Reply to Are my expectations for cross-country visits unreasonable?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]This has already been said but:

I visit my family far less often than they prefer because it is a boring/repetitive use of what little vacation (and vacation funds) we have. I don’t want to spend all of my very limited vacation time in their town and my DH and kids do not either.

This doesn’t mean we never visit. We did more often when our children were very small (we didn’t want to take very small kids that age on vacations and instead spent more time with family). But we visit less often than they would like-especially now, and for shorter periods. We are much more likely to attend large family events where we can see everyone at once and have more fun (and often those are not located in the boring town my parents live in). We want to spend time taking our own kids on fun vacations and having new experiences now that they are old enough to enjoy (and before we run out of time!)

My parents and extended family (like you) do not like to travel. They rarely visit us (far far less often than we have visited them). My parents and extended family (like you) turn down all suggestions of “let’s meet up at xyz interesting location and have fun and spend quality time together”. And it is not a financial issue. I have even suggested meeting up at a fun lake resort town location that is a 6hr drive (or easy flight if they prefer) from their hometown- still leaving the bulk of the travel burden on us-  and no takers on that either. For the most part, they really only want to see and spend time with us at THEIR home(s).

90% of the travel, vacation time use, and travel funding burden is on us. So we don’t see them as often as they would like.

I don’t mean to be harsh. But just to give your the other side of this. And it will likely be worse when he marries and has a family (because now he will be working around many more people’s schedules) 
[/quote]

+100 you can’t expect an adult son or daughter and especially one with a family to fly to the boring town you don’t want to leave that requires a connection in Atlanta or O’Hare to get to. And what’s going to be the end result? Basically sitting shiva in your kitchen for several days occasionally talking about what to do for dinner. I’ve seen this go down so many times. Then your son or daughter asks you to borrow the car to go to Starbucks for a break from your house. And then they realize while sipping their pumpkin spice latte that they just spent a couple thousand to go to Starbucks in their hometown. [/quote]

OMG I love this reply so much, especially the very last sentence. A lot of parents seem to have the “expectations” of their children coming home and sitting around trapped in the house doing nothing.

That’s not a vacation. That’s regression to being 16. [/quote]

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