How often do your kids see their grandparents/cousins/other out of town relatives?
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Anonymous
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For me:
Probably on average 3 times a year for a few days to a week at a time. This has required a lot of sacrifices on my part. I'm not sure it's maintainable (we are the ones making most of the effort) so am curious what pattern other families fall into. |
Anonymous
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2x a year for my ILs. We can't afford to fly our family of four out there more than once a year and they refuse to come more often and are apt to skip the one visit as well because of cost, despite that really not being a real issue.
My parents are 6 hour drive, the come visit every other month and our oldest goes to them for 2 weeks in the summer. Usually we drive up there once a year as well. |
Anonymous
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My parents visit once a month (or we visit them) for about four days.
We visit my ILs about twice a year, but wish we could do it more. Lots of extenuating circumstances. We visit DH's extended family on the west coast twice a year. My brother also lives on the west coast--not close to the extended family on DH's side--and we haven't been able to visit him. He comes to visit us once or twice a year, and we see him at my parents' house sometimes. FaceTime has been our friend! |
Anonymous
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My kids see my parents once a week on Skype, and once a year for about a week. Either they fly to visit us or we fly to visit them.
My sister makes lame excuses why she can't fly to visit us so the cousins may not see each other for like 2 years, or however often we fly out there. One set of ILs we hadn't seen in a couple years. They either visit us, or we fly to visit them. The other set of ILs are within driving distance and used to come about once a month, but as the kids have gotten older it's more like once every 3-6 months. We rarely (2-10 years) see either my or my DH's extended family. |
Anonymous
| The in-laws live on the opposite coast. We generally either go to them or they come to us every other month. The 4 yr old can now FaceTime fairly productively with them. |
Anonymous
How do you have enough vacation time for work? Do you not do tourism travel? Have a lot of leave time saved up? Great you see family this often! I'm baffled about how you make it work though. |
Anonymous
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My IL's live in Boston so they try to visit every 6 weeks to 2 months from fri to sun which is nice. We go to them for thanksgiving and maybe 2 long weekends in the summer as well.
My parents live on the west coast so it has been much more challenging. My mom has been great about visiting us 3x per year, and my dad comes with her maybe 1x per year. My older sister who is married but without kids comes once every other year. We go to visit them at Christmas each year. |
Anonymous
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My family lives far away - we visit a few times per year, and spend most of the time with cousins. They are warm, welcoming and fun. We look forward to it all year.
DH's family lives 5 minutes away. We visit a few times per year, and get in and out. They are not exactly, warm, or welcoming, or fun. I have heard MIL get downright ugly and nasty about people, including family (even family that did nothing to her, but she has perceived slights, apparently). I can only imagine what she say about us. Who cares. |
Anonymous
| We see my family about 2x per year. They come to see us once and we go to them once. We see DH's fsmily about one time per year. They struggle financially, so either we fly to see them or purchase their tickets to come see us. We never see extended family, except on facebook. |
Anonymous
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We live across the Atlantic or across the Pacific from our families, so depending on the relationship, we see them twice a year to once every 5 years. It's the sacrifice of being an international family. |
Anonymous
| We're all on the East Coast, but the closest cousins live about 5 hours away. We probably see them about 4 times a year for long weekends. Other cousins maybe 1-2 times a year. (They have ski vacation house and a grandparent's condo in Florida, so they often self-select out of get-togethers.) |
Anonymous
| Rarely. Once every couple years. They live abroad and visit in with 3 kids is expensive. They refuse to come here to visit. |
Anonymous
OUr children are 18 and 16. It was 3-5 times a year with us doing the most of the heavy lifting for the entire time on both sides. DH's parents died early on. My mother dies two years a go and since Sept, my Dad is now living with us and is not expected to live to see his birthday in May. From my perspective, at the end of it, it is worth it. We were able to use FaceTime in the past few years and that helped immensely. It is/was a 7 hour trip to see my parents one directions, a 7 hours trip to see my sister in the other and 4 hours to see DH's parents. We have exchanged visits with my sister and one of DH's siblings too. |
Anonymous
Most familes do not do tourism travel annually and make do with family visits for their vacations. DCUM mmv. |
Anonymous
We do tourism travel with our families (like meet up with inlaws in Hawaii, etc.). |