Reply to Balancing travel to visit grandparents vs grandparents visiting you

Forum Index » General Parenting Discussion

Reply to "Balancing travel to visit grandparents vs grandparents visiting you"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Who cares. I would love your setup. A handful of times? Try them asking to come over before they’ve even left the house from the last visit. [/quote]

I care for a lot of reasons including that my first child died at the age of 2.5 years, so I’m very aware of the fragility of life and how much time we have (or don’t have with loved ones), and my children love seeing and spending time with their grandparents. I grew up less than 10 minutes from both sets of my grandparents, so I saw them frequently and we never had to worry about “travel” for visits. I know and respect that visits with family can be challenging, but it can also be really wonderful. I guess i’m just struggling with the idea that my in-laws don’t seem to want to spend time with their grandchildren (despite what they say), unless my husband and I put in all the effort to make it happen. Didn’t know if this was a normal thing among grandparents or if ours are just special![/quote]

Honestly, I think this is pretty common with that generation—just wrapped up in themselves.  My ILs lived thirty minutes from us for the first ten years of my oldest’s life and maybe visited us 7 times despite us making it clear repeatedly that they were always welcome.  One of those visits was on Christmas Day a few years back...my oldest woke up in the middle of the night with a horrible double ear infection, we had to take him to urgent care on Christmas morning.  So, we phoned the ILs and said we should postpone Christmas until the 26th (they don’t work and had no other commitments)...but, they refused bc they wanted Christmas on Christmas Day...so they came over, complained that my kid and DH took so long at urgent care and then got downright shitty when my kid said he didn’t want to open gifts bc he was in so much pain, and took off before noon.  We just put our kid to bed and did Christmas the next day.  They refused to come back the next day bc they said my kid was told ungrateful and didn’t appreciate having them there.

[b]Anyway, that’s just one anecdote—but, when I talk to my friends it seems their kids all have at least one set of selfish, disinterested grandparents.  I think it’s best to just be nice and stop stressing over it—it is what it is.[/b]
[/quote]

Yep.  I've been on DCUM almost a decade now (found it when I was trying to find childcare for my first kid) and I have now seen so so many of these posts.  I've sort of followed them because my kids have had disappointing  grandparents on both sides and because as an older parent I probably won't be able to be much of a grandparent due to age.  It's amazing how often able-bodies grandparents have no interest in their grandkids.  I've been streaming Parenthood lately and that show is just a family fantasy.  I don't think bonded extended families are as plentiful as we would like to think.[/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