Not to be expected to travel 150 miles to see grandchildren

[changinghairstyle]

My son and his wife moved 3 and half hours away and then had children, the move wasn't for work or house prices it was simply to live by the sea.

Both son and his wife drive but I've had to stop driving due to age related health conditions.

My son and his wife are not prepared to come and visit because they say it's too far and they work and have children but they have said if I wanted to see them and the children I can come and see them even though they know I can't drive, they also don't have a room at their house so I will have to stay in alternative accommodation.
I have 3 empty bedrooms.
I have declined an invitation and instead invited them to come and stay but now my son is saying I obviously don't want to visit so don't bother then and declined my invitation.
I miss my son terribly and the grandchildren.

Aibu to think they shouldn't expect me to travel all that way with no car and book myself into a hotel when they could just drive down and visit me and I have the room?

YANBU to not want to travel by coach / train for that long, equally your DS / DIL ANBU to not want to drive that far with three young children. The issue is that either one, or both of you need to travel in order for you to see you DGC in real life.

You've mentioned your DH can drive, why can’t he also come?

Alternatively could you suggest meeting halfway, perhaps for a holiday in the summer if you can find a holiday rental somewhere between. The alternative is that if neither of you budges then you are going to miss out.

The fact that you make a point of mentioning that their reasons for moving are not due to work or family, makes me wonder if you would be more willing to be the one to do the long journey if you felt that they had moved for an ‘acceptable’ reason.

YABU. It's easier for one adult (or you and your DH) to travel than for them with 3 young kids and to a house that isn't set up for this. Just go for a weekend and book a hotel or an air bnb? Why is your DH so unpleasant and you're stubborn for no reason? Go without him on a train or coach, ask your DS to collect you. Get over yourselves and travel a couple of times a year to have a relationship with your DS, his wife and grandchildren and a change of scenery, it's easier for you now than for your son's family. This is a priority, not your comfort because you're getting older.

You all sound like you're being really stubborn and it's a shame. Perhaps if they saw you were willing to make the effort to see your grandchildren they would be more open to doing the same?

Putting three children, at the young ages they currently are, in the back of a car for a 3.5 hour journey (probably longer with traffic) to stay in someone elses home is FAR more stressful than you and your DH hopping on a train with a small suitcase and checking into a nice hotel by the sea.

I think they have made it perfectly clear that they don’t want to see you.

There will be a reason for this. Kids don’t just practically cut their parents out for no reason.

You either be honest and work on your relationship with them or you can not acknowledge there’s a big problem and never see them again.

It's a shame that they live so far away but a weekend trip with a 7 hour round drive is quite a lot with 3 children .
You say they expect your husband to take time off work to drive you there, but you are expecting the same from them and they probably need all their annual leave to cover school holidays.
Maybe if you make the effort first, they will do the same in the future.

If u want to see them u’ll make the effort using public transport.

If they come to you they will need to bring a travel cot, high chair, baby cutlery and crockery, bottles (if the one year old still has them), etc.

Suck it up and visit them if you want to see them.

I'm wondering if living by the sea was their only reason for leaving family and friends behind.

We're pretty much 20 years into my husband being punished for "moving away". My in laws have visited us three times in the twelve years we've had kids; once was just a day trip. All phone calls and contact is initiated by us. If we didn't travel to them, they would never see any of us.

As the kids get older, we are making the trip less and less because it's a 3 hour drive, there are other weekend commitments with kids' sport - the difference being that if they came to us, they'd get a full weekend except for a few hours of a match or a club, whereas we wouldn't be able to get away until much later and would have to leave much earlier.

Generally I think reciprocity is key in these things and it sounds like right now your son and DIL aren't willing to reciprocate, which is crappy of them but I can see how the journey would be stressful for them. So you and your DH have a choice about what's more important to you - maintaining the relationship and being the ones to put yourselves out, or being in the right?

Am sure people with young children still manage to pack a car up and drive long distances for holidays etc .
OP try getting a train and stay at a B&B and just be the bigger person who is prepared to make an effort.
It might rub off on your son and DIL !!

You all sound very rigid. My paternal grandmother applied for her first passport and nervously made her way across Europe to see me as a child. In return, I carted my kids from Aberdeenshire to Hampshire twice a year to see her.

If you put the effort in now, the kids may come on their own when they're older. I used to love my solo trips to my grandmothers.

Don't let your husband and your son ruin your relationship with your grandchildren because it sounds like underneath all this...their relationship may be the issue.

Wowsers, you need to reread that.

They have a 3 small children, they are likely to be sleep deprived, stressed, and really struggling with life. Most parents with young kids are. They probably aren't thinking straight, don't have a lot of energy for emotional baggage and don't have the time to think about your needs. They are probably also financially very tight if they've had a parent off work on maternity.

On the flip side you have all the time in the world to consider how they feel, what they need and how you can make things work for all of you, you also have time and probably have money too. You should be able to be the adult in the room, considering what stage your children are are, instead you are throwing your toys out the pram because of something they said that you didn't like- you aren't giving any leeway.

A 3.5 hour trip with that age of children isn't a 3.5 hour trip, its probably 6 hours each way realistically. If they have a 6 year old at school then they can't come up to you friday night as the timings don't work. this means they can leave early ish on Saturday morning, get to you mid afternoon, stay with you for 5 hours, and then leave at 11 the next morning to have enough time to get home.

Alternatively you could get a train/bus whatever, to get there friday afternoon and stay until Monday morning without any bother.

Its interesting that you are happy to force your son to take time off, but not your other half who sounds like much more trouble than the children

I agree with others in that you’re both being unreasonable. You might not drive but there are busses/trains. One of my family members has to get 2 trains and a bus to see her grandchildren, as she can’t drive. She does it every few weeks.

Her situation is different from yours in that her DS is in the army so they didn’t move as a choice. Obviously your DS did have a choice.

My husband is our son's dad but he sees how much this upsets me and I think he has had enough of it all.
I have had to stop working due to my health and my health is getting worse.
I'm also not getting any younger.
My house is perfectly child friendly and I brought 4 children up in it.

Op you really should make a bit more effort if you want a relationship with the grandchildren. Generally if there is no backstory most people are willing to do journeys like that when the kids are older, but it’s a lot to expect from them now. Why they moved away is totally irrelevant unless it’s after causing you to have a chip on your shoulder and subsequent stubbornness about the travel? Really it appears you have a choice here, either travel or don’t but it will come at a cost of the relationship with your grandkids!

I would feel like you only if they were doing 3.5+ hours drive everywhere and multiple air travel and not coming to mine. If not then, it is much easier for you to travel to them.

You know what op it doesn't actually matter if your son and sil are unreasonable this is their decision to make and one they have made.

Your decision is. Do you want a relationship with your grandchildren?? If so to do that you need to accept that comes with you going up there.

My mum's decision. Was she didn't want a relationship so she visited us twice in 17 years. (We went there 10 times) my motjer Also bitterly Complained we were keeping the grandchildren away from her. When my dd 2 stayed with my sister for 5 months she visited once. (Sister was 2 hours drive away and mum usually drove that monthly)

Thats the decision you have to make. If the decision is its more important for them to do as you want then your decision is also not to be close to your grandchikdren.

You chose where you want to love your son and sil have the same choice it doesn't have to be close to you.

Both my parents and in laws live a long drive away (parents 2.5 hours; in-laws 4-6 hours depending on traffic). We rarely make the trip to see them and are grateful to them for coming to us. We haven’t been to the in-laws for 2 years as they downsized so have nowhere for us to stay and journey would just be horrific with a 0-2 year old who as a baby just screamed in the car and now as a two year old doesn’t accept his arms need to stay in the car seat and spends the journey trying to get out. Our older 2 also get travel sick.

We do visit my parents once or twice per year which is hard enough, even though they can put us up and have things like a cot and high chair.

Packing for a trip with a baby / toddler takes ages. It’s not just throwing in a few clothes, it’s things like formula, bottles, plates, spoons, food for them, monitors, black out blinds, toys, medical kit, books. It takes me just as long to pack for a weekend away with my three kids as it does a holiday! I struggle to find the time with working.

Is your house suitable and welcoming for a family to stay? One issue we had with my in laws (before they downsized) is they just wouldn’t put the heating on to make the rooms warm enough for a baby. We got there once quite late and the room our baby was expected to sleep in was 10 degrees!

I have had to stop working due to my health and my health is getting worse.

Better that you start doing things to enjoy yourself while you still can then. You're not going to look back to times when you could've seen your grandchildren but didn't and feel pleased that you took the moral high ground.

OP do the children see their other grandparents?

You are sure? Well that settles it then.

But even if its “child friendly” it’s not their kids house- can you honestly not see their point here? And they’d still have to undertake a 4/5 hour journey (with breaks) to get there with 3 very young kids. That alone is too much for a lot of people and certainly would be a lot more difficult than you and your DH doing it.

It sounds like you’re just determined to get your own way, fine, your decision but you’ll be the one to lose out. These power games never work out well for the MIL/ grandparents.

Plus if your health is so bad that you can’t catch couple of trains or a coach, why would you want 5 people including 3 small kids staying for days? You can have it both ways! Maybe the sea air would be a tonic!

3 kids of those ages, I can totally see how they don't want to travel. It's so much easier to visit young children in their own home. Your son doesn't want to see the wider family, he wants a break because he has 3 young kids.

Both sides should put in more effort. We made a similar move and have never had an issue doing the journey (4hrs for us, 4.5 at times when there's been lots of roadworks), our eldest was 5 when we moved and the youngest has been doing the journey since a few months old. Do their children suffer from travel sickness or are they still babies? If not then 3.5 hours shouldn't be a nightmare journey, one stop for a wee and a leg stretch at most (I do a straight run house to house with no stops 9 times out of 10 since the youngest was 3, before that we would stop for 20 mins or so)

But my family also make an effort, my mum comes to stay for a couple of days every couple of months, my gran comes a couple of times a year and stays at a travel lodge because our lifestyles/bedtimes clash so she likes to have a quiet place to retreat to at the end of the day.

Couldn't they shuffle the sleeping arrangements so you can stay with them to save costs? I can see how it would become quite expensive otherwise with train travel. We sleep in the kids rooms or on the sofa so my mum can have our bed when she visits, it's not ideal but it's only for a couple of nights

I'm assuming they aren't planning a holiday?

I think both of you needs to compromise.

Working people have holidays and there are bank holidays

But both of you are digging heels in