My parents visit for a day and it’s stressful for my kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would love this. I hate long visits. My parents live IN TOWN and want us to come over and stay literally for like 6 hours. And we do nothing except sit around. I hate it.

Yeah, my parents and my wife’s parents are like that. They just want to sit around for hours and talk. I’d be secretly thrilled if they only ever came over for a couple of hours.

[Anonymous]

My parents used to do this too - they would want to show up right at the beginning of nap time. We had twins so we really needed nap time to decompress and did not want to chat with my parents who showed up right after the kids fell asleep. Then in the afternoon it would inevitably be too hot, cold or windy for my parents to last more than ten minutes at a playground and so we would be stuck back at our small apartments trying to keep our twins entertained while my parents played Words with Friends or read the newspaper because at that point they were bored of my kids.

So I get how short visits can be stressful - but it sounds like your parents do try to engage. Try to enjoy that and also I would not talk up the visits with your kids. All the anticipation may make it harder for them to cope with short visits.