Reply to So are we to never have a husband-wife trip without kids for another 14 years?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote] Anonymous wrote:
Our parents were either not capable, not interested or not alive to ever watch our kids. Both of our siblings live across country so “getting away” was not a easy option..

When kids were 3 and 5 our nanny watched them for an overnight.

When they were 11 and 13 my sibling stayed for 3 nights, he barely did anything (forgot meds, classes etc) but the kids were alive. Still we decided that wasn’t going to work going forward.

This year, our kids (now 13 and 15) will go to sleep away camp and we will take a week somewhere.

We do family trips and when the kids were younger some all inclusive switch kids clubs. This is a choice we made to be parents so we dealt with it but I was at times envious of people who had active and involved grandparents (the ones I had who were capable are selfish and uninterested and the one who loved my kids was not capable and now has severe dementia and we care for her).

If I’m able to be an active grandparent I will be. And if I’m not I’ll try to help financially so that my kids can hire help if needed.

There is no reason to add the "but": you didn't consult any of your relatives on the timing of your becoming a parent, on how many kids to have, on the values you communicate to your kids, so any contempt, even miniscule toward relatives is unwarranted.[/quote]

You’re responding to me and I disagree. I am disappointed in one of my parents who has spent most of his adult life focused solely on his needs and wants. He and his wife (my stepmom who does not have kids if her own) travel 5-10x/year for pleasure, own multiple homes, and could easily have visited us at any time. Or invited us on any of the many fancy trips they take. They have traveled to see us once in 15 years (after kids 1 was born for 2 days)  and instead expect us to visit them at their convenience, which means traveling across the country and staying in a hotel because they don’t want us messing up their homes. They expect us to zoom with them at their schedule but never ours. They like the trappings of being a grandparent but do nothing to foster an emotional connection. I never expected them to take on the labor of caring for my kids, but I expected them to have some interest. They do not ,but expect us to show up for command performances (my dad’s bdays). I am really over it and I do have some contempt for how self absorbed they are and how limited emotionally and I am envious of people whose parents are loving and involved grandparents. I do not think that I needed to ask permission of my parents to have children and I get that there’s this dcum “expect nothing from others” attitude (which is a weird emotional variant on pull yourself up by the bootstraps) . I can still be disappointed by what a self involved parent and now grandparent I have and I also see that this is truly not the norm among my friends who have parents who actually enjoy being grandparents. It’s instilled in me the desire to be a loving and involved grandparent should I have the chance. You know, call on birthdays, visit, go to their plays, be interested in their lives and try to help adult children who are juggling it all. [/quote]

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