<p>My D1 spent the weekend before Christmas with her bf’s family and they had Christmas dinner and exchanged gifts. She and her bf came to our house Christmas eve eve and spent Christmas eve and day with us. Both families were ok with this.</p>
<p>i read every message here, and try to take all to my brain. my heart is heavy, as i see the worm gravitating to his s/o’s family. it cost me about $1200 to join them for past holiday, and i don’t want to repeat this every year. as much as i like the s/o and her family, the loss is painful. i just do not know how one incorporates another family without flexibility.</p>
<p>Hard for me to believe because every year I see so many parents on CC wait for their kids to come home for Christmas. This year one mom was heart broken because her son’s flight was cancelled, and a very nice CC’er offered to use her miles to get this mom’s son home for Christmas. I see many parents on this thread who would not “make” their kids come home for Christmas because they want their kids to be happy, but secretly I think if they could they would prefer to have kids home for the holidays. I have a lot of respect for parents to have that much love for their kids. On the flip side is I wonder why a child wouldn’t want to be just as considerate.</p>
<p>Every year I find out from my staff in Nov to see who needs to travel far to be home for the holidays, and I make sure they could take extra time to be home.</p>
<p>Regarding exchanging gift, in my generation (not my child’s generation), uncles and aunts would give gifts to us at the e d of year - but only doing so when we are still a child (but not baby or very young toddler) .</p>
<p>We have been doing so for our next generation for the past 20 or so years. An issue is what is the definition of child today. For some “adult chiild”, because of various reason, it may take a long time before they are financially independent and some uncles or aunts may have been retired and have passed their peak earning years - I.e. relying on fixed income or retirement savings.</p>
<p>We recently thought maybe the time to stop it is when the nephews and nieces are graduated from college. (Btw we have been doing this for the nephews and nieces not because our siblings are close. I think we are doing this because we think it is a good tradition. The children on either side have no fault in our not so good relation. I think my sibilings may think the same.)</p>
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The catch is there are 3 parties to whom the child should be considerate … their SO (and this should come first IMO), their family, and their SO’s family. For me, as the dad of a daughter, if my daughter was in a relationship and the man always prioritized his family first and pushes my daughter and her family behind I would find that concerning behavior for their future … and I realize YMMV.</p>
<p>We are talking about a 3 month old relationship.</p>
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<p>My S just spent Christmas with a female friend in Europe, where he is an exchange student. (We knew he was not coming home…that was not an issue.) This is, if I understand things correctly, the second time in the last six months she has flown from Japan to Paris to spend time with him. Pretty mind-boggling to me, but apparently her family has the resources to make this feasible. What exactly does this mean? I do not know. I wonder what her parents think…</p>
<p>Consolation, this is actually an interesting issue: a young couple came from families of different level of resources.</p>
<p>A coworker has been dating a girl from a family with much more resources than his own family. Last year he took her to his family for Christmas. This Christmas they were in her family. He did not say much except saying her family is in a very wealthy neighborhood.</p>
<p>In DS 's years in college, a female student presumably from overseas (but speaks English fluently due to her education background before college) was from the most wealthy family among the students in the two suites which share the same bathroom.</p>
<p>OP, I completely understand how you feel. I would be upset if I my son decided to pick up and fly to be with his GF’s family for Christmas if Christmas means family time to you and I think if the child is single, his/her loyalty goes to his/her own family first no matter how long the relationship has been.
My D is spending her first (and married) Christmas with her husband’s family. However my single S flew 3000 miles home to be with us even though he has a GF where he lives and the GF wanted him to attend her family’s traditional Christmas Eve dinner.
Next Christmas I expect both kids and son-in-law to be here.</p>
<p>YOU may expect your adult unmarried children loyalties must be with you, however they are grown adults and demanding, even expecting, loyalty doesn’t always work. It’s something that is given freely. You are expecting both kids and SIL to be with you at Christmas next year. A lot can happen in a year. Do they get any say? Your son is 3k miles away and has a gf. When does he get to be an adult and choose for himself? Only when he’s married?</p>
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<p>He voted with his presence. And my daughter and SIL voted with thier absences. I find your judgmental statement offensive.</p>
<p>I have a problem with the whole loyalty thing when it comes to this issue. I, personally, don’t want my kids to come home out of loyalty alone. I want them to WANT to be home. If there are years when circumstances take them away from me for the holidays, I will miss them. But I won’t think that they were disloyal. </p>
<p>Being flexible is healthy and loving. I think it would also go a long way to prevent holiday related depression, which I think is caused by our need for picture perfect events that mimic every tradition and custom from our past.</p>
<p>“He voted with his presence.”</p>
<p>And likely caused a tiff with his GF in the process. I’m surprised by the number of parents here who are so controlling of their ADULT children’s lives. What if they NEVER get married? Are they destined to forever be at your beck and call for holidays then? I have a gay relative who lives in a state that does not recognize gay marriage, so should she NEVER EVER be granted permission to spend her Christmases with her SO’s family? Or what if the couple just never wants to marry? When they’re 40, 50, 60, are they STILL required to go home to Mommy because that’s the rule?</p>
<p>My ex left me when my older 2 kids were 3 and 8. Until they turned 18 they alternated Christmases between their two parents. Then at 19, S was deployed somewhere overseas at Christmas. And last year my D chose he dad over me for that holiday to save money on her airfare. You can’t always get what you want, and I’ve found that demanding it leads to nowhere good.</p>
<p>D1 spent last Thannksgiving with her bf’s family. It was because she had to work the day before and after and the bus schedule from our home to hers meant she would only be home for about 15 hours and we would have to eat Thanksgiving dinner very early, barely past breakfast. Being at her bf’s meant he could drive her home (4 hours) but they could leave much later.</p>
<p>I have to admit, I was unhappy because --she was not home but also because her bf saw his parents all of the time because he was in graduate school not far from where they live. (His mom actually works at his graduate school.) Couldn’t he have come to our house, which is actually closer to where she lives, for Thanksgiving ( he lived about 1. 75 hours away from us) and then driven her home? But I basically kept my mouth shut. Maybe that is why they spent Christmas this year at our house. They also spent this years Thanksgiving apart at their respective families. They’ve been together almost three years btw, not 3 months!</p>
<p>How do you control adult children? You can’t. I went home every Christmas because I wanted to. Unless I am totally off about my kids, I am pretty sure they would want to be with us for Christmas if they could. I am sure they’ll need to be with their in-laws some day, but they’ll miss being at home for the holidays. It may sound strange, but we do like to hang out together. D1 has been living on her own for few years now, but she still calls us with anything major in her life.</p>
<p>I do think it is strange that people are assuming that cbreeze’s son comes home because he has to. There are many adult children who like to share special days with their parents.</p>
<p>cbreeze made it very clear what she “expects” in the way of “loyalty” from her kids who are unmarried. No one is assuming anything.</p>
<p>I loved spending part of the holidays with my parents. But my parents were not the only people in my life. I had a husband, and HE had parents, and siblings. And I have kids who had TWO SETS of grandparents that lived 2,000 miles apart. I wasn’t always at my parent’s house on Christmas. I called my mother every week, more often if I had a problem until she died when I was 40. My ex called his mother until she died last year at 90. That doesn’t mean we dropped everything, and everyone to be with them every Christmas come hell or high water.</p>
<p>We compromised, which is what a lot of people do rather than make demands and list expectations.</p>
<p>Oldfort, our family likes being together on holidays, too. Our kids (and my nieces and nephews) want to be at our family gatherings. They have all been involved with people who also want to be with their families. It sounds strange, but I guess they gravitated toward people who have similar backgrounds. We have never forbidden anyone from coming or excluded them; they simply want to do what they have always done. Of course, it changes once people are married.</p>
<p>Oh, and it helps that we all live within 45 minutes of each other. :)</p>
<p>^ agree oldie but goodie. Isn’t that what we strive for? Adult children who like to share special days and events with their parents. Mine still do, although it is different with each kid.</p>
<p>Adult children in relationships also have to figure out how to spread the love. We want our kids to be with us. But their SO’s want to be with their families. We have to accept their decisions. </p>
<p>Three months seems fast to me ( and rather stupid to be making any major decisions in my opinion). But the OP’s D is not announcing her engagement for goodness sake.</p>
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I didn’t know you knew my S and his GF.</p>
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I don’t discriminate between my married and unmarried kid.</p>
<p>No, his GF wasn’t unhappy at all,she understood. Her family is also very important to her. She has lived within 200 miles from home the whole time while attending college, medical school and now doing her final year of residency. I never put any limits (financial or geographical) on my kids on their college or professional choices. It was completely theirs, with our full support. However, we place a high value on family. We have always offered to purchase plane tickets to come home at Thanksgiving and Christmas while they were attending college. They took our offers every year even though plane travels were not particularly fun at major holidays.</p>
<p>My kids live and work in Manhattan and have been independent financially since the day they graduated from college. Not knowing our family dynamics,do you really think I have such power as “demanding” anything other than their own wishes with their precious days off? They are not automatons.</p>
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<p>On the contrary, some parents are quite good at it.</p>