Reply to Are those grandparents who are worried about being "too far away" from grandchildren unaware of airplanes?

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Reply to "Are those grandparents who are worried about being "too far away" from grandchildren unaware of airplanes?"

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[quote=Anonymous]I grew up 20 minutes from both sets of my grandparents and it made a huge difference. When an emergency came up (like my mom needing to take my dad to the hospital in the middle of the night), my grandpa could be there quickly. They could be relied upon for semi-regular babysitting, and we could visit them every week, or drop in on them easily. Sometimes we went to their house and just watched the baseball game on TV with them for a couple hours, and there was no pressure to make every moment special, because it wasn't limited and rare. When my cousins who lived far away would visit, it was always a [i]thing [/i]that needed to be scheduled and programmed to make the most of the visit. As a result of living nearby, I had a super-close relationship with all of my grandparents that was really easy to develop and maintain.

Now, I live a 10-12 hour drive from my parents and my in laws (in opposite directions). When we have had medical emergencies, we've called friends to watch our kids instead of being able to call our parents, which is fine, but we're lucky to have developed those kinds of drop-everything friendships. And our kids have a close relationship with their grandparents, but we have to work really hard at it, be really purposeful about arranging visits, and use video calling regularly. We're lucky they only live one time zone away, so video calling isn't difficult to arrange, but if they were on the west coast, or overseas, it would be a lot more difficult to schedule.

[b]TLDR: It's perfectly reasonable to be upset that you live far away from family, even if you can take an airplane to visit them. Living far away requires a lot more effort to build and maintain a close relationship, and puts more demands on visits when they do happen.[/b][/quote]

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