Reply to Overseas ILs? Anyone's 2-3-4-y-o meet grandparents for the *first* time?

Forum Index » Family Relationships

Reply to "Overseas ILs? Anyone's 2-3-4-y-o meet grandparents for the *first* time?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]We will be in [country] in a couple of weeks for a 3-week visit with my parents-in-law. The rest of DH's siblings and their kids will be traveling there as well.

DH and I have been together literally decades, so although his parents moved back (retired to) their home country before we started dating, I have spent time with them on several occasions (including weeks at a time). Because they are older now (80s), they have not traveled to the US in some time, and the last time we saw them was just before I got pregnant, when we traveled to [country].

DC is now almost 3 years old and has only Skyped with her "second" set of grandparents on a few occasions. Maybe a dozen, total. Short version is that DH's family thinks they're close, but... not really.  3 of 4— maybe even 4 of 4— of the kids are closer to their ILs than their own parents, let's put it that way.  Skyping is somewhat stressful in theory, tolerable in practice, but hard to get excited about-- I do ask DH to do it more often, but it is what it is.  Mostly they ask DC and us the same questions every time and can't hear us very well. Some of that is age and Internet reception, some is honestly just how they are as people (keep things on the surface).  DC finds it kind of weird and uncomfortable, although we try to be casual and upbeat with it.

They are definitely excited... in their way... about meeting DC.  They are also people who made us cry on the last visit, so, in short, dysfunctional. But also tolerable most of the time, and also possessing some great qualities, just... dysfunctional.  I guess DH and I feel it's our responsibility to manage them and how much their negative qualities affect us.

But now, we have a kid.  And more than that, we do nearly everything as parents differently from the way his parents did/do things. In the past 20 years, DH has grown tremendously and in some ways, in opposition to the way he was raised. So it's always jarring to deal with his parents and realize how crazy their way of doing things sometimes seems now. But it's magnified with a kid.

DC is an awesome person, and very “braggable” in a lot of ways— which is important in DH’s family. But she’s also moderately slow to warm up. Not unusually so, but the next-oldest cousin— who was raised by my MIL/FIL until 4.5 years old, long adoption story— is like Ms. Cocktail Party Personality, literally hugs people she just met… she was born that way, from what I hear of her birth mom. So that's the standard from my ILs POV. On our side of things, we don't make DC hug anyone (more that "hug, handshake, or high-five?" school of thought).

That's but one example, but you get the idea.  They are big into making kids "perform," and we're not.  More authoritarian, whereas we are firm but work with our kid.  Etc.

DH's brilliant idea (no sarcasm!) was actually that we go earlier than his siblings to give us time to work out any kinks.  So we will be there a couple of days before anyone else and a week before most people.

Any other thoughts? Advice from folks who have been there?  When I try to Google "toddlers meeting grandparents for the first time," I come up empty, for obvious reasons.  :/[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics