Adult children and visits home to see older family

[saphiro]

How often do your adult kids come home to visit? We are having trouble getting our daughter to understand that she needs to come home every few months to see family.

All of her grandparents are 85+ and love to see her. Fortunately they are all relatively fit and healthy and still enjoying life with trips overseas etc.

Dd says she dislikes coming home because the area is a shit hole. We live in a poor ex-mining village in northumbria. Dd lives in London and is doing very well for herself.

She comes every three months or so for a night or two and then comes back for a few days at Christmas. Otherwise she uses her annual leave to go on holidays or to see friends.

How do we get her to understand that her family want to see her and won’t be around forever? She thinks that her grandparents could come and visit her for a night or two.

@saphiro You sound very chippy and small town, tbh ,OP. What on earth do you think will happen to your parents on the Tube?? How strange. If they can travel abroad, I’m sure they’ll be able to cope with London 🙄. Whenever someone is described as “doing well for themselves” it always makes the describer sound jealous in a “ideas above their station” way. Hope that’s not how you feel about your own daughter.

That's a ridiculous statement. Old people live in London and get respected in the Tube and everywhere else. I don't know where you've got that idea that they'll get pushed around. Have you been to London?

OFGS anyone that can navigate an airport can cope with the tube - or your daughter could meet them off the train!

It's London not the Gaza Strip.

Get them on a train, book assistance in London and they will get them in a taxi or maybe DD will meet them. They don't have to go on the tube and there are quieter areas in London.

That is true, I'm 70 and the last time I was in London I had so many offers of help at Paddington and on the tube. I'd quite like to be 16 again but I have to confess being old has some advantages.

You need to accept that your daughter is an adult and can now make her own decisions and has a life of her own.

She is visiting at a frequency which works for her and her life and you need to respect that.

She does not have a endless supply of annual leave and it is perfectly understandable that she wants to use it to have the holidays of her choice, not just visit family.

Trying to guilt trip her is not acceptable either...

Like being offered a seat by nice young men 😊(I'm the same age as you).

Yes it is rather nice isn't it.

My parents lived in a pretty place in the further reaches of Devon when I was a young woman building a career for myself in London, so it wasn’t the place that stopped me visiting more often , nor my relationship my family. I visited about as often as your daughter did, tried to do it more often when my father became ill, but my life was very busy, weekends were for doing all the life admin I had no time or energy for in the week plus building and maintaining a social life which doesn’t happen naturally, you have to put the effort in.

There are more opportunities for keeping in touch now without the expense and time constraints of physically travelling on a busy Friday night and back on slow Sunday trains - can you suggest and facilitate a FaceTime or WhatsApp video chat with her older relatives ?

I don't think that's too bad. An overnight stay every three months plus Christmas is enough for a young person who is working. I don't agree with getting 85 year olds to travel to London though. I wouldn't do it and I'm 20 years younger.

How old is daughter?

every three months isn’t bad! You want every two? Or demanding every couple weekends?

uk is tiny, so it’s not like it’s long to get anywhere. But they also tend to be wenies about traveling.