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This really hits home for me. DH and I live in a very busy area of SW Miami Dade County where traffic is hell and to get anywhere like the beach takes at least 1 hr. drive and another 1/2 hour to find parking. For years I have wanted to live in a smaller town in the middle of Florida where it doesn't take all day to get out of the state to take a road trip (it takes us about 8-10 hours to get out of the state of Florida from where we live).
At any rate, I retired last year, DH has been retired for about 5 years. We have 3 small grandchildren between us, me an 8 year old grandson and 5 year old granddaughter and he has a 4 year old granddaughter. I am overly attached to my grandkids and see them regularly (at least weekly, usually 2-3x week).
However, my daughter has been looking for other jobs and had been considering moving out of state if the job came through. These were in NY, DC and CA, extremely far for us and I was devastated. However, she recently got a job in Broward County about a 1.5 hour drive from us. We would not be able to see the kids as frequently if they decided to move (she may decide to commute).
This put me in a quandary, do I move where I have often wanted to move (about a 3 hour drive from where my daughters new home might be) or do I stay put? My son lives in CA, and DH's 3 adult kids live locally but are involved in their own lives and we see them infrequently.
DH and I do very little socialization outside of family events, we tend to be extroverted in social situations but are usually just on our own. As most of our relationships with other people were working relationships, we find that we are, for the most part, isolated. We do not have other couple friends that we go out with as many other people have, in part because we worked very different schedules for many years and most of our relationships outside of work were with parents of our combined 5 kids.
Other my daughters family and his 3 adult kids, I have a sister living 1/2 hour away and another living about 1.5 hours away but both work full time and are very busy with their careers.
I don't know what to do and I feel as if I am waiting for my daughter to decide on whether she will move to another county or not before taking the leap to move to central Florida. My fault, I know but I wish I could decide what to do. DH has no problems moving at all, nor seeing his kids several times a year, so this is kind of on me.....
I used to live where you do (SW M-D County) and my inlaws lived in Broward. We saw them usually about twice a month while my kids were small.
Now I live in central FL, very close to my 3 y/o granddaughter, and I see her and my daughter and SIL several times a week. I can understand your quandary.
If I were you I'd first wait to see what decision your daughter makes about where she's going to live with this new job. If she decides to move to Broward to be closer to her new job, then you have a different decision to make. If I were in your situation I'd want to keep the close relationship with the grandkids until they get older and naturally start occupying less of your time. My very close relationshp with my granddaughter is central to my life, and it's the reason I live where I do. To be fair, though, I really like where I live for other reasons as well.
I feel your conflict, and I don't know what you should do, but I will share with you that my own parents pulled up stakes and moved out-of-state when I was pregnant with their first grandchild. I've never acknowledged this before, but it hurt me very deeply. I felt abandoned. My children (their only grandchildren) are now young adults, and they barely know my parents. The distance and expense of traveling were just too great to have the kind of relationship I would have wished for them, and there's no going back. If at all possible, my husband and I plan to do things differently if we are so lucky to have grandchildren ourselves.
Last edited by randomparent; 05-05-2018 at 10:44 PM..
I feel your conflict, and I don't know what you should do, but I will share with you that my own parents pulled up stakes and moved out-of-state when I was pregnant with their first grandchild. I've never acknowledged this before, but it hurt me very deeply. I felt abandoned. My children (their only grandchildren) are now young adults, and they barely know my parents. The distance and expense of traveling were just too great to have the kind of relationship I would have wished for them, and there's no going back. If at all possible, my husband and I plan to do things differently if we are so lucky to have grandchildren ourselves.
I am so sorry.
Even, if your parents had planned for years to move to a different state, or were forced to move due to their jobs, they should have at least keep up with regular visits back home (and through phone calls, letters, etc.)
My husband's parents lived 1,000 miles away and we visited them once a year and they visited us once a year. Plus when our children were older they traveled by themselves and visited them one or two weeks every summer. They also had regular phone calls and letters. Of course, it was not like they could see their grandparents as often as if they lived in the same city but they were still quite close.
I am sort of in that quandary though we did not move away after but before we even knew there would be grandchildren. And now a year later and a half later, we are 800 miles away and our first grandchildren (twins) will be born in a few weeks. Had we known our DD was going to even have kids, we probably would have stayed closer though it has been a lifelong dream to move where we did. She has a very tight relationship with her in-laws who live there though, so she has the support she needs. We will try to visit as often as possible and maybe even move back in a few years as that is where most of the family still lives. I hope DD isn't feeling that we abandoned her, but we honestly didn't think she was going to have kids (she changed her mind as the clock ticked I guess).
i live within a mile of my grand kids, they come over several times a week. I babysat when they were younger. I know as they age they will want less time with us but I cherish every moment with them. At times I would like to move to a place with less traffic, but I know I won't because one of my grand kids is autistic and the other mentally challenged, they need support from all of us. They would feel abandoned if we moved. As they grow up and move into adult hood we all need to be there to help them, even if its just listening. My granddaughter and I are very close, it would break my heart if I couldn't be here to watch her grow. Our grandson has always spent alot of time at our house he is autistic and we have learned how to help him.
Many people retire so they can travel, we have already traveled while my husband was in the USAF. There is no place either of us want to visit. We love our home just hate the traffic. But we also need to be close to a targer hospital because of hubby's health problems. But i think you should do whats important for you. Life is too short to live unhappy.
I was always very close to my granddaughters. The oldest stayed with me every weekend, and the youngest lived in the same apartment complex as I did. As my older one got into the teen years, we saw her less and less, but saw the younger one daily. Being a grandmother was the biggest joy in my life, and I never dreamed that things would turn out the way they have.
When it was time for the younger one to start school, my daughter and her husband decided to move out of state to a small town so that their daughter could have a better place to grow up. Since they were going to be too far away for us to visit (we live on a fixed income) and it was becoming unaffordable to stay where we were, my husband and I had no reason to stay. We moved to another small town in the same state that they moved to, but at the opposite side because he has family here.
Older granddaughter is about to start college, and I basically no longer exist to her. Younger one is thriving, doing well in school, involved in lots of activities, and seems very happy. I have not seen them, or my daughter or son, for more than three years now. I talk to my daughter every day, but it is just not the same. I rarely hear from my son.
My children have grown up and are living their own lives, which is what they are supposed to do, and I am proud of them. It was not easy being a single mother, but I must have done something right. As for me, we did what we needed to do to survive, but it hurts me deeply that they are so far away and I am no longer able to see them. I am happy here for the most part, but a part of my soul is broken. I miss them terribly every single day.
We moved from Las Vegas to Austin Tx and our son and his family decided to follow us. We live within a mile of each other. So I see my grandchildren alot. I enjoy seeing them and we have a really good relationship. I took care of them while their parents worked when they were younger. But as grandchildren grow you know they will go off to college and marry and it may be no where near where we live. But we are all settled so I don't see our son and his wife moving away but if they did we would stay put.
I've posted before about this. Will try to make it short.
My parents moved about 230 miles away in 1980 after they retired, leaving my family in my hometown. We made many trips to see them through the years, and they made trips to see us as well. My dad died in 1991. My mom stayed in the town they had lived until 2006, when we had to move her to assisted care. In the meantime, it had become hard to visit her so often because of the demands of my job and my teens. But my kids always loved seeing them, and we were never estranged. But eventually we had to move Mom away from where she had lived for many years, and from where she had friends. None of us lived nearby.
When you live far from immediate family, if you live long enough, you will likely have to move to be close. Moving is expensive.
When we retired, we eventually moved to the PNW where two adult kids live, and where our two grands are. We gave this a lot of thought. It is unlikely that that either kid will move. So, I feel that we made the right decision for us. We like being just close enough to our kids and grands.
I think when we retire we need to project out for 10-15 years or more. What could happen? How will we make friends? Can we afford the area we want to move to? It is an individual choice. There is no one right answer.
IMO living where you are most content and able to thrive in your home life is where you should be. If that means NC, then I believe you can make it work.
Opportunities for visits will come about, 3 day weekends, holidays, vacations, etc. There's the ability to communicate by phone and internet, pictures and it's also fun to send packages of gifts, trinkets & goodies from time to time for the little ones.
If something comes up and you need to don your Super Grandparent leotards and cape and go save the day, then 8 hours will barely be an obstacle.
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