figuring that out.

But I don’t think my grandson needs another expert. He doesn’t need me to compete with Google. And he certainly doesn’t need me pretending I’ve got life sorted.

I think my job is much simpler.

Keep living.

Keep learning.

Keep getting things wrong.

Keep finding a way.

And every now and then, look over my shoulder and say:

Come with me.

Where this started

What Are Grandads For Now? is the question I’ve arrived at. But Modern Grandad started with a much more personal one: what kind of grandad do I want to be?

I wrote my way through that question in seven short posts.

Start here →

I’ve got something Mark Zuckerberg probably wants.

My grandson’s attention.

Right now, getting it isn’t that hard. If I’m heading outside, he comes outside. If I’m fixing something, he wants to mimic what I’m doing. If I’m going somewhere, all it takes is a wave of my hand and:

“Come with me.”

Of course, sometimes I have to work for his attention. Sometimes I have to entertain him. Sometimes I have to sit with him and watch half an hour of Miss Rachel.

I’m not pretending I have some screen-free wonder child.

I’m saying that, right now, I have access to something that will become increasingly valuable.

His attention.

And I want to make good use of it while I can.

Why five years?

Five isn’t a scientific cutoff.

It’s my shorthand for those early years before school and the wider world begin claiming larger pieces of his life.

School will want his attention. Friends will want his attention. Sport, hobbies and whatever he’s into will want his attention. And more and more, businesses will want it too.

Games. YouTube. Social media. Streaming platforms. Apps.

We live in an attention economy.

Some of the smartest people in the world work for companies whose business models depend, in one way or another, on getting us to look, click, watch, scroll and come back for more.

One day they’ll be competing for my grandson’s attention too.

I’m not suggesting they’re evil. I’m saying something much simpler.

They don’t have his best interest at heart.

I do.

What a wonderful opportunity.

Before everyone else arrives

There’s something unusual about early childhood.

Young children still want to come along.

Going to the shops isn’t an errand yet. It’s an outing. Digging a hole isn’t work. It’s something Grandad is doing and therefore worth investigating. Making my sandwich can take three times longer because somebody insists on helping. A walk that should take ten minutes takes thirty because apparently every stormwater drain requires inspection.

It’s wildly inefficient. It’s also wonderful. Because for a relatively brief period, being invited into an adult’s ordinary life can be enough.

That won’t last forever.

Nor should it.

His world will get bigger.

He’ll go to school. Make friends. Discover interests that have nothing to do with me. Eventually he’ll have places he’d much rather be and people he’d much rather be with.

That’s growing up. I’m not trying to stop it.

I’m wondering what I can do with the opportunity before it happens.

Early childhood matters

I’ve been looking into this because I wanted to know whether my intuition had anything behind it.

It does.

Early childhood is an important period of development. Children are building foundations for how they regulate themselves, relate to other people, approach challenges, learn and participate in the world.

And those foundations aren’t built only through formal teaching.

They’re built through relationships, play, conversation, participation, manageable challenge and thousands of ordinary interactions with caring adults.

Parents obviously matter enormously.

So do other adults around a child.

Including grandparents.

I’m not suggesting Grandad determines how a child turns out.

Far from it.

There will be countless influences I can’t control.

But that’s precisely why these early years interest me.

Early childhood gives grandparents a remarkable opportunity. While children still naturally want to come along, ordinary time together can help build foundations they’ll carry into a more complicated world.

So what foundations am I interested in?

For me, they come down to three things.

You matter.

You belong.

You’re strong.

I don’t mean teaching those words. I mean helping a child experience them.

You matter. I listen to you. I notice you. I’m interested in what you think. Your questions aren’t an interruption. You can contribute.

You belong. There’s a place for you here. You’re part of what we’re doing. You don’t have to earn your place by being impressive. Come with me.

You’re strong. You can have a go. You can get something wrong. You can be frustrated without the world ending. You can ask for help. You can try again. You can discover that not knowing how to do something is simply the bit that comes before learning how.

None of this guarantees what sort of teenager or adult a child will become. That’s not the point.

I’m trying to give him experiences he can build upon.

What do I want to make normal?

This may be the part that matters most to me.

The wider world will eventually tell my grandson all sorts of things about what being a man looks like.

I don’t control that. Nor should I try to fill his head with the “correct” opinions before somebody else gets there. I’m interested in something earlier and quieter.

What can Grandad help make normal before the world starts telling the child what’s normal?

A man apologises when he’s wrong.

A man treats women as equals.

A man can disagree without despising someone.

A man can lose without blaming somebody.

A man can be strong and gentle.

A man doesn’t have to know everything.

A man can change his mind.

A man talks to the waiter with the same respect he talks to the CEO.

A man encounters somebody different from himself and gets curious rather than threatened.

A man fails at something and says: “Right. Let’s have another go.”

A child doesn’t need a lecture about any of that.

They need to see it being normal.

That’s what I mean when I talk about grandadding as leadership through example.

Not standing in front. Not dispensing wisdom. Living your life where a child can see it.

No extra grandadding required

This is the bit I don’t want us to miss.

I’m not proposing another list of worthy activities for grandparents.

Take them here. Teach them this. Buy this educational toy. Complete these 27 enriching experiences before their fifth birthday or you’ve ruined their university chances.

No thanks.

No extra grandadding required.

You’re making breakfast anyway. Let them help.

You’re fixing something anyway. Give them a go.

You’re going to the shops anyway. Bring them along.

They’ve got something to tell you. Listen.

You don’t know how something works. Let them see you learning.

Something goes wrong. Let them see how you handle it.

That’s the opportunity. Not necessarily doing more things for a child. Letting the child do more things with you.

While I’ve got his attention

Eventually my grandson won’t automatically want to come with me.

One day he’ll have his own places to go.

I’ll be sad but that’s exactly what I want for him. But we’re not there yet. Right now, I have some of his attention. Quite a lot of it, actually. And unlike the companies that will eventually compete for it, I have one enormous advantage.

I love him.

So while getting his attention is still relatively easy, I’m going to make the most of it.

Not by filling every minute. Not by turning Grandad into another educator. Not by trying to prepare him for every possible future.

I’m going to invite him into real life.

Give him a go. Listen. Let him help. Let him see me learning. Bring him along.

There’s an opportunity here.

I’m not going to sleep through it.

For most of history, age and information came as a package.

If you wanted to know how something worked, you found someone who had been around long enough to know. If you wanted to know how to grow something, fix something, build something or get through something, there was usually an older person who had done it before.

Grandad had an advantage. He’d been around longer. He knew things you didn’t.

That advantage has pretty much disappeared.

Grandad isn’t the smartest person in the room anymore.

Google has been outsmarting all of us for a while.

AI is now the undisputed smartypants.

What an extraordinary change we are living through.

Then: How do I get the information?

Now: What do I do with all this information?

Answers are everywhere. Instructions are everywhere. Opinions are everywhere. Explanations are everywhere.

So if knowing things is no longer Grandad’s great advantage, what is?

That’s the question I’ve been mulling over.

Age is not wisdom.

I’m suspicious of the traditional idea that getting older automatically makes you wiser.

It doesn’t. I know plenty of older people who haven’t learned much from being older.

And older people can be just as susceptible to rubbish, misinformation and poor judgement as anybody else. Experience doesn’t guarantee good judgement.

So I’m not interested in making Grandad sound like some wise old oracle dispensing the answers from the mountaintop.

But age does give you something a child doesn’t have.

More life.

You’ve had more time to experience things.

More beginnings. More endings. More things going wrong. More things working out. More decisions. More consequences. More surprises. More mistakes. More opportunities to discover that something you were certain about wasn’t quite as certain as you thought.

Age gives you experience.

Experience gives you pieces of the puzzle.

What you do with those pieces determines whether they become wisdom, perspective, judgement, a good story, a bad opinion, or absolutely nothing.

The value isn’t in simply being older.

It’s in what you have done with the life you’ve had.

What has Grandad had time to lose?

This might be one of the less obvious benefits of getting older.

Here are some things that I am happy to have lost along the way.

The belief that there is one correct career.

The belief that embarrassment is fatal.

The belief that everyone is thinking about you.

The belief that adults know what they’re doing.

The belief that a setback means your life is ruined.

The belief that changing direction means you’ve failed.

If you’ve actually lived through several chapters, you can develop a different relationship with uncertainty.

You discover that things change. People change. You change. The thing that seemed enormous at 25 can look very different at 55. Something you thought was the end can turn out to be the beginning of something else.

That doesn’t necessarily make you wise.

But it can give you perspective.

And perspective can be useful.

Especially to somebody who hasn’t lived long enough to have any yet.

Lived information

There’s another difference between what Grandad knows and what a child can find online.

That’s the difference between information and experience.

I can tell my grandson how something works. He can ask Google. He can ask AI. He can watch a hundred videos. That’s not inferior to what I know. In many cases, it’s vastly better.

But it isn’t the same thing as having lived it.

That’s not superior information.

It’s lived information.

I know what it’s like to make something. To break something. To try to fix something. To get something wrong. To discover that the thing I thought would take ten minutes takes two hours. To have an idea that doesn’t work. To start again.

That experience doesn’t make me smarter than my grandson.

But it gives me some pieces of the puzzle he hasn’t encountered yet.

And I can put those pieces on the table.

The Physical/Analog Bridge

This is something I’ve become increasingly aware of in my own grandfathering.

There is a whole physical world that can become strangely invisible when so much of life is experienced through screens.

Where does water come from? The tap.

How do you fix the car? Call roadside assistance.

How do you make something? Buy it.

How do you find out how something works? Look it up.

None of these answers is wrong. But there is something different about actually encountering the thing. Opening the bonnet. Holding the tool. Feeling the weight. Getting your hands dirty. Taking something apart. Trying to put it back together. Finding out that the instructions don’t quite match what is in front of you.

I’ve had the opportunity to experience a lot of that physical world.

And because I’ve lived in it, I can open the door into it.

I don’t have to teach a lesson.

I can just say:

Come and have a look.

Or:

Give me a hand.

Or:

Think we can fix this?

And suddenly the child isn’t learning about something. They’re encountering it.

That’s what I mean by the Physical/Analog Bridge.

It’s not digital versus analogue. I’m not nostalgic for a world before smartphones. I’m using smartphones. I use AI. I look things up. I learn from YouTube.

But I also want my grandson to have a relationship with the physical world that isn’t entirely mediated through a screen.

And I think Grandad can be useful there.

Translation

Here’s another capability I’m becoming interested in.

Translation.

Not translating French into English.

Turning complexity into something another human can understand.

The world is getting more complicated.

Children are going to encounter ideas, technologies, systems and problems that are difficult to make sense of. Information doesn’t necessarily solve that problem. Sometimes it creates it. The internet can give you ten thousand answers.

But which one matters? Where does it fit? What’s the bit I need to understand? What’s missing?

A good human translator can help.

And human translation has an advantage when the translator knows the person receiving the explanation.

I know what my grandson already understands. I know what he’s curious about. I know when he’s pretending to understand. I know which analogy might make something click.

Age itself doesn’t make you a translator.

It’s a capability a Modern Grandad can develop.

And perhaps that’s the point.

The future doesn’t need Grandad to know everything.

It needs him to remain useful. Curious. Open. Interested enough to keep learning himself.

A longer life

So I’m coming back to the question:

What does a longer life give Grandad that can be useful to a child?

Not superiority. Not authority. Not automatic wisdom.

Experience.

A longer life gives you more chapters. More encounters. More mistakes. More things you’ve seen change. More pieces of the puzzle.

And if you’re willing to put some of those pieces on the table, rather than insist that you have the whole picture, they might be useful to somebody whose puzzle has only just begun.

That’s what I increasingly think Grandad is still good for.

Not having all the answers.

Bringing another life into the room.

And sometimes opening a door the child didn’t know was there.

Come with me.

There’s a video I posted on Instagram a few months ago.

It’s had more than half a million views.

Remy’s sitting on my workbench while I show him how to use power tools. Together we’re making a ladder for his playground.

I like reading the comments.

“My dad…”

“I remember…”

“I wish…”

“We lost my father…”

The video has landed somewhere I didn’t expect.

Then yesterday someone left a comment I can’t stop thinking about.

The timing was exquisite.

I’d just dropped Remy home after two full days of grandparenting.

I was knackered.

If you’d asked me right then how enthusiastic I was about grandadding, you might have caught me at a bad moment.

I kicked back, started scrolling and read this…

“Makes me want to adopt since I can’t have children.”

Whoah!

I feel as though I’ve double-dipped into the parenting luck fund.

Happy parenting.

Now happy grandparenting.

If I ever start complaining, write back and remind me of this story.

Please.

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SBS Insight - Grandparenting

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There’s no such thing as the perfect grandad.

But there are different ways we show up.

I think about it using two simple questions:

How well do I understand the world my grandchildren are growing up in?

And:

How much am I actually showing up in it?

Put those two questions together and you get four kinds of grandad.

DEFAULT GRANDAD
You love your grandkids, but you’re mostly doing grandparenting the way it’s always been done.

KNOWING GRANDAD
You understand a lot about their world, but you’re not showing up as much as you’d like.

WILLING GRANDAD
You might not understand their world yet, but you’re there, you’re interested and you’re willing to learn.

MODERN GRANDAD
You’re making the effort to understand their world — and showing up in it.

These aren’t labels.

And they certainly aren’t grades.

You might recognise yourself in more than one. You might move between them as life changes.

The point isn’t to decide whether you’re a good grandad or a bad one.

It’s simply to stop for a moment and ask:

Where am I now?

And perhaps the more interesting question:

Where would I like to be?

There’s no finish line here.

Modern Grandad is a direction of travel.

I’m figuring this out myself.

If you are too, come along with me.

You know where you’d like to be. Now there’s another question worth asking: how much time do you have?

Share Modern Grandad

Most of us assume we have plenty of time with our grandchildren.

Years, certainly.

But years are hard to see.

Weeks are different.

The Life in Weeks chart turns a 90-year life into something you can see at a glance. Each little square represents one week.

Try this.

Find your age today and mark it.

Now think about your grandchild. How old will you be when they turn 20?

Mark that too.

Then look at the space between those two points.

That’s your window.

Not a countdown.

Not a reason to feel old.

And definitely not a reason to feel guilty about what you haven’t done.

It’s an opportunity to think about what you can do with the time ahead.

You don’t have to make every week memorable. Most won’t be.

But over those weeks there will be breakfasts, walks, stories, silly games, difficult conversations, small adventures, mistakes, questions and ordinary afternoons together.

Those small moments add up.

So look at your window and ask yourself:

What do I want to do with it?

Life In Weeks A4 Modern Grandad

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Now you can see your window. The question is: what are you going to do with it?

Do you remember where you were when you made a decision that quietly changed the direction of your life?

Mine happened this week.

In a darkened cinema.

I was watching Neighbourhood Backyards, a documentary about what happens when adults step back and let children choose how they want to play.

At one point a school principal said something that grabbed me.

“For years, I was looking at play all wrong.”

Then he added,

“The biggest risk we could ever take is not allowing kids to engage in this type of play.”

Something went off inside my head.

Not because it was a new idea.

Because it wasn’t.

I’ve been drifting towards this for months.

Maybe years.

I just haven’t admitted it to myself.

When I started writing Modern Grandad, I thought I was writing about grandfathers.

Lately I’ve realised I’m writing about childhood.

...the kind of childhood that helps children discover who they are without adults constantly directing the outcome.

I don’t know exactly where this will lead.

But I do know this.

Some ideas stop being interesting.

And quietly become your work.

—

Learn more about Neighbourhood Backyards

Neighbourhood Backyards follows the real-world experiment of giving kids a local communal space and getting out of the way – and asks what happens to our communities when kids, not adults, are given the freedom to lead.

This hour-long documentary solves a problem for me.

I’m looking to create a loose-parts playground for my grandson and the other children/grandchildren on our street. When I speak to other local parents/grandparents, the concept of unstructured play throws them a bit. Even though they nod along, I can see they don’t really get it. Now they can ‘see’ it.

That’s the power of this film.

You see kids choose play over screens. You see kids sort problems without adults. You see adults change their opinion towards the perceived problems of giving kids autonomy over their decisions. You see how kids respond to the freedom to make their own choices.

Check it out here.

https://www.australianinstituteofplay.org/neighbourhoodbackyarddoco

Like me, if you want to start your own smaller-scale version, start here.

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A million minutes ago, my grandson was born.

When I first held him, I fell in love.

I leaned in and whispered,

“I’m going to be the best grandad I can be.”

I wasn’t sure what that meant.

I wasn’t even sure how to begin.

I just knew I wanted to try.

He turns two soon.

He’s grown.

Somewhere along the way, so have I.

I used to think becoming a grandad was about what I could give him.

I’m starting to think it’s also about who it’s asking me to become.

A million minutes isn’t very long.

But it’s been enough to change one little boy.

And one older man.

Twenty-three months ago, my first grandson was born. When I first held him, I fell in love, and I whispered, “I’m going to be the best grandad I can be.”

Now, I didn’t know how, but I was willing to learn.

And I was sort of excited because—talk about getting the timing right—more grandads are walking the earth right now than at any time in human history. That’s roughly 700 million grandads to call upon to show me the way. If you gathered them all into one place, they would form the third-largest nation on the planet—more than the populations of the US, Indonesia, and Pakistan combined.

So, twenty-three months later, why can’t I find them?

I started by looking online for groups. I found groups for older men who are lonely, but I’m not lonely. I found groups for grandparents who are looking after grandkids full-time, called kinship carers, who often need financial and in-person assistance. I need neither. Then I got excited when I found a prominent grandparenting conference, only to be deflated when I realised their primary goal is to pass on a religious legacy. I don’t have an agenda. I just want to be a role model to my grandson, support his parents, grow as a person, and do it with like-minded men.

Hmm. A book might give me answers. I found no granddadding titles. There’s a swag of grandparenting books out there, but they were either written for grandmothers, relationship-focused, or heavy on research. Some had a token section devoted to grandfathers—you know, a “let’s not forget grandad” chapter.

I wanted a how-to guide to build a capable grandson. I wanted ideas on how to offer young people alternatives to the poorly thought-out ideas of the Manosphere. I wanted a book full of possibility and the future, not nostalgia and recycled advice like “take your grandkids to the movies.”

Alright then, looks like I’ll have to start my own group. I called it the New Grandad Club. It was meant to be an easy afternoon for grandads and grandkids to chase, chill, and chat. I ran a six-week campaign across ten Facebook community groups, through three local council offices, and on public notice boards. It was enthusiastically supported by… women.

“Such a fab idea!” “This one’s for you, Dad!” “Love love love this!”

Men? Not so enthusiastic. Two turned up, but they were two friends I had practically begged to come along so I didn’t run the risk of looking like Nigel-no-friends.

I know, I’ll speak to civic groups like the Lions Club. Maybe they’re interested in a partnership. I spoke. I inspired them. But they were committed to established projects like sausage sizzles once a month at the local big-box hardware store. I got a pat on the back and a “good luck” as I walked out the door.

Time to think bigger. I approached people who have created social enterprises to see what they thought. They saw potential to turn this into a service that helps fulfil State and Federal government health objectives for older Australian men. But I didn’t want that. I just want to be a role model for my grandson, support his parents, grow as a person, and do it with like-minded men. With no hidden agenda.

So here I am. My grandson is about to turn two, and I feel alone in a world of 700 million grandads. I’m not sad. I’m not hurt. But I’m not finished. I’m curious.

Is “Grandad” Out of Date?

I can’t be the only person thinking this way. There are 700 million grandads on the planet. If only 1 in 1,000 men think the way I do, that’s 700,000 people—the population of a major city. So if I’m failing to reach even one man, then I wonder: am I speaking the wrong language to someone who isn’t really there anymore?

Just who is a Grandad in 2026?

An identity problem?

How we see grandfathers feels like it is stuck somewhere in the middle of the last century. The popular image of a grandparent is often someone in their late 60s or 70s, but the statistical reality is much younger. The average age for an Australian man to become a grandfather falls between 56 and 60.

A design problem?

As governments worldwide push retirement ages higher to combat aging populations, the working grandfather, it seems, is becoming the universal norm. In Australia, you can get the Age Pension at 67, while the average actual retirement age for men is 63 to 65. So most men spend their first 5 to 10 years as a grandfather while still working. Are they balancing career with a desire to be more present in their grandchildren’s lives?

An invisibility problem?

Despite working, midlife men are heavily relied upon. Nearly a third of working parents rely on grandparents as their primary source of childcare when returning to work. Then there’s the “triple load”: maintaining their own employment, providing hands-on care for grandchildren, and frequently supporting their own aging parents.

So it seems that while midlife men are silently grandadding in the background, they are trying to apply a 1980s grandparent model to a 2026 life pattern.

Maybe that’s how they like it. Maybe I’m poking a bear that doesn’t want to be poked.

What Do Midlife Men Actually Want?

If you ask men in their 50s, 60s, and beyond what they want out of the next chapter of their lives, their answers usually boil down to three things: Purpose & Legacy, Autonomy & Freedom, and Deep Connection.

Men think that to achieve these, they need to stay relevant in business or find a purpose through a hobby like fixing up old cars. They love the idea of having no boss, no schedule, and no expectations. Many feel the isolation that hits post-retirement, when work friendships fade, so they look to clubs and groups for connection.

But here’s where I see the irony.

I’ve found my Purpose & Legacy, my Autonomy & Freedom, and my Deep Connection by simply showing up for my grandson. I’m mentoring the next generation directly. I see it as a leadership role, not a hobby. I’ve reinvented myself as a guide, operating entirely outside the stressful metrics of career production. I’ve built a wonderful, unconditional bond with a child that keeps me current and a socially integrated part of my family.

Being a Modern Grandad has helped me find meaning, structure, and connection. I feel it is possibly my most important work yet.

What Is Stopping Men from Engaging More?

A radio producer asked me, what’s stopping men from stepping up as proactive grandads? I didn’t have an answer. So I dug in online. Here are four invisible barriers:

• The “Support Staff” Illusion: Many men view grandparenting as an extension of domestic labour—changing nappies, managing schedules, and enforcing rules. Because they historically left domestic management to their partners, they assume they don’t have the skill set, or they view it as “women’s work.”

• The Fear of Getting It Wrong: Modern parenting styles are different. Many older men look at these new rules, get intimidated by the fear of “doing it wrong” or causing friction with their adult children. It’s safer to stand back.

• The Lack of a Roadmap: Unlike women, who possess distinct biological signposts like fertility, childbirth, and menopause to naturally mirror the transitions of life, men have only puberty. Without biological markers to announce the shift into elderhood, modern men default entirely to an institutional map dictated by school, career, and retirement. They miss out on a tribal ritual to transition them from the role of “Warrior” (provider) to “Elder” (anchor).

• Few Role Models: Because grandparenting infrastructure is heavily matriarchal, retired men rarely see active, powerful archetypes of themselves serving as developmental guides.

I think there is a real need to reframe the whole identity around being a grandad. To say: you aren’t just babysitting; you are intentionally guiding a child’s future. It’s not a demotion from provider; it’s a promotion to elder.

What a Bloke Like Me Would Do…

In my two years of searching for like-minded grandads, what has struck me most is that I felt nothing out there was speaking to me. As a man. A regular bloke.

So I would like to offer alternatives to the traditional caregiving language—words like nurturing, helping out, minding the kids, or babysitting. When I read those, it makes me feel—rightly or wrongly—like a commodity. I want to offer more than that.

Agency, leadership, legacy, and adventure. That’s my language. Here’s an idea. What if we translate grandparenting into a dialect that aligns with how men are socialised to find value: through challenge, competence, and building things?

A man’s day job rarely reflects his actual soul. Work is often just a placeholder for purpose. Can we use this phase of life to offer a “second chance” for men to step into personas they always wanted to inhabit, but never got the opportunity to play in the professional world?

A corporate lawyer might have secretly dreamed of being a performance coach. A school teacher might have always wanted to be an explorer. Just by changing the way we frame it, can we at least get more men into the conversation?

I asked AI to give me a list of descriptors based on how a man naturally approaches and processes the world. Look at this list through the lens of the older man in your family’s life. Is there a version of himself he is waiting to unlock?

The Archetypes of Granddad Leadership

• The Master Builder – For the man who wants to lay solid foundations, assemble character, and construct things that last.

• The Creative Director – For the man who wants to shape the vibe, the culture, the imagination, and the vision of the family.

• The Storyteller – For the custodian of identity, history, and the deeper meaning of where the family came from.

• The Anchor – For the unshakeable, grounding presence who provides safety and stability when the world gets chaotic.

• The Navigator – For the map-reader who helps the next generation read the terrain, spot the pitfalls, and find their true north.

• The Performance Coach – For the mentor focused entirely on unlocking potential, building resilience, and sharpening mindset.

• The Senior Partner – For the trusted advisor who stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the parents, offering high-level wisdom without micro-managing.

• The Explorer – For the champion of curiosity, unstructured play, risk-taking, and outdoor adventure.

• The Trustee – For the ultimate custodian of value, acting out of deep trust, integrity, and protective care.

• The Catalyst – For the man who wants to spark energy, curiosity, and new ideas in a child’s life.

Some of you might be rolling your eyes. The nappy needs changing and you’re asking us to indulge men in childhood fantasies? Of course, we have to keep it real. Someone has to change the nappy. Everyone benefits when men do their share.

But words are persuasive. Maybe don’t ask him to babysit. If you are an adult child trying to get your dad to step up, have a go at changing the way you invite him into your world.

Something like ‘You know, I always think of you as the master builder, you always seem to me to be building things that last. I’d love to see you bring some more of that into the family…’

I think we are all better off with more modern grandads around. So regardless of what it said on his old business card, help a man in your life become one.

—

I’m stumbling my way through this. I’d love for you to share your ideas and insights and support. If you speak up, I’ll listen.

There are somewhere around 700 million grandads in the world. I’m one of them.

And I’ve started wondering where everybody is. Not physically. I can find grandads. I mean, where is the conversation about being one?

I’ve been searching online for information about grandfathering and finding surprisingly little. So I tried a very simple experiment.

I searched for father.

Within the first few pages I found:

What is the Role of the Father?
7 Types of Dad
Fathers Matter: The Importance of a Father
Understanding the Vital Role That Fathers…
The Role of Fathers in a Child’s Life
What Is a Father, Anyway?

Then I searched for grandfather.

I got:

GRANDFATHER definition and meaning
Discover Sydney’s Grandfathers Restaurant
A List of Names Kids Call Their Grandparents
Grandfather Images and Stock Photos
Gifts for Grandpa

One search wants to understand the man. The other wants to categorise him or sell him something. One is meaningful. The other is trivial.

So I kept looking. I did an SEO keyword search for grandfather. The big search term. Grandfather clock.

Then I did an image search for grandparents. Happy multigenerational families stared back at me. I searched for grandfather. Then half the page was cartoon images of balding white-haired men with glasses, braces and walking sticks.

Apparently we’ve got 700 million men and four ideas about them:

Old.
Bald.
Nice.
Buy him a mug.

Something doesn’t add up.

There have never been more of us

There are around 1.5 billion grandparents alive today. That’s roughly one in five people on Earth. In 1960, there were about 500 million. By 2050, there are expected to be around 2.1 billion.

I haven’t found a definitive count of grandfathers alone. Estimates put the number somewhere around 700 million.

The exact number isn’t really the point. The point is this:

There have never been more grandads alive than there are right now.

And we’re not all sitting in rocking chairs. In Australia, men retire at around 65. The Age Pension starts at 67. The average man becomes a grandfather years before either.

That means there’s a period in many men’s lives that we don’t talk much about.

He’s a grandad. But he’s still working.

Still driving to work. Still solving problems. Still learning things. Still using technology. Still capable of climbing ladders, building things, travelling, playing, exploring.

He’s not the old man I saw in the image search. He’s potentially got decades of grandfatherhood ahead of him. Yet somehow our picture of him hasn’t caught up.

Then there’s the other number

I look after my grandson two days a week. He’s still little. Which means for hours at a time, I have something every trillion-dollar technology company on Earth is fighting to get.

His attention.

That’s when the numbers really stop adding up for me. Google wants his attention. YouTube wants it. TikTok will want it. Advertisers want it. Game companies want it. AI companies will want it. Entire industries employ some of the smartest people on the planet to work out how to capture and hold a child’s attention.

And for these few years... my grandson just gives me his.

He follows me into the garage. He watches what I do. He points. He copies me. He wants to help. He wants to have a go. He listens to my stories. And, perhaps most importantly, he watches how I behave.

I don’t know how long that lasts. Five years? Ten if I’m lucky? At some point, Poppa Jules won’t be quite as fascinating. I’m under no illusions about that. But right now I have his attention. So what am I going to do with it?

We had the conversation about fathers

Something else happened while I was searching. I realised how much we’ve talked about fatherhood.

What is a good father? How important are fathers? Should dads be more emotionally available? How much time should they spend with their children? What role do fathers play in resilience? Confidence? Play? Discipline? Education?

We’ve challenged the distant father. The breadwinner father. The authoritarian father. The absent father. We’ve debated what should replace them.

We certainly haven’t solved fatherhood. But we’ve taken it seriously enough to argue about it. And somewhere along the way, fatherhood stopped being merely something a man was. It became something a man could willingly aspire to do.

Then Dad becomes Grandad. And the conversation seems to stop.

We turned fatherhood into a role.
We left grandfatherhood as a relationship.

Maybe that’s what I’ve been noticing.

So what is a grandfather for?

I don’t know. And increasingly I find that a really interesting question.

I’m not interested in producing another list telling men how they’re supposed to behave. We’ve got enough of those.

I’m certainly not claiming my way of grandfathering is the right way. I’m one grandad with one grandson trying to work this stuff out as I go.

But I do think the questions are worth asking.

What is a grandfather for in 2026?

What can we offer grandchildren that parents can’t?

What do grandchildren need from us?

What should we keep from previous generations of grandads?

What should we leave behind?

What does a useful modern grandfather look like?

And what happens if millions of capable older men start seeing grandfatherhood not simply as something lovely that happened to them, but as an opportunity?

Not another obligation. An opportunity. Because maybe the biggest thing we have isn’t wisdom. It isn’t money. It isn’t experience. It’s attention. Ours. And, for a surprisingly short period of time, theirs.

Maybe that’s where we start

I don’t want to start a campaign telling 700 million men how to be grandfathers. I’d rather start a conversation about what grandfatherhood could be.

We can ask better questions. Try things. Share what works. Show up.

And perhaps become role models not only for our grandchildren, but for the grandfathers some of them will eventually become.

Because if we do that well enough, maybe one day something changes.

A boy grows up. He becomes a father. Years pass. Then one day, he becomes a grandfather.

And when that happens, he won’t have to search Google to find out what he’s for.

He’ll have seen it.