Family Forum / Parenting / Parenting / May 2008

unless you already had a friendship with them, which is kind of what a
baby is building with grandparents, it won't be all that long before
they can have a close relationship despite rare visits, we've never
lived close to grandparents, we moved from being 4 hours away to 1/3
of the way around the world when DS was 18months, at that point with
phone conversations and photos, there was just enough there with my
parents for it to not change anything when we got back, we saw DH's
parents less often and communicate less frequently, so it was more of
a new relationship when we got back. We had a year or so in the same
country before we headed off around the world the other way, DS has
great relationships with both sets of grandparents and you can see DD
developing it too (she's 2 years younger), pictures are definitely a
help. If you really want to work on cultivating a relationship with
grandparents, even a simple thing like putting their pictures in an
obvious place, especially a picture of them holding the child and then
talking about it regularly, confirms the importance of that person in
the child's mind.

My mum is utterly convinced that there is something about family that
means babies and young children accept them, the way they wouldn't
accept a friend, I think that probably says more about the way my
family views and treats other members of the family than anything
else, because we have noticed that this does happen in my family, my
kids have always responded well to my sister despite rarely seeing
her, I don't know what it is about the way my family behave because
this isn't true in my husbands family. But we've also noticed the same
with a small number of friends, and it's nothing to do with how often
they see them, I think it must be some kind of very subtle vibe that
children pick up on about being completely comfortable with a person
and mutual acceptance of that person - which means watching your own
relationship with that person when you want your child to have a good
relationship with them is probably helpful, Paul, I notice you said
something about your wife's parents not being available to care for
him, you probably just said that as a fact, but if there is anything
more then even a one year old might pick up on that, so you and your
wife might help your son develop a relationship with his grandparents
by thinking about your own feelings far more than worrying about
anything else.

Cheers
Anne

and to top it all off he's just had his 1 year old shots! lol (of
course he's back to normal)

Thanks for the info on the separation anxiety everyone. I'm sure
that's all it is.

Well we discussed the cosleeping/crib/bed transitioning some more that
night, and by the time we got home and all 3 of us were in bed, we
decided to put the idea of transitioning him off for some other time,
who knows when.

He puts himself to sleep now, we no longer rock him (he actually
started pushing himself out of our arms when we would attempt to rock
him about .. oh.. 2 months ago)

I told my DW that if he was in a crib I'm sure we would be having the
opposite discussions/arguements of "i told you we should have
cosleeped!" ;-)