How involved are your parents and in laws in your child(ren)’s life?

[Anonymous]

I think higher than normal. We live within 20 mins of all the grandparents.

My mom: sees them 1x a week and facetimes them once or twice. She comes to all activities she can like their activities, school events, she drops off food or mails them cute little notes.

My Dad: eh grumpy old man we see him 1-2 a month

My in laws: watch our youngest once a week and then we usually hang out with them on Sundays during football season.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My FIL couldn't care less about my children's existence. He was like that with my husband growing up as well. Basically he treats kids as annoyances.

My MIL wants to be involved but she wants to be needed, so she prefers my husband's sister and her kids because they need her time and money and we don't.

My mom has early onset dementia and she loves my children and gets them little gifts and wants to spend time with them. If she weren't so disabled she'd be a lovely grandmother but it's hard.

My dad was the best grandparent in the world and he died last year. It was a huge loss.

There's no right answer, OP. Some people have awful parents. Some have wonderful parents. Some live close by, some far away. Some have lots of money, some have none. Haven't you seen this with your friends? There is no one size fits all situation here.

OP here. I know there's not a right answer. Part of my asking this is it seems like most of my friends/acquaintances DO have parents/ILs that are really interested in their kids. I do actually feel like the odd one out, particularly when certain situations come up in conversation. I don't care anything about money, we don't need/want/expect their money. Their time and interest means a lot more to me than anything. It just hurts because I feel like one set is really missing out and kids don't stay kids forever.

PP here. I get it. My best friend's parents live in the same city and are super involved with her kids. They are very, very lucky, all of them. My closest local friend lost her dad 11 years ago and her mom has never been involved and has since moved to FL. We have sort of made our own family, and we know our kids are loved by lots of people and have plenty of adults in their lives. I get that it's hard to be the odd one out in this situation, and I hope you are able to find other relationships that are meaningful for your kids. Family isn't always the answer.

[Anonymous]

My parents are 25 min away, they moved to VA to be close to me and my kids 6 years ago.

We see my parents every weekend - they come to the kids sports, school events, birthday parties. They watch the kids on days off school when we need to work. They occasionally watch the kids overnight on a weekend for 1 night, maybe 6 times a year. If we had a conflict where we couldn’t get both kids to activities on the same night, they would help out on a weeknight, but we try to avoid scenarios where they just do the kid stuff to help us. We prefer to bundle any time they are helping us with quality time - so if they pick up the kids from school for us while we are at work events, we would meet them at home with takeout and have dinner together.

I love that they are around a lot because my kids have a very comfortable and affectionate relationship with them. We went away for a long weekend recently and my 6yr old started crying when he realized it was “just the 4 of us” and neither set of grandparents, no aunts, none of my local cousins were joining us.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Local grandparents who live down the street. They usually pick the kids up from school and walk home with them. They make us dinner 2x a week. They babysit on Friday nights and have a sleepover once a month. They give us 9 days a year to go on big vacations as a couple while they babysit. They love taking the kids one at a time and doing special things with them like baking cookies, a play, swim lessons, library story time. I also want to say that we have childcare and don't beg for help, this is all their own initiative.

It's wonderful and I can't imagine them being more helpful. We're eternally grateful. They're not pushy either.

I will say that this has caused tension with the inlaws. They want us to visit more to compensate how much my parents help us. They want more holidays. But I'm an only child and it's just not fair to give them more than 50% of the holidays. My parents go above and beyond all year and then get abandoned for Christmas? no way. I host a lot of holidays and invite inlaws, my parents, and dh's siblings. Inlaws want us to visit whereas my parents always defer to us and visit us.

We are super involved parents and grandparents and have the great fortune of having them all living right here with us in the DMV. We are happy to have the kids / grandkids spend all or most holidays with the in laws in other cities and never feel “abandoned” when they choose to do that, because we know how lucky we are to have everyone around most days of the year.

I think your way of thinking about your in laws is incredibly selfish. And if your parents share your view, then so are they.

[Anonymous]

My parents are very involved. They come to all of their games, we have regular lunch/dinner every week and they spend a lot of time with my children. They also speak on the phone when they're not here. My IL are completely uninvolved (which I prefer).