How is everyone handling COVID/social distancing differences with family? BIL and SIL not taking it seriously, and it is causing stress. Ugh.
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I think every household needs to determine their comfort level, communicate those safety measures, and if extended family won’t follow them, then you can’t see each other (or have overlapping bubbles). One potential option would be outside, distanced and masked if you really need to see them.
I missed my family this Xmas but they couldn’t isolate, so we stayed apart. They know it’s not personal, and not forever. Hopefully we can see them by the summer. -
@ChitownRo: Thanks! I think this is what is going to happen going forward. My in laws babysit BIL & SIL’s child, and FIL has a health condition which puts him at very high risk for COVID. This makes things more stressful and complicated. We had a baby in mid-March, and my in laws have only held her twice. We are going to make this visit work, as SIL & BIL have very reluctantly agreed to distance from her family for 10 days, but I think this will be the last visit until we are all vaccinated. Hope you are able to see your family this summer!
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It’s a total non negotiable for us. Thankfully we don’t have anyone in our lives that isn’t taking it seriously, but my in laws were lax with restaurants and stuff in the summer so we started doing outdoor only visits for occasional hikes. My FIL was playing indoor squash for some reason before Xmas?! So we aren’t seeing them for a bit. Basically, too bad for the family guilt. If it’s that important to everyone, they can come up to our level of safety. Even so, our provincial recommendation is to only see those in our household so I am taking that seriously. We saw no one at Christmas this year and are rounding out 2 weeks school/daycare/work break with just the 4 of us at home. It is what it is. I’m not risking things if I can help it, regardless of what others think.
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I don't have the privilege to be able to isolate and our "bubble" is stadium sized. My husband is essential and my kids have to go to school (I'm essential from home, if that makes sense). So we are both the walking petri dishes and the ones who are the most strict because of the likelihood we could infect others.
Our meetups (5 since March) are outside, socially distanced, and masks. If you fail to keep your mask on, you lose the ability to see us until there's a vaccine. It's awful, but it's the only way we can feel safe. We've also watched a lot of people die from this and aren't playing games
What helps us in the decision making process is asking, so how will this sound to the contact tracer and symptom nurse at work. They're always awkward conversations to begin with, but catching COVID from a family event is definitely frowned on
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We have not seen any family in a year (since last Christmas). My in-laws live 2.5 hours away so it's a little easier. I know they're antsy to see us but have respected our wishes, especially since FIL is considered high risk. They were actually supposed to visit the weekend that everything hit the fan in March but we all decided to postpone.
My family lives acrkss the country so it hasn't been an issue. My mom was planning to viist last summer but we obviously canceled that. Hopefully we can see them by the end of the summer...
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@Pollywog: yes! We totally imagine the contact tracing as well! It’s amazing how it makes you think twice and I wish everyone would consider it because it’s so simple to imagine. I would feel absolutely horrible and embarrassed. Our local public health publishes particularly bad cases on social media (no names or identifiers of course) and they are so cringeworthy. Weddings leading to like 80 cases with multiple schools, daycares, affected, etc.
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@Pollywog: The contact tracing thing has been what I’m thinking about too. In the fall we were doing things that I considered safe - like, we took the kids to a climbing gym that mandated masks, social distancing, and had a max capacity of 15, and it felt really safe, but later I thought that if we had to justify it to a contact tracer “we were bored and wanted to” didn’t feel good enough.
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We have not seen my in-laws since last Christmas Eve. I don’t expect we will see them anytime soon. We live in an area where people are not taking this seriously and it’s sad. I just don’t want to be responsible for anyone else getting sick.
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We don’t see anyone indoors, regardless of how strict they are. Although this is partly because my kids are in daycare, and I worry we could infect others without knowing. It does make me sad that my kids don’t get to spend much time with my parents, though, despite them living close
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We see my parents in doors because they are retired and equally strict as we are, but that's it. My sister has a larger bubble, so I only see her outdoors, distanced. I was seeing a couple friends outside too, but now that it's winter, those have all moved to virtual.
DH works from home, and I'm a SAHM, so our bubble is small. The only thing we do is a 1-2 time a week class for DD through the school district. It's small and people are masked and distanced. It is higher risk than anything my parents do, but they still want to be able to see DD (their only grandkid) but think that it's also important for her development to do the class. That's where we are at. Hoping for the vaccine soon so we can see our elderly grandparents again.
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We don’t hang out with family who don’t wear masks, and when we do see my parents and siblings, we wear our masks.
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I think each family has to set their boundaries and then see where they overlap. Last summer we went on a trip and saw family indoors so had a stadium sized bubble but locked down for 2 weeks when we got home before seeing anyone else even outdoors/masked/distanced. Also during that trip my aunt and uncle were being more strict so we only saw them outdoors with masks and everyone did a firepit, hikes, etc with masks to respect their wishes. It's hard to navigate and can completely change based on who is involved, individual health risks, outside exposures, etc. Now that school is back we've locked down more just because keeping kids in school is important to us. I think it's important to reserve judgement on others' choices, respect boundaries and be very clear about our own boundaries. (The irony that it took a pandemic to reinforce this is not lost on me since shouldn't this have been the norm all along?)
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