I don’t feel guilty saying that I’m somewhat pleased Dh agreed to cover Christmas this year bc he has colleagues with younger children and knows that it means a lot to his colleagues not to have to worry about possibly being on call and getting the short stick this year (one just had her third child earlier this summer).
In fact, as our kids have gotten older (19 and 21) I kind of like that with DH being on call we aren’t then obligated to travel wherever his side of family usually wants to gather. We prefer spending one on one visits with family members (and our in-laws actually prefer that dynamic, too, which is so nice!), versus big groups all at once. No right or wrong with either preference, but we are likely known as the less sociable family wing of the family.
And I’m okay with that.
I figure (as does Dh and kids) that when and where we see people over holidays isn’t as important as long as we spend some time with them. Even if it’s just for a meal at a location half way between where we all live.
That is so considerate of your husband to be willing to cover for others over the holidays, and for you to be supportive of him doing that. I hope others appreciate his (and your) kindness.
I shouldn’t whine because I just remembered that we stopped traveling during the holidays around the early 2000s. We got caught in several winter storms including one where we had to spend the night on a wrestling mat in a community center in Tucumcari NM with about a hundred snoring fellow travelers. After that we decided that we’d travel for Thanksgiving instead, but the next year, we ended up in a huge ice storm that cut power to thousands of people. We spent thanksgiving hopping from one house to another as the power went on and off randomly.
I think we switched to traveling in the summer and fall after that (the kids were on a year round school schedule with a month off in the fall). Then we got tired of being the only family to travel to see each other (siblings never visited us in over 17 years) after my dad died in 2007. Instead, my mom decided she was finally brave enough to fly to visit us in the summer and we did that for three years. She never wanted to go farther than an hour away from home until then and she really enjoyed visiting Virginia and taking the train to Florida to go on a cruise one of those years. Sadly, she developed vascular dementia soon after and had a stroke that ended the trips. It broke my heart when she would tell me on the phone that every time she saw a plane flying overhead, she wished she was on it going to visit us. She couldn’t understand why she couldn’t. Ironically, I think it was the dementia that took away her anxiety about traveling (she landed in Dulles during a tornado warning one year!).
She passed in 2020 and it’s now been 24 years since any of my siblings have travelled to see us. One year, I suggested having a surprise 50th birthday party for my older sister and our whole family drove from Boise to Oklahoma for it and when we got there my younger sister said that my older sister and BIL were going to Orlando (work trip with S tagging along) the next day after the party. My younger S and BIL had been involved in the planning all along but neglected to consider how extremely stupid it was of them to agree to a date where they would be leaving the next day. Not to mention disrespectful of our efforts to take off work and travel a thousand miles. That was a big straw on the back of the camel that was broken for good when my mother died.
My husband has 7 siblings and for several years they tried to organize a family reunion after their father died (they had it at their parents house every other year or so until then). But no one could agree on where to have it bc they are scattered all over the country and everyone wanted to have it near them. So he hasn’t seen much of his siblings either.
That’s why it’s so important to me that our little family continues to spend time together each year. I don’t care when we do it, just as long as we make the point to keep the family ties strong. I know that we aren’t that exciting to our oldest but we were older when we adopted and she doesn’t understand that at once a year, she might have less than 10 more chances to see one or both of us (all but one of my grandparents passed in their 60s).
Anyway…I’ll probably delete this book later but felt compelled to hijack the thread again this morning.
I have a bff who often calls and texts for advice about adult sons. One time, I told her what I do/did in a similar circumstance. She told her dh what I said, and he said, “That’s TERRIBLE advice!” lol I really thought about that, because I knew it wasn’t terrible advice as that same advice worked well for me, but you now what? it WAS terrible advice for HER, because her relationship with her boys is different from my relationship with my boys, and she can’t pull off some of what I can with mine. Soooooo … all of that to say this:
Sometimes, we NEED to be “that mom.” Sometimes, adult kids are clueless, especially if we’ve always presented to them as capable and independent and not needy. People can’t read your mind. If you want or need something from your adult kids, you might have to ask for it.
YMMV, but on this thread or some other one I’ve written that my therapist has told me that my hyper-independence since childhood (latchkey kid often in charge of my own physical and emotional needs) is no longer a protection strategy that I need or that is serving me well. This is really difficult for me, to be vulnerable to my kids and others and to say what I need, but I do believe the therapist is correct.
I had a MIL who was that mom. Everything was equally important, and she wanted us to make the 3.5-hour drive to her and well beyond many times a year for family events. I have worked so hard to not be that mom, especially with ds1 and his wife. But you now what? I think because I haven’t been that mom his whole life, on the rare occasion that I ask for something he really listens.
Again, I can’t know everyone on here’s relationships with their kids, but I wanted to give a dissenting opinion that maybe it’s OK to make an ask instead of continuing to settle for whatever you get.
This did not work with my daughter when I was so sick with long covid stuff. I think (but don’t know; we’re not communicating at the moment) that it scared the daylights out of her to see me so weak and needy. Single mom, only adopted kid. Exactly what you said–each parent and kid has a different relationship and it plays out differently at each stage of life. xoxoxoxo to all!
I stopped sending Christmas cards over 10 years ago. Instead, every holiday season on Facebook, I post a “Dysfunctional Family Christmas Newsletter.” It’s always in a tongue-in-cheek sort of tone and I poke fun at myself & my immediate family in a sometimes over-the-top way. Somebody I used to know would mail out these really extremely over the top braggy Christmas newsletters every year. Seriously, like they were really horrible. A couple of years in a row, the mom bragged over the top style about 2 of her 3 children, but didn’t say a word in the newsletter about kid #3. Many years, her newsletter would be full of a never ending string of babble about all of the ‘fabulous’ overseas vacations she took over the calendar year. But mostly it was the tone. Like she way thumbing her nose at everybody else. She’s a super rude person and there’s probably a good reason why her kid #3 lives a couple of states away from her, never goes home to visit her parents, and hardly ever sees them. Needless to say, that woman & I are no longer friends.
But the “Dysfunctional Family Christmas Newsletter” keeps me humble.
There’s your answer right there re: why your son isn’t able to come to you for Christmas. He only has 1 day off. Plus, Christmas Day this year is smack dab in the middle of the week on a Wednesday.
So the reason has nothing to do about you & your spouse. It’s about logistics and lack of enough time off.
So go to his place for Christmas if you’re able to.
@deb922 had posted another update that clarified that her son said they had (in so many words, I’m paraphrasing…) “they had put aside one day to have Christmas with @deb922 /H)” and she said that would not be Christmas Day. So there is only 1 day to work with. I love my kids and love spending time with them but I don’t know if I’m driving several hours (which I think would be correct for her) in the winter, in the midwest for one day.
If you love and value your time with your kids, that doesn’t = making poor decisions on traveling and safety to see them. Individual decisions for sure. But I don’t think any of us are in the position to know or need to know all the particulars of this decision one way or another.
It’s easy to say “just go!”. But likely there is more at play here than just trying to find a few hours to covet with family and visiting.
I come from a big family. While my Mom was alive she demanded everyone come to her for Christmas. It was a 2 hour drive and my spouse is Jewish so it worked. When she died one of my brothers took it on. He tried but one sibling decided she didn’t want to make the drive (Bay Area to Los Angeles) with her kids any longer. With Covid we ended up with canceling as someone was always sick. Fast forward and we haven’t all been together in 5 years aside from one wedding. Three siblings make an effort but 2 don’t. I finally gave up and realized it’s not my job to get everyone together.
My own kids do try to all get together. They all now have children and they want to cousins to know each other. It is stressful finding times that work even for the two who live in town.
Everybody has situations like this that are complicated. Those situations are really frustrating when none of the available options on the menu are ones that are satisfactory. It sucks.
I think the hard part of relationships with our [adult] children is that they are, in fact adults. With full agency over what they are willing to do, how they prioritize their time/money/energy and how they navigate conflicting interests, especially once a significant other/their own children are in the picture as well.
My therapist has said plenty of times over the years, “You can’t control other people’s actions, thoughts and feelings. The only person you have control over is yourself.”
Those sentences have been playing in my head while I’ve read this entire thread. Our adult children are going to make decisions we don’t like or agree with, and we have little to no say in those decisions. Which can feel strange when, at one point in your lives, you had total control over that person’s whereabouts, food consumed, clothes worn, etc. etc. etc.
I think is also hard to accept and work through feelings of hurt when the other person who has hurt you is well within their ‘rights’ to make the decisions they’ve made, decisions which are often reasonable and appropriate. Adults children not wanting to travel and spend their limited time, money and energy in the same ways their parents hoped they would is disappointing, but isn’t a malicious attack or betrayal.
Every one of us is working through how we navigate and re-negotiate our relationships with our adult children. I hope each person struggling this holiday season is able to figure out what might offer some relief that they, as an individual, control.
The disconnect often is that if we grew up in a home where we spent every Sunday driving hither and yon to visit grandparents, aunts, uncles, distant cousins, etc. and then did our best with our own kids to at least be responsive to the “older generation” on holidays and other special occasions-- it is disheartening to watch a “getaway weekend” take precedence over family time.
But Beebee has beautifully pointed out that controlling how an adult child spends his or her time and resources is a battle nobody can win. We can put our finger on the scale; we can be direct and overt; we can beat around the bush. But they’re gonna go where they go, when they want.
A long time ago when I first complained about a kid-less holiday, a wise older friend of mine said “I’ll bet you’re wishing you hadn’t encouraged him to take that fabulous job X thousand miles away, and was still living in his childhood bedroom waiting for you to finish doing his laundry so you could watch 60 Minutes together, right?”
It was so absurd I had to laugh. And of course, makes one wish for a compromise between living at home and being dependent, and living far away and doing whatever the heck seems fun and convenient.
But compromise is hard to come by when the vacation days are parceled out, and nobody’s boss ever said “Gee, you should really go home for a week, I’m putting in for 4 days extra vacation for you, I’m sure HR will figure it out”.
I think you have both hit the nail on the head. When we were our kid’s age, we made different decisions about spending time with family and the holidays. So, it is hard to understand why they are making the decisions they do.
Worrying about things you can’t control, like what your adult children do, is not healthy in the long run. (Although, easier said than done.)
I know I’ve been whining about the holidays. It’s just that. A whine so I leave my kids alone. A whine because I don’t understand their choices all the time and that’s ok. A whine because as I’ve said over and over again that I wish my husband and I weren’t the bottom of the barrel in priorities. That’s where we are, in my opinion. That’s probably not the entire reality.
And the holidays are stressful. There are two close together, the closest I am is 400 miles away.
I get that to see them, we will need to travel. I’ve accepted that. Does it mean that I have to like it? Does it mean that I can’t wish for a different outcome?
I don’t ask them to come here all the time. There are no demands. But in my personal time alone with my feelings, I wish that once in a great while they would think to travel to my house. As they do with the other side of their new families.
But because of this, I don’t feel alone anymore. I don’t feel ashamed that my kids don’t visit me. I feel better. That was the objective.
Fortunately, we don’t have to host Christmas this year. My brother opted to do that. Lol! We have a small dining table, and there were “complaints” about our overstuffed sectional swallowing kids. I probably need to put up a sign, “WARNING, if you sit on the couch, you won’t be able to get back up and you’ll be held prisoner.” I should’ve bought leather.
I probably need to put up a sign, “WARNING, if you sit on the couch, you won’t be able to get back up and you’ll be held prisoner.” I should’ve bought leather.