Reply to Parents guilting me about time with the grandkids

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I’ll get flamed for this, but I’ve stopped thinking as relationships outside our nuclear family as my responsibility not that I don’t think relationships are work, but they are a *two way* street, and shouldn’t involve one person making all the efforts, concessions, and doing the life Tetris to make it work.

Yes, your children are young so some of the burden is on you until they maintain that relationship on their own, but that also downer mean you have to complicate your own life to make it work.

It’s not your responsibility to make it equal if one side of the family simplifies things and one makes it harder. It’s nice if you can make it fair by coming up with other opportunities for connection, like weekly calls or FaceTime instead of visits, or somehow opening up the opportunity for relationships that don’t include the things that bring you burden.

I firmly believe that the more people who love your child, the better for them, and the other people, but I also firmly believe that killing your own happiness to make that happen isn’t the right thing to do for anyone. People that truly, in their bones WANT this relationships will make it happen, even if the men’s are unconventional. Example - one of my dearest friends lived a huge distance away from us for years. She wanted to develop a relationship with my DD. She would send her random envelopes with dollar store craft finds and funny little pictures and notes. Now, DD is older and they can text and chatter to each other, and it is a relationship that is completely independent of me. I think it’s amazing. [/quote]

I love this post.  YES.  It sums up so many of the issues.  We have grandparents who make it so so easy to see them and spend time with them.  And we have one set who wants it to be easy, but without any work on their side, so then it's never very easy.  With kids, the adults who don't live in the house have to do extra work to cultivate a relationship without making more work for the parents.  If you don't want to do that, fine.  But then of course you will get the status quo.

[/quote]
OP here and yes, the work of hosting is a real thing.

It's much easier to spend time with my ILs because they do the work involved with hosting a visit. They have a list of activities we can do while we're there. Honestly, for a couple of years, we had to remind them of the limits of toddlers attention spans and ability to be on the go all day. But when we visit them, we show up and then they have more or less figured out some activity options each day and have meal suggestions, etc.

When we visit my parents, we show up and then are expected to come up with stuff to do in an area we are unfamiliar with. On our last four day visit, my parents suggested a trip to a playground, and then it was up to me to figure out how to keep my kids from going stir crazy the whole rest of the time and make decisions about what/where we would eat for lunch and dinner most days. It's stressful.[/quote]

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