How do you keep in touch with your adult nieces and nephews?

<p>I sent a Christmas box to my 28 year old nephew. It was returned - I sent him a Facebook message asking for his new address. He said not to bother to forward it because we never see each other and he feels bad taking gifts from a stranger.</p>

<p>That was like a knife in my heart. I sort of admire his integrity, not wanting to accept my gift. But so hurtful. I agree - we hardly ever see each other. He lives about a 5 hour drive away - high school (okay, middle school) drop out, lots of tatoos and piercings, manages to have both far right wing and far left wing opinions…not a lot in common with him. I really can’t imagine making the drive to see him. I sent him a friend request when I first got on Facebook but he didn’t accept.</p>

<p>This side of the family really doesn’t have family reunions and if they did, nephew couldn’t afford to travel anyway.</p>

<p>My parents were both from big famlies - they have 20-some nieces and nephews on each side. I’m pretty sure they’ve never given a thought to keeping in touch with them…if they show up at a family reunion or funeral it’s nice to see them, otherwise no big deal.</p>

<p>How do y’all stay in touch with nieces and nephews who live far away from you?</p>

<p>Ouch, missypie.</p>

<p>I have 6 nieces and nephews. One of the nephews is in the middle of the country and a senior in high school, don’t see him but maybe once or twice a year up until a couple of years ago. He jumped at the invitation to spend a week or two in sunny California and has been coming out each summer. We tend to stay in touch on facebook. He has two siblings who I don’t have much in common with, but we get together when we are in the same city.</p>

<p>The other ones are all young adults and don’t live at their parents house anymore, but we tend to socialize with them when everyone is in town. Emails, texts and FB messages are the standard way we keep in touch. My nephew is the one in that family who is least likely to initiate conversation. They are all wonderful kids. </p>

<p>Sometimes if there is a funny thing on youtube or a news article that I think one or the other might like I just send this link to them. It either gets the ball rolling, or not. Everyone is busy, either with college or grad school, so nobody has a lot of free time.</p>

<p>Hmm, my oldest niece is younger than my youngest, so I keep up at family events.</p>

<p>But here’s one for you; how do you keep in touch with your aging aunts and uncles?</p>

<p>I have an aunt who gets offended when my kids don’t call her back 8-(</p>

<p>Text, facebook, phone calls and vacations. In over 20 years we’ve never taken a vacation just to take one, we always go visit family. Our brother and sisters do the same. I’m not recommending that, just sharing that it’s taken a tremendous investment in time and money to stay in touch with our nieces and nephews as they’ve grown up as we are a military family.</p>

<p>If this were my nephew, I’d ask for his address so I could just send a card and I would include a letter. I’d explain in my feelings in a kind way perhaps pointing out that while you don’t know each other very well now, he’s been special to you since he was born and that he always will be. Perhaps that won’t mean anything to him now, but it very well may in the future. </p>

<p>Hugs to you. Sometimes it’s difficult being the older one in a relationship.</p>

<p>Our family, spread across two countries and 8000 miles, which includes four generations, has reconnected and stayed connected via facebook. We weren’t close before FB, and none of us knew of everyone. We don’t send gifts and cards, but we remember birthdays on FB and share photos, and jokes, and sometimes do skype calls. It has been great for that.</p>

<p>Sorry, missiepie! The poor guy sounds a bit rebellious, and maybe that will change with age. Tell him you care, and family matters, even though it may not feel that way to him at this point. Maybe someday he’ll be ready for more contact. </p>

<p>Would agree with facebook. I only have 3 nieces, both a delight, and I love seeing their lives, in one case overseas, via facebook. They are only children, and care about family a lot. My kids, less so. But they have siblings and step families. Maybe too much imposed family.</p>

<p>It would be quite hurtful to have a gift I sent to anyone returned as your nephew ungraciously did, Missypie. Sorry he’s feeling so rude but perhaps that may change over time as he matures & perhaps mellows. We have a nephew who is “finding himself,” so we’ll see how that goes as well.</p>

<p>I have 12 nieces & nephews on “my side” and 2 on H’s side of the family. All of my sibblings live in Honolulu, so we get together fairly often & all the nieces & nephews have been coming to Honolulu for breaks/vacations. S will be the first to get a full-time job outside of HI (on the East Coast), so we’ll see how it goes. D may get a job in LA this summer.</p>

<p>The cousins keep in touch with each other & mainly I ask my sibs for addresses if we want to send a gift or card to the nieces/nephews. We have a niece & nephew who live in SF – we see them when we visit & send gifts to their dad.</p>

<p>I have 2 nieces (19 and 25) on my side. DH has three nieces (11,12,13) on his side.
To be honest, we have virtually no contact with them other than seeing them at Christmas for a few hours (most years but not every yr). We used to send them all Christmas gifts. This year my bro. and I decided to stop the gift giving with our adult age kids (my sons are 21 and almost 24). DH sends $$ to his middle school age nieces. It does seem kind of odd because we really don’t “know” them. For years DH’s sibs. gave our S’s $$ every Christmas but have stopped it now that they are adult age.</p>

<p>I’ve kept up the $ gifts at Christmas and birthday for my niece and nephew because (a) niece is still in grad school, and (b) nephew is pretty broke. Guess I can stop with nephew now. And like I said, I tried to friend him on Facebook about 18 months ago but he didn’t accept.</p>

<p>My niece “friended” me on facebook; my kids (21 & 23) refused. :slight_smile: I don’t go on facebook much & think it awkward. My kiddos prefer I don’t venture out there anyway; I’m not very comfortable there. I guess I don’t like that things on the web are there “forever” and owned by FB.</p>

<p>No one in my family lives closer than a four hour drive from us.</p>

<p>I’m pretty sure older younger brothers kids would friend me if asked. They are friends with their grandmother and parents. I like them, but I don’t need to be facebook friends. I do see some of their posts through mutual friends. I see them at holidays and give them small Christmas presents, but not birthday presents. My kids have the same relationship with my kids.</p>

<p>My younger brother’s kids are quite a bit younger, so no facebook yet. We see them several times a year. And generally now do birthdays, but not Christmas.</p>

<p>We are quite close to my husband’s sisters son. Partly because he had a lot in common with my oldest, and partly because she never married, my dh feels he needs to be a bit more of a man in her son’s life than he might have otherwise. Since nephew now does biomed research they really have a lot in common. He gets birthday and Christmas gifts and we get gifts from him, not just from his Mom. We see each other at least twice a year, and dh is often in DC for grant reviews so often saw them then.</p>

<p>Finally my dh’s other brother lives out in CA. I only see his kids every couple of years. It’s too bad. They are adorable. DH sees them more often since he has academic things that take him out to CA at least once a year, sometimes more often. His kids are still in elem. school and get birthday and Christmas presents.</p>

<p>As for your nephew, that was awfully ungrateful.</p>

<p>Keep working on that nephew - try when it’s not holiday season, there may be guilt there that you’re not aware of and it’s worse this time of year. You’re not FB “friends” but you can still message him, maybe once a month or so just send a quick “Hi, hope things are going well for you.” type of corny message. Kids don’t admit it but I think they like/expect corn from oldsters and with these brief messages you’re not invading his space but letting him know you’re there.</p>

<p>He may not respond but I can’t believe he won’t appreciate it and might even come back into the fold once he’s in his 30’s.</p>

<p>It is good to keep lines of communication open. </p>

<p>Our cousins were about 10+ years older than us and we didn’t have much contact with them when we were growing up (we always thought of them as VERY OLD–they had moved away to CA and their careers when we were quite young). Recently, both are alone (one is a widow & the other recently divorced) and 60ish in CA. We suddenly have MUCH more in common, as we have an empty nest and one of my cousins has his D in the same U & same major as my D, the other lives in LA where both girls are attending school. It was good that we kept the communication open, giving the kids more loving adults in their family circle.</p>

<p>In our family, it seems to have a great deal to do with how much we saw the kids growing up. I had a great Uncle & Aunt who I only met twice, but I sent Christmas cards & letters until they died as I had strong happy memories of the two times I met them.</p>

<p>With my nephews & nieces, ranging from 20-40, the ones who grew up far from my parents home and who rarely visited, there is really no connection. The ones who made & continue to make an effort to stay in touch, there is a connection. A great deal of the feeling toward the kids is correlated with the feeling toward the parents.</p>

<p>How many of you stay in touch with YOUR cousins. When we were the niece & nephew generation, I feel like we saw many of our cousins often, but as everyone grew up and went their separate ways, that fell by the wayside. I am beginning to reconnect on FB with some of them.</p>

<p>The thing about relatives is that they’re always connected to you. It’s not like friends who can disappear forever. </p>

<p>I have a distant cousin, we share the same great-grandparents, and we can go for years without seeing each other and then one of us call the other and we get together. My kids know her kids - I think they’re distant enough my daughter can marry their son! The kids think it’s so cool to know such a distant cousin, they probably wouldn’t be good friends were it not for the cousin connection.</p>

<p>On my husband’s side, everyone who spells the last name the same are related. I think the great grandfather had two wives; one from Germany who died shortly after coming to US, one from US and a total of like 20 kids or something. My daughter is on FB a few years ago and discovers a cousin of some sort with the same 3 initials (first, middle, last) and the same exact birthday! They are now FB friends and talk about meeting at some point in the not too distant future. My mother-in-law is trying to figure out how they’re related but it’s a little hard since she has no contact with the boy.</p>

<p>Blood is blood, no matter how thin it’s gotten.</p>

<p>Update from OP. I talked to my parents yesterday and now I understand nephew’s problem. Over the summer, his other grandmother was dying of cancer. Word went around the family to come see her one last time. His dad and half-bother went - they live about an hour away from nephew, he could h ave joined their corss country drive, but they didn’t even tell him about grandmother. So everyone got to see grandmother one last time execept for some reason, no one told him. I’m sure there are two sides to this story, but that is his side. So he is angry at his father and his sister, and by extension, pretty much every relative but his mom.</p>

<p>One of my uncles wasn’t invited to his dad’s big birthday celebration. It was one of the last gatherings for my grandfather, who passed away a few years later from cancer. </p>

<p>My uncle was never as close to his mom or extended family, after that point. I think he felt like he was the black sheep. I never thought he was before this, but it created a ton of conflict with his mom and siblings. Siblings thought he was going, mom didn’t want him there because he was post-rehab. Many of us nieces and nephews gave our grandmother a bad time about this and still are mad at her. It was wrong and she was selfish and par for the course of how she has treated her youngest child for too many years. (This was my grandma’s second marriage - to a much older man - so her child was actually around my age. He was in his mid-20’s when his dad died.)</p>

<p>I think family support is critical, especially at that time. Sorry to say, it’s been ten years since that point, but he still stays away. He is even more messed up than he would have been, IMO.</p>

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I really don’t, except for an annual Christmas card with a short note inside and seeing them at major family events every 5 years or so. I know it’s caused some hard feelings and that, in their eyes, it’s my fault. I was close to my cousins growing up, but went out of state for college, have lived hundreds of miles away from where I was born since, and have very different values from most of my extended family. My five cousins live in the town they were born in and get together with each other for a noisy, crowded dinner every other Sunday. I can’t lie - that’s way too much togetherness for me.</p>

<p>Family closeness, especially between adult sibs but including more distant relatives, is a tough issue. I’ve noted many hurt and resentful posts on CC because one family member feels that others don’t expend enough time and effort on getting together, especially over the holidays. As a person who finds it hard to enjoy noisy, crowded family gatherings, especially when I have to spend many hours getting there (and beg my own husband and children to adjust their holiday wishes for people they don’t know well), can I say that sometimes no snub or offense is intended? Really, we’re doing the best we can.</p>

<p>missypie, I can understand why your nephew’s response threw you, though he surely didn’t mean to hurt you. My contact with my nieces and nephews, and husband’s too, is limited to sending them birthday/Christmas cards and gifts, ditto graduations/engagements/Eagle Scout investitures, talking to them by phone on Christmas morning, and seeing them at major family events even I can’t find a way to avoid :D. I love them very much and I think we’re all happy with the arrangement.</p>

<p>Christmas came and went. I didn’t see any neices (don’t have nephews). DH saw one of his three siblings. My sis came for an overnight visit. Didn’t see brother at all, a first.</p>

<p>Some families just love to get together for any reason (SIL’s family) and others are just content to drift along with regualr occassional contact (that’s us I guess). </p>

<p>Do any of you see that coming with your own kids? Our two sons are like night and day and though only three years apart in age have never been close or enjoyed each other’s company. Even as adults (21 and almost 24) they don’t spend time together when home for the holidays. Each goes off in his own direction and are only together when it’s mandatory. They don’t fight or argue (never have). They just sort of co-exist. I have always wished they were close and enjoyed each other’s company but it’s just never happened.</p>

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<p>Absolutely. Younger D will keep in touch with older brother and older sister. Older brother and sister will never go out of their way to contact the other.</p>

<p>Here’s the stupidist idea I’ve ever herad to keep siblings in contact: FIL and his only sibling didn’t get along. Saw each other only when they had to. FIL didin’t want that to happen to his four kids…so he gave them this money that they HAVE to invest together!!! The oldest brother is an Alpha Male who has to control everything; the sister’s husband is a compulsive gamblier, so no investmnet is too risky for that family; another brother is a school teacher, so he just wants something safe; and we just want our finances to be no ones business. That forced investment has caused untold conflict and will cause conflict into the indefinite future!</p>