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Growing up, I was in my grandparents' faces almost every day. They would have had a hard time getting rid of me even if they had tried - and thankfully they didn't. My parents were young, and the help they got from their parents in caring for me made a huge difference in my life and theirs.
Many people in the United States today don't live in the same town as their family of origin, so grandparenting can be a little more complicated. We're almost to another holiday season, a time when families tend to travel to bridge these gaps. But what about the rest of the year? What does a long-distance grandparent do to stay in touch?
Naomi Dagen Bloom of Cityworm and A Little Red Hen has a whole category for distance grandparenting on the latter. She writes often about traveling to Portland to see her grandchildren and of sharing her love for knitting with them.
"Grandma, will you teach me to knit?" This request from Zach, my grandson, was on my mind on our recent trip to Portland. What led me to knit? I had no grandmothers. But there was Meta Weigert, an older family friend. She and her husband had come to St. Louis as German-Jewish refugees in the late 1930s. I'm sure it was the combination of her seeing that we both could use some companionship and a European bias about 13 year old girl should learn to knit that brought me the gift of her fiber expertise.Reason One, then, is that Handcraft is very satisfying for itself. Reason Two--the connectedness with others--especially, my grandchildren. Fills the granny-less debt in my own past.
Robbin writes at Squidoo about her granddaughter.
Since she lives over 3000 miles away from her grandmother, I have had to find very creative ways to keep in touch with her. This lens will share some of the ways that have worked for us. Of course nothing beats holding her in my arms and hearing her laughter for real, but in between those times here's some ways that keep her knowing how much I love her and miss her.
Kathleen at Retired in the Rockies waits for the day when her granddaughter wants to connect with her.
It's very interesting being long-distance grandparents. Ashley Jane doesn't know us, and still doesn't particularly want to know us. She's very happy watching us from a distance, kind of like a zoo or an aquarium exhibit. We're interesting, but not something she wants to have up close and personal. Don't feed the bears. Don't let the bears feed you.
I have every confidence that she'll outgrow this. I doubt it's going to happen in the next five days. We're sure enjoying Ruth and Ben, though, and it's a lot of fun to watch Ashley as she crawls around. That's a new skill we're privileged to see. Our great desire, of course, is to hold and cuddle and spoil her, which she won't allow. There are times in all our lives when we find ourselves on the outside looking in, and in those times we have other blessings to count - many of them. I'm counting as fast as I can, and looking ahead to the many milestones that lie ahead.
Sally Connolly and John Turner write the Retirement Relationships blog, including this post about grandparenting from a distance. Sally writes:
We, of course, read lots to and with Josh and after returning from one of our visits we bought a story book and began reading nightly tales for him on a tape. We sent them to Josh so that he could go to sleep at night … or for his naps, while listening to us reading a story. His mother said that he loved hearing us read to him … and talked about it a lot.
We would be interested in comments from other grandparents about how they kept in touch with their grandchildren from a distance.
Hooi Imm at (Mis)Adventures of a Malaysian Mommy is in New York while her parents are back home. She just had a baby and is very unhappy about the toll the distance is taking on the family.
My parents live 10,000 miles away on the other side of the world. They were here for Olivia’s birth but went home when she was 1 month old...Olivia is their first and only grandchild, for the moment. She
