IL visit frequency

[Anonymous]

We have two sets of out of town grandparents. One is a 6 hour flight, one is a 6 hour drive. We make one trip to each per year. We are limited by vacation and budget. 4 plane tickets across the country are not cheap and the time change is brutal on our kids when they are still in napping ages. Each family gets a week of our vacation time, we need the rest to cover school teacher days/closures.

They are welcome to visit us. Mine tend to come every 6-8 weeks or roughly 6-8 times a year, the other set comes twice a year. All are able-bodied and retired with plenty of money. Neither set has other out of town grandchildren/children so they are not constrained by having to visit multiple families.

We gets lots of grief from my ILs that we don't come more often. But we have one school age child, so the only school breaks are winter and spring, and summer. We aren't going to come twice over the 9 week summer, we aren't going to spend both Christmas and Easter with them, so I'm not really sure how we could make more visits unless we did one of winter/spring break and a week in the summer? But then we'd have to make another trip to my parents to even up our efforts and with 4 such visits, we'd have no annual leave left at all.

[Anonymous]

My ILs have made it clear that most of the time, we need to visit them (despite being young, healthy, affluent, etc.). Every once in a while, if we ask them to visit for a specific event or whatever, they might come.. but usually by the time its over I feel like I put them out.

They never offer to visit or invite us to visit. The ball is ALWAYS in our court. Even holidays... they act surprised if we ask to come visit them for Christmas.. as if they would have never even considered the idea had we not brought it up. They say yes if we ask to visit them... but I am never really sure whether they really wanted us to come or not.

Honestly, it often feels like they forget they are even supposed to want to see their grandchildren.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My ILs have made it clear that most of the time, we need to visit them (despite being young, healthy, affluent, etc.). Every once in a while, if we ask them to visit for a specific event or whatever, they might come.. but usually by the time its over I feel like I put them out.

They never offer to visit or invite us to visit. The ball is ALWAYS in our court. Even holidays... they act surprised if we ask to come visit them for Christmas.. as if they would have never even considered the idea had we not brought it up. They say yes if we ask to visit them... but I am never really sure whether they really wanted us to come or not.

Honestly, it often feels like they forget they are even supposed to want to see their grandchildren.

So stop making so much of an effort!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My ILs have made it clear that most of the time, we need to visit them (despite being young, healthy, affluent, etc.). Every once in a while, if we ask them to visit for a specific event or whatever, they might come.. but usually by the time its over I feel like I put them out.

They never offer to visit or invite us to visit. The ball is ALWAYS in our court. Even holidays... they act surprised if we ask to come visit them for Christmas.. as if they would have never even considered the idea had we not brought it up. They say yes if we ask to visit them... but I am never really sure whether they really wanted us to come or not.

Honestly, it often feels like they forget they are even supposed to want to see their grandchildren.

So stop making so much of an effort!

Agreed. Stop going. They probably feel like you should be making your own holiday traditions with your children at your house. Do every other year if you want.