Meet my (grand)mother

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As they stand in their kitchen during a rainy Tuesday afternoon, Jared Lehnherr, 11, pinches the cheeks of Becky Lehnherr, 67, his grandmother and his adopted mother. They are one-in-the-same woman.

“You’re old and wrinkly,” he teases her as he stretches her cheeks.

Lehnherr and her husband became Jared’s guardians when he was eight-and-a-half-months-old and adopted him about a year later.

“At first it was hard to get use to having a baby in the house again, because you were getting up at night, feeding the baby every two hours,” Lehnherr said. “You do just like you did when you were raising your other children, only you’re just a little bit older.”

The Lehnherrs are not alone.

According to the United States Census Bureau in 2000, about 2.4 million grandparents in the United States said they are responsible for grandchildren living with them.

The Census also reported about 17,800 Kansas grandparents are responsible for grandchildren living with them.

Helping bear the financial burden

Emotional and financial responsibilities come with adopting a grandchild.

On January first of this year the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services began the Grandparents as Caregivers Assistance (GP as CG) program. The program provides monthly assistance to grandparents, and qualified realtives, such as aunts, cousins and great-grandparents, like Lehnherr. The grandparents or qualified relatives receive $200 a child per month, but cannot receive more than $600 per month.

“This money is really important to these families,” Director of Communications for the Kansas Department of SRS, Abbie Hodgson, said. “A lot of families would like to raise their relatives or grandchildren, but it is a financial burden to raise a child. Children are expensive.”

The GP as CG program has funding for about 1,200 families, but only about 100 have enrolled, according to Hodgson. Without budget for advertising and promotions the program few families know about the existing aid, including the Lehnherrs.

In order to qualify for the program a child must be living with a grandparent or relative who has legal custody, and the biological parents cannot be living in the same household. The relatives must also be at least 50 years old. Lehnherr meets each of these requirements.

The final requirement is that household income must be less than 130 percent of the federal poverty level. According to last year’s income level this would be a yearly income of about $26,000 or a monthly income of about $2,100 for a four-person family.

With a family of two, as in Lehnherr’s case, 130 percent of the federal poverty level would be a yearly income of about $17,000 and a monthly income of about $1,400. With social security Lehnherr said she receives more than $17,000 a year and doesn’t believe she would qualify for the Grandparents as Caregivers program.

Even though Lehnherr did not think she would qualify, that leaves more than 17,000 grandparents who might need help easing the financial burden of raising their grandchildren.

Keeping the family together

“We got legal guardianship in order for his mother to get her life straightened out, and maybe to have him back in her own home, which did not work out,” Lehnherr said.

The Lehnherrs decided to adopt Jared after Social and Rehabilitation Services called about making plans to place Jared in the Lutheran Adoption Agency. That happened nine months after the Lehnherr’s legal guardianship began.

While financial assistance is now available for grandparents raising their grandchildren, family support still rests on the shoulders of the individual families.

In Jared’s case, he still has contact with his biological mother, who lives in Council Grove, as well as his brothers and sisters, whom he refers to as his “uncles” and “aunts”. Lehnherr and Jared are not hung up on the titles sprouting on their family tree, though.

“When you are out in the public and people will say ‘grandma’ when I am mom to him, we just go with the flow,” Lehnherr said. “If they say ‘grandma’, we just take what they say and go with it. He’s good with that.”

As Jared puts it, he has two moms.

Family titles might not make a difference, but age has a significant impact on grandparents like Lehnherr. She realizes she will not be around forever.

Taking on the age gap

“The only drawback I feel, is that the older you get, the less you can do with this child. He has been in scouting and I have been going to his campouts,” Lehnherr said. “Now, he is going on into boy scouts, which kind of takes a little bit of pressure off of me, ‘cause I don’t have to go on the campouts anymore.”

Lehnherr’s pressure as a parent has doubled since her husband’s death in October of 2005. He was the only “dad” Jared has had.

“I have a real dad, but I don’t know his name,” Jared said. “My grandpa, he was my dad.”

Jared had learned to hunt and fish with his grandfather before a stroke in 2001 put Frank Lehnherr in a wheel chair.

“Even though he couldn’t get up and do anything with him anymore, Jared had him here to come in and show off his awards or new shirt or new outfit,” Lehnherr said. “He would build with his Legos and come in and show them to ‘dad.’ They just had a good relationship.”

As a single parent now, Lehnherr will soon take on the task of raising her sixth teenager. She’s already raised two of her own children along with three stepchildren.

Diagnosing a whole other issue

On top of preparing for Jared’s teenage years, Lehnherr is also preparing Jared’s daily care and medication.

Jared has been diagnosed with ADHD, hypothyroidism, and epilepsy. As a retired nurse, Lehnherr is well qualified to watch over Jared’s medications, which he takes twice a day.

About a year ago, she took him off his ADHD medication and looked for alternatives in order to raise his grades. So he could receive a more individualized education at a smaller school, Lehnherr transferred Jared to Chase County Middle School last August. They drive about a mile from their home near the former town of Plymouth, west of Emporia, to meet the school bus.

“The school is working with him on his testing, putting him in a room by himself to take his tests so that he won’t be distracted, because he gets distracted very easily,” Lehnherr said. “He has gone from Ds and Fs up to As and Bs and one or two Cs once in awhile.”

One of Lehnherr’s hardest challenges raising Jared happened only two years after his adoption, when he had a severe epileptic seizure.

“He was three and a half when he had a grand mal seizure and had to be intubated and life-flighted to Children’s Mercy,” Lehnherr said. He remains on medication and he still has a few seizures.

A grand mal seizure is the most severe seizure a person can have. While Jared’s continues to have small seizures – his grandmother calls them petite – he still has what his doctor calls “activity.” Since that activity was detected, Jared has stayed on his medication in order to prevent future seizures.

“I almost died and my throat swelled shut,” Jared said.

Getting back to the good life

Despite the medical conditions, Lehnherr doesn’t let them spoil the time she has with her grandson. One her favorite memories of Jared was from the time he broke his wrist after falling out of a tree. Jared told the doctor he fell out of the tree while trying to catch a bird for dinner.

As an imaginative and energetic child, Jared loved to dance, too. Lehnherr recalled how he would dance around the living room and on top of the coffee table.

As a grandmother and a mother Lehnherr is doing her best to keep up.

“I just treat him like he was my very own,” Lehnherr said.

David Linhardt contributed to this story.