to ask if you live near your parents?

[Denira]

I live 190 miles from my parents. I have a 7 week old DS and am struggling with the fact that my mum and Dad are missing out on so much. It makes me really sad that they only see him once every few weeks. I miss them so much and envy people who have their mum round the corner.

I work in a specific field in law enforcement and have a DSD who lives down the road from us, so no chance of moving closer to my parents.

Does anyone else find them self in a similar situation? Can anyone reassure me that this is common and that it'll all be fine?

Feeling deeply sad about it...

I moved away from my hometown to go to university and stayed in my university city. Most of my friends from my hometown no longer live there. Most of friends from my university city have moved elsewhere for work or family reasons. Most of my family no longer live in my hometown either - I have one uncle and cousin there. Of my closest relatives, one lives over 200 miles away in the UK and the rest are scattered across three different European countries.

We all live each other AND get great holiday destinations with free accommodation!

I live a couple of hundred miles away from my parents. I never thought about it until I had children and then it made me sad. I would have loved for them to be more involved. Now my parents are approaching 80 and suffering with health problems. I feel very worried and guilty that I can't be there to help them.

My mother has never left the area where she was raised, whereas my dad was never tied to an area. Personally I couldn’t wait to leave and currently live nearly 200 miles away from my mother, and about 50 from my dad. My in laws are across the ocean in the US. Eventually when my husband retires we’ll be settling stateside, but likely in a different State to his parents.

I’m about 10 mins drive from mine and 30min drive from in-laws. I do have a brother and nieces living in England (we are in Ireland) we just FaceTime,a lot! Parents do find it difficult,I reckon they see them in real life 8 or 9 weekends a year. My brother probably sees at least one of us every month

I live 180 miles from my parents but that's positively close as we moved 6000 miles from them when dd was 7 weeks old! At least FaceTime and Skype now exists for you, we only had the phone and it was expensive

I moved away as a young adult and lived in a series of places but having children made me move back to be nearer my parents. Same with my sibling. Now we all live a few mins away from each other. The support network that we have is amazing but we are exceptionally lucky to have this.

The DCs other grandparents live in a different country. They’ve seen them a couple of times in the last few years as XH is not particularly close to them.

I’m a 6 hour drive away. Hardly any jobs, which is a shame as it’s gorgeous round there

Parents are overseas and other set of parents an hour away in London but don't see each other frequently.

My family were very clear that they wanted me to go out and experience life in different places. They told me that if we ended up living next door to each other and reliant on one another then they would have failed in their parenting.

When I lived in Scotland people at work, including my manager, couldn't believe that I didn't have people around to help with childcare as the norm was having extended family - cousins, aunties, parents, second cousins- nearby to provide cover. These assumptions were dangerous and I had to explain my situation numerous times.

OP my parents and step parents are dead so only their older grandchildren had them around. My parents and step parents were not hands on as they had raised or were still raising enough children between them. Some of my siblings were children under 10, while I was in my teens when their first grandchildren appeared. It was left to other siblings, frequently the younger ones including me, to help out with our nephews and nieces. The advantage of this is myself and younger siblings have close relationships with different nephews and nieces. I do live a few miles from some siblings and their adult children though it takes on average an hour one way to see them. Also as they have their own busy lives so it's a case of me finding out when they are free. As my DC gets older my siblings will start winding down to retirement so will have more time on their hands. If they wish to see DC more they are welcome to.

I've never lived near my parents since I had children. We're 90 minutes from one set of parents and 4 hours from the others. It's the norm for me.

Growing up, I didn't have relatives in the same city as we lived in either. I would hate to have my sister in the same street and my parents around the corner. Seeing your parents every few weeks is fine.

I live a 20 minute drive away from my dad and and a 25 minute drive away from my mom. My sister and her children are about a 15 minute drive away and my aunt/cousins and grandparents are about a 25 minute drive away. I love the fact I see my
parents at least once a week and I could never be away from my sister and her children. Having them on hand is lovely and it’s nice that my children have their family around.

My DH’s parents (though MIL has passed away) love on the same street as us and it was always lovely having them so close by.

YANBU OP to miss being near your family in such a vulnerable time of your life. All we can do is make the best of our circumstances but that doesn’t mean we have to be happy with them.

Congratulations on your new baby

I live about 8 miles from my parents and can’t imagine not but we are London so hardly had to compromise career or location to be near them. I see them most weeks, I like that they’re around, the kids have a good relationship with them but apart from the odd day in the school holidays they don’t do childcare or babysitting so that threw that theory out the water

Live about half an hour from
Parents and 45 minutes from
Children. Far enough away for us all for privacy in our individual lives and close enough to maintain the close contact we also like

No, I don't mind living 4+ hours from my parents. If it was a better relationship then I might feel differently! Yes, it gets me down, but it is what it is.

I have recently moved back, partly for a job/better house, partly to be close to family. I have a 17 month old DS. It has been nice.

Sorry you are feeling down about. What are the positives about where you live? Try and make a list of those when you are feeling sad.

It ia swings and roundabouts as we left London which I am sad about.

I have very difficult relationships with my parents so I deliberately live hours away from them. However DH really wants to move back to where his family are so the plan is to do that in about 4-5 years time.

The major downside of the situation is that we have massively struggled since having DS and are having to stick to one when really we would like 2-3 but just can't do that without family support.

Reading some of the threads about primary school I do worry about people just assuming my DC have "a grandparent" that can step in at a moment's notice for example if they want to have a meeting with me.

My parents moved away a long time ago and are 4hours drive from us. It was sad when the dc were little but we went to stay quite a bit as they lived somewhere very nice to visit.

To be honest it’s more of an issue now they are elderly as I’d like to be able to help more than is possible and see them on a basis other than visits of several days.

I'm 8 minutes on foot from mine and I love it. I used to live 60 miles away, and before that 120 miles away and I hated it. I'm very lucky that my DH who I met when I lived 60 miles away loves where my parents live and was more than happy to move here when we got married.

Well it looks like people have very limited experiences and some parents put their own needs over the dreams and needs of their kids. But yes if you are brought up in an area with non professional jobs, you want to work in a professional job you have to move. Nearly everyone I work with has moved away for university then work. You move away, fall in love and marry and start a family with someone whose parents live at the opposite end of the country. Op I live 1.5 hours away from parents - my mum hates it but it’s not practical to live in the small town and I wouldn’t want to as I hate the mentality and lack of facilities,I’ve asked her to move closer but she won’t as that’s her home, she can’t understand that living somewhere else for more than half my life means that other place is now my home and definitely DSs who was born here. Modern life means families are a lot more spread out, esp when working in niche professional jobs, lessso if you work in say retail where jobs are a lot more common in various locations

My parents are dead, but I live near where I grew up, so if they were still alive I'd live near them. My dad died when I was 21, and he and my mom were just in their 50s. So I wouldn't have moved away from my mom after that. After she died, I'd have moved, but my husband didn't want to.

I live more or less 3h flight away; came to the UK as an economic migrant from Southern Europe and settled here.

I suppose emigrating is pretty common where I'm from, so nobody thinks it's weird or it's done to experience other cultures. Not sure why some people think moving away from your parents is selfish or useless, lots of us came here only to have a better quality of life and work.

Live 5 minutes away and wouldn’t change it for the world

@Redgreencoverplant similarly here, one child because I don't think we could cope with more kids and no family support.

My mother lives 2hrs away. We speak probably once every 3 wks and see each other 2 or 3 times a year. My children go and spend weekends with her though, separately to me.

Once every few weeks is loads. Plus, in these days of face time and Skype, you can keep in face to face contacts every day, if you want to.