Adult children moving away - visiting etiquette

[Nothrown]

If your adult children have moved away from where you live, and now have children. Both parents work, kids have clubs all small / young kids.

You are retired, no major health issues (just aching / more nervous about driving in darkness)

Is there an etiquette on visits? Would you expect to visit the family with small children more than they come to your house?

Would you be offended if they didn’t visit often and expect you to go their house more, with a 1 hour drive?

It's only an hour! When DTs were small GPs mostly came to us because our house was set up for babies / toddlers and theirs very much wasn't. Once they grew out of the wrecking everything stage we split it fairly evenly.

My family are 3hrs away, they have visited the grandchildren once each - immediately after being born. They are now 5 and 2.

We make it over there 2-3x per year, its stressful because the house is not at all child friendly (full of hazards like bleach bottles lying around, dog poo in the garden, nowhere to play).

They are not ever likely to visit us so we get on with it for the sake of the kids but I do resent it and feel visiting should be more equal.

Tbf I am the one that moved away . . .

My husband and I are the grandparents. We work full time still .My son , Dil and the 2 grandkids come to ours much more . We only live half an hour away but when they come they sometimes stay the night . We have a bigger house , a big garden and the kids love it . Plus I cook and they have a good relaxing time .

Cant you just take turns?

I personally never go to other peoples houses. They come to me.

I never quite understand these questions because the usual assumption seems to be that travelling is harder whereas I find hosting harder work than travelling for an hour (albeit that would have been different when kids were very very young and heeded a lot of stuff / baby proofing etc). Also not sure how working is relevant unless we are talking about going round in the evening or staying for a few days over working days which can't be necessary for one hour away.

So I'd probably say doing it equally is fair if neither like travelling.

If was a longer journey I'd say the ones who chose to move further away have more responsibility to travel to keep the relationship going

An hour is pretty close.

I drive that at the drop of a hat.

My family were three and four hours away respectively.

Personally as an now older (medically) retired person I remember how much of a fucking nightmare it was getting small children out of the house and into a (usually) not childproofed grandparents house and so I do a lot of the travelling.

Team grandparents should travel,

I will be in this situation soon, ds and his partner (will probably soon be his wife), are moving 2.5 hours away. They don't have kids yet but that is on the cards. I will try and be led by them on visits, wouldnt really want to do 5 hour round trip in a day so dh and I would either stay with them or book a B&B. I'm hoping they will come back fairly often as her parents live around here too. Once they have kids i will defintily book B&B as I wont want to inconveniance them.

It depends on different factors but ultimately one hour isn't very far. Maybe it should be shared.

I preferred to visit others when mine were little as I didn't have to tidy up.

I am assuming you're the adult child and you think that grandparents should visit you?

We did equal visits. We are further and to me an hour is nothing. Ultimately though you can't make someone visit more than they want to.

Whoever finds it easiest does the most. My DD doesn't have kids but she works full time and doesn't drive. I've done most of the travelling for years as she's 3 hours away. Recently I've become incapacitated so she's doing the travelling. Most likely it'll go back to me once I'm abĺe to drive again.

We're in that situation with our DP and DPIL albeit the journey times are more like 1.5hrs and 2.25hrs respectively.

We see more of my DP and I'd say they come here 75% of the time. Some of the reason is that we have more space, but also DD is a pain in the car still and they have more flexibility with their time to travel at quieter times.

With my DPIL, we see them less and it's more like 60/40 them coming to us.

For us it's all about the most flexible people travelling. When a grandparent has been ill or in a position where travelling is more difficult, we've gone to theirs more. Now it works well for them to more of the travelling.

Also if DD has for example a 2hr birthday party at a weekend, the parents coming to us means we get good family time but she still gets to go to her party, and friends are important too at that age.

I'm sure the balance will change back and forth over the next decade or so as parents health needs change and DD's needs change.

Why does he have to work Saturday mornings; what kind of school does he teach in?

For a family with young children where both parents work and they have clubs they are going to be incredibly exhausted and won’t have much free time, if any. Weekends will be spent firefighting the mess, washing and shopping and squeezing whatever they can in above that.

As a grandparent I wouldn’t ‘expect’ anything. I’d just be looking at how you could support them. A visit from them once a quarter perhaps, with you visiting in between times during daylight hours?

Grandparents (if not working)

when my kids were little they hated being in the car for an hour - travel sickness etc even with tablets and we were tired parents

I’m nearer to being a GP and I’ll be delighted to visit mine if they want me to

DH and I are in exactly that situation. We are retired and go to our children much more than they come to us, as our parents did. If the younger generation are in the trenches with jobs and children, it is only fair for the older, retired parents to come to them, assuming they are healthy enough to do so.

I just saw that we are only talking about 1 hour! My adult dc are both a plane ride away. Surely the grandparents can drive for one hour.

We live abroad from adult DC so try to see them bi-annually.

I can't imagine being put off visiting if they only lived an hour away! 😂

Grandma needs to practice driving at night.

About two hours drive away from my parents and we both host. Sometimes in the holidays I’ll drive to them. Other times they drive to us and both scenarios we stay over. Only rarely do I sometimes drive back the same day but I wouldn’t expect my parents to drive the same back back.

I don't see how an hours drive or small kids prevents the children from visiting. And vice versa.
My parents came over every Sunday for lunch (they lived closer than an hour though). During the week I'd go over there to visit while kids were in nursery/school.
In your shoes I'd be inviting them or you parent at least a couple times a month, and I'd be inviting myself over to theirs if they preferred that.

I wish my DC lived only an hour away - they are much further away! We always travel to them. They travel to us to see their DGGP about once a year. It's easier, they have room for us and the DGC can still do there usual stuff 😀

Your post is actually quite biased, to show the grandparent as unreasonable.

That being said, of course it makes sense that the grandparent should do more of a the visiting, as long as they are well and able to do the journey comfortably.

My parents always came here for a day, usually every school holiday (so every 6 weeks). My DF did like to get most of the way home before it got dark though, so visits in the Winter were shorter.

A 1 hour drive is not ‘moving away’ ffs. Take turns, who cares!

Boarding school with Saturday morning lessons (and cricket all Saturday afternoon in the summer).

My folks used to come up a few times a year and stay for a few days. Then we'd go and see them in school holidays and have a bit of a holiday as well, as they lived on the coast. But further away than an hour.

My inlaws live round the corner but it doesn't mean we see them all the time - not for weeks at a time, sometimes when we're all busy. My mum lives with us, I haven't even seen her today as I went into the office early!

When I was growing up older relatives we had who were an hour away used to come and stay for the weekend about once a month. Then we would go to theirs for a few days at Christmas.

As long as you can agree it between you there is no right and wrong approach, nor one size fits all.