Overcompensating for lack of extended family relationships

[Anonymous]

I'm an only with an only (age 4). We have no local family and family lives very far away (we see them 2-3 times per year). On my side I just have my parents who are not really involved much. My husband also has a small family, his mother and one brother. He and his brother are not close, and we don't have much relationship with him and his wife. They do have one child, who is my son's only cousin, and we see them once a year (they live in the midwest), but otherwise there really isn't much of a relationship at all.

I feel really bad that my son has such a tiny extended family. I worry that he will grow up lonely (like I did as an only with a small extended family). We tried to have a second child but due to secondary infertility we were not able to.

How do I overcompensate for the fact that my son has a lack of extended family relationships? He doesn't see his grandparents often due to distance. He just has the one cousin, and we don't have much of a relationship with them. Holidays are very lonely (just the 3 of us as Grandparents aren't interested in traveling).

My son will not have Sunday dinners at Grandma's, or big, family holidays with lots of cousins, or the week at the beach house with aunts, uncles and cousins.

We do have lots of friends, but those friends are often busy with their own families and extended families and don't have much time to get together for playdates, holidays, etc. I feel like friends are great but not a replacement for loving family ties. I have invited friends to vacation with us and they are not interested. I have invited friends over for holidays but they are busy traveling or with extended family visiting them.

I feel sad a lot about our lack of extended family ties. Can anyone else relate?

[Anonymous]

I can relate. My only sibling is seven years older and the opposite gender and my parents moved several hundred miles from family before I was born. My own kid is an only, all the grandparents are gone and cousins live at least an hour away. We only see them every once in a while.

My first thought is that trying to overcompensate for anything is never a good idea. My parents tried in various ways and for me, it just translated to their feelings being more important than my feelings.

Next, I always felt extra special when we did go and visit family because I was the "yankee cousin" and never tied in to family dramas. There was a time when a few of my cousins tried very hard to make me feel like an outsider, but that dynamic happens at one point or another with all kids. It was a little sad for me during big events like my wedding where so few of my family members showed up, but I feel a stronger connection to friends and others I've known since I was a kid. My dad insisted on invites to every single family member, and it felt weird to me.

It would be nice to have stronger family ties, but I don't feel that our family of three is missing out. Our kid feels very connected to our friends, whether they have kids or not. They're all just as interested in him as a person, he looks forward to seeing them and they bring him gifts and we have fun gatherings and activities just as a family would. When it gets right down to it, he'd still rather do the stuff he wants to do and that usually doesn't involve adults, family or not.

Don't overthink it. He'll never miss it as much as you do.

[Anonymous]

OP, I grew up as an only child with very little extended family - and I had a very happy childhood. If you had those relationships and they were special to you I can understand feeling sad your child won't have them too, but you have to remember that your child only knows his own experience - and he won't miss something he doesn't have. Make your own fun and family traditions. Do something special together on holidays instead of feeling sad you're not spending time with a big extended family - see a show or a movie, have a special thing you cook together, go for a hike, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, I grew up as an only child with very little extended family - and I had a very happy childhood. If you had those relationships and they were special to you I can understand feeling sad your child won't have them too, but you have to remember that your child only knows his own experience - and he won't miss something he doesn't have. Make your own fun and family traditions. Do something special together on holidays instead of feeling sad you're not spending time with a big extended family - see a show or a movie, have a special thing you cook together, go for a hike, etc.

OP here. As an only, I had an okay childhood, but definitely felt I missed out on extended family connections. I have to disagree with the idea that "he won't miss something he doesn't have." I grew up as an only with no local family, and really missed having that sense of a big, loving, involved extended family, even as a child. I always knew that I was missing out on the kinds of fun family get togethers that my peers were getting to do all the time with Sunday dinners at Grandma's, holidays with cousins, etc. As a high schooler I despised the lonely holidays we had with just my family of 3, I always felt like I was missing out. For example on Thanksgiving we would go out for Thanksgiving brunch, just the 3 of us, and I always felt so lonely doing that. So although yes in a way that's all I ever knew, at the same time I had the emotional intelligence, even as a child, to see what I was missing out on and grew up feeling very lonely.

[Anonymous]

I would worry that you are projecting your negative outlook onto your child. Get some therapy if you feel so bad about your childhood. Figure out how to let go of the the resentment. It's burning a hole in your posts.

As for family, create your own with friends and neighbors. Every Thanksgiving, we get together with our dear friends who live 3 miles away. I met them at work. Their kids and our 2 kids are, for all intents and purposes, cousins.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

As for family, create your own with friends and neighbors. Every Thanksgiving, we get together with our dear friends who live 3 miles away. I met them at work. Their kids and our 2 kids are, for all intents and purposes, cousins.

OP here. People always say this but it's far easier said than done. Do you know how hard it is to find anyone who is not celebrating major holidays with their own extended family? I live out in the suburbs (Ashburn) and nearly every family I meet is from here or has tons of family here. Or they travel to spend holidays with family. I never meet anyone like us who is not from this area and has no local family here and doesn't spend holidays with family. When I do invite people for holidays and they decline for whatever reason, I feel like I appear lonely and pathetic. It is especially hard when most other families I meet/are at our preschool have 3+ kids. Not that that's important, but it is much, much harder to try to make family friends with families with multiple kids when you just have one.

[Anonymous]

Go to the nearest nursing home and adopt a grandparent of someone there who either doesn't have family or whose family lives too far away to visit.

Have friends. I grew up an only child in a small family and was never lonely. Your son is not you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, I grew up as an only child with very little extended family - and I had a very happy childhood. If you had those relationships and they were special to you I can understand feeling sad your child won't have them too, but you have to remember that your child only knows his own experience - and he won't miss something he doesn't have. Make your own fun and family traditions. Do something special together on holidays instead of feeling sad you're not spending time with a big extended family - see a show or a movie, have a special thing you cook together, go for a hike, etc.

OP here. As an only, I had an okay childhood, but definitely felt I missed out on extended family connections. I have to disagree with the idea that "he won't miss something he doesn't have." I grew up as an only with no local family, and really missed having that sense of a big, loving, involved extended family, even as a child. I always knew that I was missing out on the kinds of fun family get togethers that my peers were getting to do all the time with Sunday dinners at Grandma's, holidays with cousins, etc. As a high schooler I despised the lonely holidays we had with just my family of 3, I always felt like I was missing out. For example on Thanksgiving we would go out for Thanksgiving brunch, just the 3 of us, and I always felt so lonely doing that. So although yes in a way that's all I ever knew, at the same time I had the emotional intelligence, even as a child, to see what I was missing out on and grew up feeling very lonely.

Well, we had very different experiences then. There are a million posts on DCUM from people with big families who are arguing over holidays and logistics and a million other things - a big family doesn't guarantee happy holidays.

Happiness is a choice - you can choose to be happy with the family you have or you can choose to dwell on what you don't have.

[Anonymous]

I agree with a previous poster that you're projecting your own regrets on your family, OP. Our family of three has a lovely time on holidays. Our kid loves having both parents together, because it doesn't happen often. We go out eat, visit museums on the Mall (open every day except Christmas), take a fun excursion somewhere. This year, we're considering some place warm for winter vacation, which I most definitely would have preferred over family gatherings when I was a kid.

And you don't know who you're going to meet and get to know and love as your child gets older. There are lots of families out there in the same position because so many move away from family these days. I have one friend whose entire block gets together at Thanksgiving, with everyone going from house to house.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

As for family, create your own with friends and neighbors. Every Thanksgiving, we get together with our dear friends who live 3 miles away. I met them at work. Their kids and our 2 kids are, for all intents and purposes, cousins.

OP here. People always say this but it's far easier said than done. Do you know how hard it is to find anyone who is not celebrating major holidays with their own extended family? I live out in the suburbs (Ashburn) and nearly every family I meet is from here or has tons of family here. Or they travel to spend holidays with family. I never meet anyone like us who is not from this area and has no local family here and doesn't spend holidays with family. When I do invite people for holidays and they decline for whatever reason, I feel like I appear lonely and pathetic. It is especially hard when most other families I meet/are at our preschool have 3+ kids. Not that that's important, but it is much, much harder to try to make family friends with families with multiple kids when you just have one.

Damn, you sound depressed. People are making decent suggestions, and all you can do is whine.
Go get screened for depression and get some help. I'm serious. Do it for your kid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

As for family, create your own with friends and neighbors. Every Thanksgiving, we get together with our dear friends who live 3 miles away. I met them at work. Their kids and our 2 kids are, for all intents and purposes, cousins.

OP here. People always say this but it's far easier said than done. Do you know how hard it is to find anyone who is not celebrating major holidays with their own extended family? I live out in the suburbs (Ashburn) and nearly every family I meet is from here or has tons of family here. Or they travel to spend holidays with family. I never meet anyone like us who is not from this area and has no local family here and doesn't spend holidays with family. When I do invite people for holidays and they decline for whatever reason, I feel like I appear lonely and pathetic. It is especially hard when most other families I meet/are at our preschool have 3+ kids. Not that that's important, but it is much, much harder to try to make family friends with families with multiple kids when you just have one.

NP. I am in the same boat as you OP. No one treats you as family. No matter how friendly a friend, they are not accepting you into their family, that's not their intention. I have to solution for DC except to say marry in to a big family.

[Anonymous]

^have no solution

[Anonymous]

I understand the feeling. We live far away from any other family, and it makes me sad that my kids' don't get to see them often enough for them to be part of their day to day life. We do things like Skype with my brother, his wife, and my kids' only cousin to try to maintain a distance relationship with them, and I try to make friends and get involved in the local community to develop more connections for our family here.

However, reading your post, I'm wondering if you may be feeling this way largely be because you are still grieving for your secondary infertility, rather than this just being about extended family. I'm so sorry that you went through/are going through that. If this is the case, it could be worthwhile to look into infertility support groups or counseling for yourself.

[Anonymous]

My brother and I sat in my backyard and tried to figure out what a cousin is. We both have children, so they are cousins to one another, but we have no context for understanding what that's supposed to look like because we had zero extended family growing up. No role models at all for their interaction. It is kind of weird for us. We know friendship though, so we started with that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
My brother and I sat in my backyard and tried to figure out what a cousin is. We both have children, so they are cousins to one another, but we have no context for understanding what that's supposed to look like because we had zero extended family growing up. No role models at all for their interaction. It is kind of weird for us. We know friendship though, so we started with that.

Friendship is the best way to start. Cousin relationships run the gamut from close to distant, just like any other extended family. What seems to make a difference is the closeness of their parents as siblings.