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| Fishing with Grandpa |
The problem is - we don’t live near any of them. We used to when we were in Edinburgh. It was fabulous, Crazy would have lots of weekend sleep overs with her Granny and she was an amazing support to us.
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| Hanging with Granny |
Then we moved to Australia and we didn’t even move to the same state as my parents.
Now, Crazy’s grandparents are either on the other side of the world or the other side of the country. A 32 hour flight or a 17 hour drive (or two flights), both expensive little jaunts.
Definitely worth it, just not something we do too often.
We Skype to Scotland and do letters and drawings and emails and videos and phone calls but it is still not the same as weekly face to face contact.
My mum hasn’t been able to travel and with our big jolly last year and then me being ill and not being able to be near mum, we have only seen my parents once in 12 months, MrF’s once in 18 months and nearly three years. A long time between Milo’s in a kids mind.
We do it in holiday blocks, Scotland for three weeks in June, South Australia for two weeks in January, but it’s not consistent. We hang out and make the most of the time, Crazy feels comfortable quickly and gets spoilt mad, but it is definitely a different relationship than if she saw them more regularly.
If we were closer her grandparents would hear her guitar practice, watch hockey, know where she goes to school, babysit, be more of a part of her life. She misses this and gets quite upset seeing pictures of family outings with her Granny and cousins.
We know that our choices have meant Crazy is missing out and living without family support means financially there is an impact with babysitters.
With more and more people traveling and/or meeting partners overseas this, the international family unit, must be a regular family thing - what do you do? What if the Grandparents don’t do Skype or FaceTime, what if you don’t want to use all your annual leave shlepping to the other side of the country, who is missing out?
I would love to know what works best for you.
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| At Grandma's house you get a cat and breakfast in front of the telly |
Our girls have tonnes of grandparents - but we have zero support. Actually that's not entirely accurate. Last year my mother in law watched the girls for 6 hours so we could go to a friends wedding. She lives in the next suburb, drives and as we homeschool and she finishes work at 2pm she could have as much access as she wants. She isn't interested. She adores her other 6 grandkids, but our family unit just doesn't get a look in. She seperated from her husband two years ago and he left without so much as a goodbye to the girls (who knew him as their grandfather). My mum is a crazy alcholic/drug addict and lives very far away (we actually moved to melbourne to get away) and my dad hasn't even seen my twins (who are now 9 years old) as he isn't interested. Then my husband has his biological dad and step mum who are lovely and live the next suburb over. But he only met them when he was in his 20's...so they aren't close.
ReplyDeleteSo the short answer would be - nope. No support and no great interest. We do have great friends. The homeschooling community has been fantastic and a few good friends and I help each other out when needed. It's tough. But for us as our parents sucked so much we didn't miss them in our lives and as they have never been interested in our girls, the girls don't particularly want to spend time with them (especially my mother in law who only ever wants to take them to church so they don't grow up with just my heathen influence....but the girls HATE church). But now my little brother lives in Melbourne he helps out if we ask.
Hubby has been a hands on dad from the start and was the stay at home parent for years while I worked. So our support has always been each other. Ok better stop now or I will end up with an essay on why my family sucks balls and why we are so much happier on our own LOL.
Good luck trying to figure it out...but if you decide you don't want to go to Scotland feel free to throw away your tickets in my direction :P
Oh Mrs S I do not know the answer. I left Brisvegas when I was 22 to discover the world and ended up many years later living in Melbourne - which I consider home (mind you I would like to call Spain home but that has to wait a few more years!). I lost my Mum to cancer 4 years ago and that was tough not being there to help out and when my Dad had a kidney transplant before that luckily we were actually 'trying' to live in Brisbane so I could help out a bit and Evil Ruby got to love her maternal grandparents greatly. But my partner and I know that we belong where we belong and that our kids benefit more from living in inner Melbourne than the suburbs of Brisbane. Schooling is better and the coffee is too! And prefer this weather. We don't tend to visit as much as we did because we figure everyone else can hop on a plane and see us instead of us schlepping there every holiday and spending money on a 'non holiday' and if they don't want to fly to see us then that is their choice. Yep the kids miss out on grandparent time but the time they do get is quite intense and they know how much they are loved and spoilt. Gosh when we tried an experiment of living in Brisbane we didn't really get much help from the olds and we only had one child at that point (mind you my folks are elderly but they did look after Evil Ruby for small stretches of time which was grand). You make the choices you make because you believe they are the right ones - even if it means sometimes it isn't perfect. And sometimes being away from family is a godsend when you don't get caught up in family dramas and squabbles!
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