GUIDE
Sharing your child’s growth with family far away
Questions and practical answers for keeping grandparents, a traveling parent, or relatives in another state close to your kids’ everyday lives.
- The grandparents are three hours ahead on the East Coast, and their only free time lands at our toddler's bedtime. What can we change?Stop trying to fit the call into your weekday evening. Move the live call to a weekend morning, when 9 a.m. for you is noon for them, and fill the weekdays with short recorded clips they can watch on their own schedule. Put their city on your phone's world clock so you see their time at a glance.
- We see our grandkids about once a year, and I worry we feel like strangers each time we visit. How do we stay familiar from another state?Be a small, steady part of their week instead of one big event a year. Mail a postcard on the same day every week, keep one ritual that only you do, and ask the parents to put your photo where the kids can see it. Then the visit starts from something they already know.