MIGrandma
Lives in the middle-of-the-mitten.
- Joined
- Aug 12, 2009
Since the family gathering is important to your granddaughter, I think it would be nice to include her in some of the preparation &, in a way, kind of "mentor" her & guide her in how to plan & prepare for family holiday gatherings, if that makes sense. In the next few years, maybe it will be she that picks up the hosting baton.
I do think it's important that traditions are passed down & that younger generations begin to take a bigger part in the traditions as they get older.
However, I wouldn't tell her that she "needs to," but I'd maybe ask her if she'd like to help, & I definitely wouldn't require that she spend the whole weekend w/ me. I don't think it should feel like a chore to her, but, rather, a privilege in getting to be an integral part of a tradition that's very important to her.
I definitely wouldn't want to make my granddaughter feel like the family Christmas celebration is totally dependent on whether or not she's willing to spend the entire weekend w/ me.
Oh, no, I didn't mean I would try to guilt her into helping or anything like that! I should have said "ask" in the first part of my post, like I said in the last sentence. I wouldn't want her to do it if SHE didn't WANT to!! Not at all!! Let me make that perfectly clear!
As far as spending the whole weekend, even though she owns her own home (she is a social worker, works with kids) she spends very few of her weekends at her own home. She spends a lot of them with friends (she's very popular), or with her Mom and step-Dad, or with her Dad (our son) and step-Mom. She has spent weekends with us as well, that's why I said "spend the weekend", as she's done it before. We have had "movie weekends" where she comes over on Friday night and we spend the whole weekend watching movies together. So it would just be normal for her to spend the whole weekend. Or, she could just come for Saturday if she would prefer. It wouldn't matter to me, whatever she would want to do would be fine. But if she wants me to continue to host it, maybe she should start helping a little with the preparations too. Or she should be prepared for me to decide I don't want to do it anymore.