AIBU to think our current grandparent visits are fair?

[Pinkmondays]

Trying to keep this as short as possible, is the following - in your opinion - adequate time with family (we have 3 sets of grandparents). There's me, DH and our son.

-Grandparents 1- live 5 mins drive away..we see them on average every other week, sometimes more.
-Grandparents 2: live an hour's drive away, we see them once a month for a full Sunday usually

• Grandparents 3: live a 2 hour flight away. We see them at least every 2-3 months for a week, and the whole summer holidays plus every Christmas.

Is this fair? I'm asking because grandparents 2 make noises about not seeing us enough!

Why can’t you drive then to them? An hour away and a monthly visit isnt great. My parents are an hour away and we see them every week.

My mums an hour away and I see her once a month. I’ve got a busy life and I don’t want to spend a day of every weekend with my mum. I also have a dad, and separated in laws, so we’d never have time to go out ourselves, see friends or relax if we had to do weekly visits to four parents!

I’m not driving or being driven a 2 hour round trip more than once a month just to visit granny. Sorry.

Granny can come here if it’s that important to her when even her own son cnba.

My parents are 30 mins away, my in-laws are 20 mins away.
we try to see everyone equally, but it’s just not possible. This weekend we spent it with my family, but 3/5 weekends my kids are visiting my in-laws (who are amazing grandparents) and then 1/5 they visit my parents (again amazing) the difference is- my in-laws have retired and my parents are still working 3/5 days a week and my dads not in great health right now.
You are NOT a pie, your son is not a toy to be “shared” so what you have is fine!!

EVERY WEEK? So you never get a weekend off?

The problem is of course your husband neglecting his mother and step dad, but nothing you can do about that!

My in laws live 5 mins away and my parents live abroad but we see them both fairly equally overall. My in laws get more cups of tea type stop-offs, whereas my parents get a few days at a time.

Like you I feel very guilty being away from my parents and sisters family. So I do try to make up for it with longer visits.though as the kids have got older, and we have a very busy year this year with work, its difficult to do too many/long visits.

My parents are v proactive about visiting us, which is great but drives my husband mad! I told him he should have thought of that before marrying a foreign woman.

Because when you're that age you probably are very tired and travelling is quite tough. BTW I'm only 55 but I have parents and parents-in-law who are in their 80s. From 70 onwards things get harder - for most.

I could tell which set of parents was who before you said. I think you see them all quite a lot, but if GP want to see more of you, maybe they should drive over a bit more. Appreciate harder with their age though. Don’t feel bad, you do a lot already.

Oh, FILs do!
Which is fair enough if they really want to be involved in their lives, and are good people.
Health/whether you work/ability to travel comes into it too, OP, as well as how they are. For example, I would be less likely to put myself out for a trophy grandparent, who never bothered to do anything to help me (despite being well enough, and no longer working FT), and expected me to drop everything to suit them, than a would for a grandparent who was caring.
I would try to keep it fair though, because children do notice, and it can come back on a parent who favoured some people for no reason.

Would you stop grandparents 1 and 2 from visiting you more? Could your DH visit his parents with your/his DS on his own more?

Absolutely.

These visits aren't only about seeing GPs. It's also about DS being exposed to his maternal side's culture, being in an environment where the language is spoken. He gets all that as a matter of course in day to day life in father's country, but there isn't another way for him to experience his equally important maternal culture aside from spending time there. That needs to be taken into account.

I think you are doing OK @Pinkmondays. My family all live disgustingly close to each other and we managed to navigate it well with grandparents and now we are GP's ourselves. It does help that we all have particularly low tolerance levels and find a couple of hours in each others company is more than enough (well I have particularly low tolerance levels 😄)
Maybe talk to MIL and see if there's something special you can all do occasionally that might mean more to her than hours spent together.

I guess it makes a difference if OP is originally from the country where her parents live. If so, the time visiting them isn't really just time visiting them. It's going to be time going home, seeing friends and other family that are still there. If parents are ex pats and there are no other ties to the country, then it is rather skewed and unfair.

Absolutely. Unless you're actively standing in the way of seeing gp2 more, it's entirely fair. It isn't on the DIL to arrange the visits.

I'm a MIL to very chilled sons in law. So consequently entirely reasonable and above reproach!

Doesn't stop me having smpathy for MILs to DILs though, or prevent me thinking rationally.

Genuinely just have a regular invite. If they refuse that’s on them. If your dh wanted to visit alone with your child I assume you’d let him so again not your problem.

By the same though maybe the mil should make an effort to be friends with the dil before the grandbabies arrive and make sure she has a decent relationship with her own child pop in and visit wise.

Every Christmas really isn’t “fair”. The other grandparents must feel left out, as indeed they are. Can you not host anything @Pinkmondays? Seems you just go away to your parents. Doesn’t dc want to see any friends in the summer? Just his grandparent? My Dc would not have liked that. It’s very isolating. So I would change the routine a bit.

Stop using Chat GPT to write posts. It's honestly pathetic that you can't manage a short post without ai.

Who is this aimed at?

The OP. Her post was very very clearly written by ai.

Yes, it definitely was.

@Pinkmondays if DH asked you all to spend Christmas with MIL what would you say?

Well it’s obvious who the favourite set are! But I don’t think it needs to be equal - if your DH would like to see him mother more, maybe he could take the kids without you or they could call down to share the driving? I imagine if his parents lived a flight away and yours were an hours drive it would be very different. Every xmas and all summer with yours sounds unfair and I can see why his mom is upset but if it works with you and your DH, that’s fine and sounds like some childhood issues still ongoing anyway. I think you are entitled to your stance but they are entitled to be annoyed/upset about it - I’d be really upset if that was how it ended up in my family when my kids are grown up, but I’m hoping I haven’t caused that much angst as a mom!

I can see why set 2 are a bit miffed to be honest. I think once a month is plenty for grandparents an hour + away. But set 1 gets seen a lot and set 3 get overnights and all the holidays and Christmas. It feels like they are just being squeezed in by comparison. Could you stay over with set 2 for occasionally and make it a 2 day visit?

I didn’t think so because there were a couple of errors in it … but it is possible that I am wrong.

If (like me), you really don’t want to see AI generated posts, please come onto this thread and say so. It’s in site stuff and MN monitor threads there.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/site_stuff/5490256-posts-written-by-chat-gpt-and-other-ai