How much time with grandparents?

[LastingLight]

How much time do your dc's spend with their grandparents? How far away from you do the grandparents stay? We're having issues with (adopted) dd's biological grandparents demanding what we feel is excessive visits. They live a 2 hour plane ride away.

We have 2 dc, 5 (nearly 6) and 4. Both sets of grandparents live a 15 minute drive away.
Our 4 year old (who usn't in school yet) goes to dh's parents house for a day every other week. Both of them go for a day or a sleepover during the school holidays. My parents have them for a day every few weeks.
We feel it's important that the kids have a relationship with their grandparents but wouldn't agree to more than we are happy with.
Adopted or biological, your daughter is your daughter and as her parents, you have to set the visits to what you feel is best. With such a long journey, perhaps longer, but less frequent visits would work out better...?

Both sets live 10-15 minutes away. Mil has dd 1 day a week. Dm has her 1/2 to 1 day a week depending on our/her commitments. Dm also has her for sleepover about once a month.

Dd is 3 by the way. Has been like this since I went back to work 2 years ago.

My gps were about an hours drive away and at 11 I probably saw them once a month at most, obviously with my parents. Sometimes stayed for a few days in the school hols.

Mine live 3-4 hours drive. See them x2 a year

see my mum, Granny, about 4 times a year and Nanna about 0 times a year! We live an hours plane ride away

I loved it in the days that it could be several times a week.

See DFil once a fortnight (10 mins drive away). Son has neither been alone with him or stayed overnight as DFil is old and infirm and son is like Roadrunner on E

We are abroad, in DH's country. DF is 2hrs away by plane, he comes 3-4 times a year for long weekends. DM the same distance, she comes twice a year for ten days. Neither have son on his own, or overnight (obviously!). DM freaked out when we asked her to stay with sleeping son twenty minutes while we ran an errand once last year stupid moo so no help there.

We do Skype regularly with them so son knows who they are when they visit . He's 2.1 btw.

My DPs live five doors down. We see them.most days as DM is a CM who.also minds DD while.me.and dh work.

Mil - see about once a fortnight or so. FIL once ever couple of.months. They both live (seperatley) about a ten min drive away.

I have 2 boys, 4 yrs and 8 months. We stay over at my parents one saturday a month (1 hr 20 mins drive), and at the moment, inlaws (30 minute drive away) come here from 10am to 11am one sat morning to see 8 month old, then they take 4 yr old with him to theirs and we pick him up at 3pm.

We wanted a couple of weekends a month purely for us so we could have family time (and his parents were a bit full on so we had to put something in place - obviously I'd visit my parents more if I could (I don't drive) :-)

As with most things though, it's all about what you're comfortable with.

Both sets live about 90mins away, we see them probably every couple of months, either a day or overnight visit. Kids are now 14 and 11 and the frequency has always been about this regular.

I saw my 3+ hour drive away GPs for a long weekend every school holiday, possibly longer in the Summer (I went in holiday with them a couple of times) and always for christmas.

My DDs see their GPs 1.5hrs (no room to stay) rather sporadically perhaps every 6/8 weeks. It's getting very hard for my DM to get in and out the car, so we tend to go there.

DH's parents are sadly no longer with us, but I doubt we'd have seen them more than 2/3 x a year. They were 5-6hrs drive.

My dcs have seen the inlaws family only 3 times (they are now teens). They live 6 hours drive away so it's a big effort for us all to go up there. Despite invitations, none of them have come here more than once. No family feud, they just don't want to make the effort. I find it bizarre, they are just indifferent.

We live a 1 hour plane ride (and 3 hour bus journey) from GPs, they see DS whenever we go back home which is every few months if possible. Sometimes skype but not on a regular schedule or anything.

Thank you for all the replies. The gps have a court order granting access from when dd was 4. They get 2 x 8 hour days per month, extra days in long holidays and 2 sleepovers per year. This worked ok when they lived close to us but 2 years ago they moved to the other end of the country. In 2012 granny flew down to us for one weekend every month to see dd for 2 days.

In 2013 they could no longer afford that so she came down for 6 days in each of the April and September week-long holidays. This meant that dd spent virtually the whole holiday in granny's company and didn't see friends and other family members. Then they demanded that she flies up to them in Dec for 12 days. We said no as the previous year she went for only 3 days and 12 is way too much. We went for mediation and the upshot was that she went for 5 nights.

Now we got an email from them requesting that she goes up again for 5 nights in March/April. Now I might have considered this if these were people we liked and trusted but they're not. Unfortunately dd loves them and what's not to love - they give her whatever she wants and enforces no boundaries.

We will go to mediation again to sort out access arrangements that make more sense given that we live so far apart now.

For comparison, she sees my parents who live a 20 minute drive away maybe once every 3 to 4 weeks and may spent a day or two with them during long holidays. She sees my in-laws more often as they pick her up from school every Wednesday and she stays for supper. This is a treat for everybody and fil is the favourite grandparent.

Sorry for the long post, I just had to explain the background and vent my frustration with the situation.

We used to live in Devon until our dc were 3.5 a d 5.5 and our families were in Northern Italy. We spent with them a good part of the holidays. My mum also visited us at least 3 times a year and stayed at ours for 10 days at a time. Mil would come maybe once or twice a year for a week.

We now live 10 minutes away from my parents and the dc see them twice a week, soemtimes more. We see the inlaws once a month and stay at theirs for the weekend.

They see them both very often we live near both sets and they adore each other.

light that seems an awful lot of contact for adoptive grandparents, neither of my DC have ever had an overnight stay with their grandparents without us there. Can you get the contact time reduced (especially given she has access to 2 other sets of grandparents)?

Both sets of grandparents live at least 3 hours away. DD spends a couple of nights a month with my parents and maybe I one night every two months with my in laws. I wish it could be more with both but it's just too far.
Depends what you're comfortable with I suppose.

Eletheomel it's the biological grandparents, not that it should make a difference. Our mediator can modify the court order if both parties agree, otherwise we're heading back to court. That's expensive and our lawyer warned us that it could go either way... logic and the court are not always on the same side. We hope the mediator will agree with our proposal (which cuts back a bit on the contact), we're waiting for her response. We also don't want dd to turn around one day and tell us we kept her from her biological family as that is not the intention.

OP I'm not sure you can compare regular gp visits with an adoptive parent situation.

If they have access due to being related you can't use their lack of boundaries as a trason to reduce access. I think it is reasonable to negotiate different terms as time goes on.

Why did the gps not adopt their gc?

Sorry light i understood it was biological gparents, but said adoptive (doh!). I just find it odd that they were given so much contact time initially, but I have no experience of contact orders for gparents when children are adopted, I suppose I felt that adoption is a new start for teh child and am maybe surprised that so much weight is given to teh biological parents grandparents, especially when they live so far away and contact has to be an overnight stay (rather than a day visit).

The back story is long and sad, I will try to keep it as short as possible. DH was married to DD's birth mother (BM) but he is not her bio father. He met them when DD was 11 months. 3 Months later BM's parents kicked her and DD out and they moved in with DH. After another 3 months they got married. The intention was that DH should adopt DD but when his wife died 6 months after they got married the paperwork had not been done yet. BM had also mentioned to friends that she wanted DH to raise DD if anything should happen to her. The gp's initially said they will support him in adopting but then changed their minds and applied to adopt themselves. This led to a legal process which also involved social workers and psychologists. Their tactics to discredit DH included telling the police that they believed DH killed his wife or assisted her to commit suicide. After 2 years of this (during which time I appeared on the scene) the gp's realised they were wasting their money and the court would not take DD away from DH so they agreed to drop their application if they could get an access order. We were so weary and poor by that stage that we just agreed with what the lawyers proposed.

Their behaviour that we object to does not just relate to lack of boundaries. E.g. they told DD, aged 6, that her mother fell pregnant as a result of an affair with a married man. While this is true, why would you tell a 6 year old? They also badmouth other family members and encourage DD to lie to us about stuff that happens when she is with them.