How does grandparenting look if you are overseas?

[OverseasLiving]

A couple of years ago, my dd went travelling abroad, and found a country and a city that she loved. She has never been more happy she has a job she loves, a lifestyle that means she can do all the things she enjoys, and great friends and a wonderful partner.

So as a mum although I miss her dearly I am thrilled for her, and as I say to her my one desire for her and her siblings is that they are happy.

Now she is looking at having a family, and the only fly in the ointment for her is not having mum round the corner, to support and be hands on, which she knows I would, and be a part of the grandchildren lives.

i have said look there are ways that a relationship with the grandchildren can be nurtered. Such as holidays, with the kids coming to me or me going to them or both.

But we can’t really see how this works - unfortunately our only personal experience is my grandparents emigrated (to a different country) and I visited them twice in my life before they passed and they never returned.

How does grandparenting look in your family if there’s a distance involved? I presume things are different at different stages - new born, pre school, school years, teenage years etc

My dd is a planner she likes to understand how things would work, and I think if we came up with a plan that would make her content.

Its just not the same unfortunately. We cannot all go over [ I have three other teenage children myself] as they do not have the space for us to stay and it is just far too expensive to book accommodation for all 5 of us. It would be unfair for just us not to take the children so my ds brings over his children or just himself about twice a year. I feel its hard to build a relationship with them when there is just so much time inbetween.

It's different. Being an ocean away meant we saw each other twice a year, my parents came to us and we visited them with the children, I increased to 3 times once we could afford it and I had the confidence to fly with both children without him (they were 1&3 the first time I went t solo, not easy!)

But you have the benefit of modern tech I didn't have, we were still paying over 10p a minute to call, Skype was still in its infancy and unreliable connections meant it really wasn't worth using.

Your dd needs to decide what sort of relationship she wants her prospective children to have with you, loving but from afar or she needs to move honestly, only she can decide.

For what it's worth, I did move back but still hours away from my parents, my kids have a lovely relationship with them, grown now, but I never had the back up of mum helping like friends did

My maternal grandparents lived about a 10 hour flight away, my parental grandmother about an hour's drive away but my maternal grandparents were always the biggest influence on me.

They travelled to us about once a year, we went to them about every year or two. We spoke on the phone, we exchanged postcards. But the biggest thing really was that I always knew they were very interested in me and proud of me. My paternal grandmother saw me weekly but never really engaged with me, she had a lot of grandchildren and just wasn't that interested.

It wasn't and never could be the sort of relationship some grandparents have where they are so involved day to day that they are basically primary care givers - but I had my own parents for that.

My children also have grandparents who live an 8 hour flight away - they are surprisingly close despite their grandparents not being tremendously interested in many in person visits. Things that they have done to keep in touch at different stages of their childhood:

Weekly stories over zoom
Recordings of stories on yoto cards
Doing jigsaw puzzles online together
Ditto sudoku/chess
Postcards

When they visit, they usually offer to babysit overnight which does help to build the relationship but they don't visit that often.

I'd also add where makes a difference, the 10 hour expensive long haul flights made it harder for me, a quick easyJet flight making long weekends possible would have been a quite different experience. My dd is 7 hours drive or a one hour flight away from me, if she has children living there it will be possible to nip up in a way it never was for my parents, my other dd is also living far away but Ryan air and easyJet fly there for a few pounds