I see my dad once a week. He’s 90. I’m glad I’m nearby; I’ll be so sad when he’s gone. He’s a great guy.
I see my mom about once a week too, but she lives nearby. My sibs see her 2x a year, generally.
True, but if you go back even further, we all lived together throughout our lives, pretty much.
Some of these comments are really harsh. I moved away to go to college and never lived home again. I then moved all over the place for a decade. But I made it home for at least one major holiday (they paid for the airfare), and saw my family frequently. Still do, and we are very close.
You should not feel guilty about feeling hurt that he doesn’t want to come home. That is normal. So is his feeling, to some extent, of not wanting to come home. Ideally, you would all have a mutually rewarding agreement on visitation plans…like a family reunion, certain holidays (maybe alternating). I would also make plans to see him on his turf. What I would find unacceptable is his being unappreciative or obnoxious about it. If my kid tells me that they don’t want to spend their one week of vacation leave flying home I get it. But if they don’t want to see me at all, that’s another story. Kids tend to drift away and then back in their 20s. maybe this is that stage. But a changed relationship doesn’t mean that there is no relationship. If my kids have an" I"m on my own and owe you nothing attitude," I would feel the same way about tuition.
I tend to agree with @wis75. Relationships need to evolve as life changes. My wife cried when the kids walked on their own to kindergarten. I felt proud. She cried when we dropped them off for college and I felt proud. (Actually, she didn’t cry when she dropped our son off as she felt it was the perfect place for him). We’re both pleased to see them entering young adult life so well. They spend a lot more time talking to GF and BF respectively than they do us, but that is just the way things go.
I see my mother a few times a year including Passover every other year, family events (weddings, Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, etc.), plus my annual filial visit to help with taxes. I’d say this is 3-4x a year. Because I haven’t loved being guilt-tripped about not visiting enough, we decided to organize a birthday party for my mother for a weekend either in the Berkshires or at our house.
My brother lived in Asia for 15+ years with his family. He came back every xmas with his family, and came to every family vacation. My kids grew up with their grandparents living 10 miles away. I see my mother every other week since my father passed away. My kids take the lead from me. They see how I treat my parents and how close I am with my siblings. I think we can be independent and still be close to our family.
D1 is marrying someone with 25+ first cousins (the father has 10 siblings) and they are all very close. The family get together every Thanksgiving and go camping every summer, very similar to our family.
@oldfort I couldn’t agree more. Being independent doesn’t necessitate abandoning family. My parents have been very active grandparents in my kids lives regardless of the distance. My kids see how close we all are, and hopefully will emulate that as they get older.
Our DS son did not come “home” except at Xmas and maybe for a week in the Summer after he started Grad school.
Grad school location WAS his [ new] home.
no use fighting this one- the bird has flown, and he needs to be able to spread his wings- regardless of who is paying for grad school.
We ended up being the ones to visit him at his school once or twice a year.
This forum represents a narrow slice of society: mostly upper-middle class, educated, probably mostly WASP I’m going to guess.
On the one hand, yes, given the way we’ve raised our kids, telling them they need to go to another coast to go to college because that’s the best fit and that college has the best reputation, then we can congratulate ourselves–on reaching that goal of having the kid be out of the house basically for good at age 18, and likely get a job and marry someone from the other side of the country and be gone. I will say, though, that for many people in this country (rural whites, and probably most minority cultures), and many people in other cultures, they would find it bizarre that the children don’t live near the parents, and that children and grandparents don’t have a close (i.e. daily or almost daily interaction) relationship. My sister once told me: when we were looking at college and grad school and professions, did we understand that we were being pushed into a national job pool? Was staying in our home town, or at least going back, ever given to us as an option, once we graduated college?
The OP’s son doesn’t seem to share my sister’s regret, but I think these things are related. Yes, it is natural (in our society) to want to declare your independence in your 20s and get far away from your parents. But it is also pretty natural to gravitate back to family, especially when you start to have kids of your own. But when you’ve settled across the country, it can be too late. You have two weeks a year when your kids can go see grandma, and you ask yourself “why am I on this side of the country again?”
To the OP, I actually want to say “congratulations”–and it could very well be this way with my kids–because your kid is accomplished, smart, independent, and will be OK in life. You have done your job, really, and I mean this sincerely. You might not see much of him going forward, but given the society that we live in, you’ve done well, and should be proud.
@rocket88 That is a truly bizarre assessment with race and socioeconomics determining closeness of a family apparently. DH’s family came over on the Mayflower and have probably moved around within a 50 mile radius in all that time. Kids today are traveling far away to college for many reasons including the hunt for merit aid which has sent these upper middle class white WASPs you mention to places like Alabama and U Arizona. OP said the first college was a free ride so money seems the deciding factor. I have no idea what “class” OP is but I really think that you got that wrong. BTW we are upper class WASPs and are sending our kids to instate publics because it is the best value just like many UMC families across the country.
I see my mom every day. I talk to her few times per day. Same for my husband when his parents were alive. My kid in college and my adult child call me daily and text few times per day. Our parents were in daily contact with our grandparents.
My mom, who is almost 90, said of the brother who lived with my grandparents until their death and even still resides in the family farmstead (now surrounded by city) that “He was gone when he needed to be gone.” She felt everyone needed to leave the nest, go away, and learn to be an adult. Come back if you want, but you need to leave first. I don’t think we can say that leaving is new to our generation. And I also don’t think @wis75 is harsh.
Is there time between Europe and the internship? Can you visit him then, when he will have less to do and maybe plan some fun times. I assume it is not “on the way” for him to come home after Europe.
I don’t think it is always about the closeness of the family, but on where the jobs are and where life takes you. Although I think it takes effort on all fronts to remain close. It can be easy to become more distant when you aren’t in each others lives regularly. I see that with my husband and his siblings who live far away. While they feel close, they can go months without talking.
We ended up near my family, not by design but by husband’s job. We saw his parents at least once and usually a couple of times per year as they were on the opposite coast (and overseas some of the time) but traveled to our area for business and we traveled to the west coast for many vacations. We still felt close to them, it was just distance, work and money that kept us apart. But it is difficult.
My parents were pretty infirm during my kids childhood and were not coming to games etc. But we saw them regularly and my kids saw us take care of them as they aged.
Now, my father-in-law is in his 90s and lives in a retirement community that is at least a 7 hour drive from a couple of his kids and we are on the opposite coast. He only gets family visits every few months, if that. While he is in a unique community, I really think I would want to live close to at least one of my kids at that point in my life, if at all possible. Not to live with them, but to have them close enough to visit weekly or at least every few weeks and to be there in case of an emergency.
There is no easy answer, especially as the parents get too old to travel. With a job and a family, it is hard to fly across the country or use every vacation to visit family. OTOH, it is hard not to be there for your parents at least some of the time.
I can’t even imagine this. How different families are!
I remember going home as being like visiting your old kindergarten classroom. The chairs look so small. Everything is different, not bad, just different.
I went to college in the same county as my parents’ home but didn’t go home much after the first summer because I built a life on campus. We were and are a close family but it is more than physical presence, especially since I’m now married and live out of state. It is great that you can visit him. Do that and don’t try to guilt him - It will turn talking to you into a chore.
I’ve always told my children to consider the whole globe open to them, since I will come visit wherever they land.
My sons (mid-20s) are 3,000 and 4,900 miles away from us. The carrot approach works better than the stick for us.
S1 never came home for the summers after he left for college; always had research or a job that didn’t involve coming home. To my surprise, he actually comes home to visit a couple times a year, generally for 3-4 days, but he’s here, he did it on his own dime, and he is interactive and pleasant. Because he lives in an area where we have friends and have traveled as a family many times as he was growing up, we also go out to see him during the summer. We let him set the timing around his commitments, and then he’ll generally join us for some camping or other short trips. He’s a relatively introverted person, and while he shared a LOT with me when he lived at home, he kept his life pretty private during college. As he’s gotten older, he has opened up again. We have never told him he had to come home – we’ve let him find the way. I’d rather do this on his terms than insist on mine and drive him away.
S2 recently moved overseas after living with us post-college for almost three years.He’s worked really hard for this opportunity and I am not holding him back (even though it’s in a potentially dangerous area). He’s the one who saved my life five years ago and while I have MANY, MANY panicked feelings about him not being here if it happened again, I have not shared that with him.
We do whatsapp and Google Hangouts to stay in touch – both guys seem to prefer the video contact rather than typing.
The son of good family friends (S1’s best buddy in HS) just finished a STEM PhD – he was in the lab ALL.THE.TIME. He’d call his mom at 2 am and while he was letting experiments run. He could only come home for a 2-3 days a couple times a year because he was running so much lab work. He’s now doing a post-doc and is still spending his life in the lab. It’s what he loves. And he doesn’t love his parents any less. They try to do a big trip every couple of years to some place that has lots of intellectual interest (all three are scientists) and that works for them. The prospect of a free trip to Iceland, the Grand Canyon, Galapagos Islands, etc. has its attractions. And because he took the full ride at the flagship, did extremely well, and got a fully funded PhD at a top school, his parents have savings to fund these expeditions. Win-win.
Keep in touch with my 90 plus year old father via phone calls. His memory is going more and more- from not knowing who his adult grandchildren are to spouses’ names now. Every phone call involves repeating where I live (going on six years) and his repeating his current weather info within two minutes. Nothing to talk about (btw- mother died over 30 years ago- don’t smoke!). Upside is that we kids no longer argue views with him. Phone calls serve to know he is still alive (refuses to move).
re post #93. Why spend your talking time with parents daily instead of peers for the mundane? Why do they need so much life detail? Does this crutch deter them from learning to live as independently? Don’t they have better things to do? Could go on and on presenting an alternate view on the ways things should be.
As you can see, different families sure have different ideas on healthy, loving relationships.
Let go.
Spending few minutes on the phone with parents daily is a norm in Eastern Europe where we are from and is not taking much of the busy day. Believe me no problem with independence for both kids. Both kids grew up learning that there’s nothing more important then family. Again different norms for different families.