If your parents live far away (because I think this is totally different if they live close) would your kids go and spend a week with their grandparent(s)? Like one kid by themselves? Or did you do so growing up?
My mom keeps pushing me for this, especially for our 10 year old. We literally live on opposite ends of the country and I’m just not that comfortable with DD being that far away yet … I’m also not super comfortable with the worldview my mom has around the kids (although I think it’s not dangerous, it is stuff that bothers me like how she constantly talks about dieting and bodies and how she can’t eat anything, for one example - or another, DD tends to get a major attitude after being around her a lot). Also my mom lives alone, she’s older, what if something happened? I just feel better with it being a group thing.
We already go visit several weeks in the summer as family vacation (in addition to going at holidays, other visits at our home, etc). I guess I’m trying to gauge whether I should just let my issues with it go or if it’s reasonable to say, visiting you is something we do as a family, and we can’t make a long visit to you if we also have to fit in weeks for the individual kids, it just doesn’t work for us. I feel like it would be so different if we were just a couple hours away too.
I also don’t have a great frame of reference for this as my only grandparent who might have wanted this with me died when I was 8. DH and I each have one parent left and the kids would never stay with his dad.
Sorry for the rambling but open to perspectives on this!