How often do you visit with out-of-town grandparents?

[Anonymous]

How often do you visit with out-of-town grandparents? One grandma lives about 4 hours away and the other set of grandparents is about a 7-hour drive. Neither is willing to come to us. I am trying to determine what is normal/reasonable.

[Anonymous]

We take the train to see my in-laws twice a year, sometimes three times, and we fly across the country to see my parents at least once a year, sometimes twice. (My parents also come to see us at least once a year, sometimes twice.)

What is normal and reasonable depends on you. Do you want to see these people? Are the visits enjoyable? Are you going to resent that they can't or won't travel to see you?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How often do you visit with out-of-town grandparents? One grandma lives about 4 hours away and the other set of grandparents is about a 7-hour drive. Neither is willing to come to us. I am trying to determine what is normal/reasonable.

Ours have a similar split but come to see us regularly, so we only go to them once a year.

In your situation, I would say twice a year for each, and don't feel obligated to make it Thanksgiving or Christmas if you want to have those holidays at home.

If they couldn't come to you, that's one thing, but won't? I'd draw a line on that.

[Anonymous]

My parents come to us often (they're a 15 hour car ride away) and stay for 4-6 weeks in a rental. They love it and it was their retirement plan to spend it with grandchildren. We visit them once per year.

My inlaws (3 hours away) NEVER come to us, but want us to visit every 6 weeks. I think that's very unfair since we don't visit my parents that often and I feel like we owe my parents more visits. DH makes us visit his parents for 5+ days and that too is very difficult (no beds for any of us and our family shares a bathroom with SIL's family too).

[Anonymous]

All family lives in another state, about 7 hours away. My parents and IL's live 2 hours away from each other in the same state. We visit twice a year for a week total and spend 3-4 days at each location. There may be other things (i.e. weddings) that cause up to take a quick trip up, but we would not visit both families during these trips.

IL's and my mom visit every other month. My dad comes with my mom when he get the time off of work, usually 1-2 times a year. Also, both sets of grandparents come down for Christmas every other year (at the same time) so we only have to travel the opposite years.

I would say that my kids see their grandparents 6-8 times a year depending on the year.

[Anonymous]

Only one set of grandparents. They live 2.5 hours away by car and never visit. We go up there about 3 times per year for weekends or long weekends, usually Christmas, Easter, and once in the summer. Sometimes we might go up a 4th time, but the visits are not enjoyable (for me), and I do resent that they never visit when it would be so much easier than packing up two little kids and all the gear. My parents are perfectly capable of driving to their beach house, which is 2 hours away from them, but refuse to drive to us or take the train.

[Anonymous]

Grandma here - but a young one with her own kid still in school!: our oldest DD and her DH and baby come to see us or we see them about every 5-6 weeks. We also take at least one week long vacation per year together, sometimes two. Alternating Christmas/Thanksgivings they come to us for 4-7 days. And we Facetime usually every weekend. We live about 4 hours away from each other.

I will take baby for 5 days when my DD and her DH travel together on her work retreat.

Last year my DD had a long term work project here and brought baby with her for some of the weeks. My DH and I took turns watching her while my DD worked.

I wish we lived in same town but we are all doing our best to be part of each others lives and not devolve into just special occasion family get togethers

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How often do you visit with out-of-town grandparents? One grandma lives about 4 hours away and the other set of grandparents is about a 7-hour drive. Neither is willing to come to us. I am trying to determine what is normal/reasonable.

My mom lives on the west coast. If I am really lucky, I see her twice a year - once we go there (usually at Christmas) and once she comes here.

My dad lives in the midwest. I usually see him once a year. Either he comes to see us or we go there.

DH's parents (divorced) both live in Florida. We see them once or twice a year. Usually his dad and stepmom come here because they spend summers in New England and drive and we're on the way. When we go to Florida to see his mom, we try to pop over to the other side to see his dad and stepmom too.

I hate it and wish that we could see them all a lot more often than we do, but flying 2 adults and 2 kids around the country more than 3x a year is prohibitively expensive.

[Anonymous]

I'd make sure we did a visit at least once a year. Maybe twice, if visiting wasn't awful.

Definitely not more than that unless I really enjoyed myself on these trips, then maybe more. I'd always make sure that they are welcome to visit us more routinely too.

[Anonymous]

If they are truly unable to visit for health reasons or financial issues, that is one thing. But if they just don't prefer to travel, or have a dog they won't board or something, that's different. Then, I would to to them each twice a year--one set gets a spring visit and Thanksgiving, the other set gets a summer visit and either Christmas or New Year's. That's it. Don't like it? You are welcome to visit us any time.

My parents live 10 hours away. We visit them once or twice a year, and they come out to see us once or twice a year, with my mom filling in additional just-her visits.

My ILs live 4 hours away. We visit them once or twice a year, and they come to see us about 3-4 times a year.

We also sometimes take beach trips or Yellowstone or other "destination" vacations with each set, say once every other year for each set.

[Anonymous]

Once a year to each side. One is a 6 hour flight, the other is 6 hour drive. Vacation time and budget are limiting factors. Once we spend a week with each family, we only have 8 more days of vacation each to cover all school closings, teacher work days, etc. We almost never manage an actual vacation due to this.

[Anonymous]

When they were all still alive, we generally travelled 3/4 times to their 1 each year. DH’s parents lived about 4 hours away and my parents were about 7 hours away. I wanted my children to have a relationship that was more than once or twice a year.

They are all gone now, my father,being the last died two years ago when older DC was a freshman in college and younger was a junior in HS.

[Anonymous]

Once every two years. Parents live in Europe, 7-8 hour flight.

[Anonymous]

Both sets of grandparents live across the country so they are a plane ride away (or a really long drive). Each set visits once a year at most. There have been some years with no grandparents visiting us. We visit both sets once per year in the summer (they are only about four hours from each other). We used to visit more (2-3 times per year), but got tired of spending all of our vacation time visiting grandparents so now we use that time to take an actual family vacation with our kids. It works for us. Neither set of grandparents is very involved so about 3 or 4 days with each is enough.

[Anonymous]

My parents are about 10 hours away and we don't visit them. They have two untrained dogs that I don't want our baby anywhere near, and my husband has terrible dog and cat dander allergies.

MIL is 2 hours away and we've visited her once. She has cats (see above), and my DH does not like her affair partner-turned-boyfriend. She's only become part of our lives again because of the baby...its a very challenging relationship.

FIL is 9 hours away and we're flying up on Wednesday for the second time in 7 months. No pets. Also not crazy like the rest of the grandparents.