If you become a mom, there are probably times you’re particularly going to cherish as your kids grow up. You might enjoy their birthdays when they can invite their friends over. Maybe you’ll bake a cake for them.
There are also all the national holidays that most people celebrate, like July 4th or Thanksgiving. Most Americans do celebrate these, regardless of whether they agree with the sentiments behind them. They like that they can gather with family on those days and enjoy being together.
When your kids become adults, you might still emphasize getting together on some of those days. It will be up to you how much you choose to emphasize those holidays as a time when your family can still gather, including your adult kids.
Let’s talk about what the holidays might mean, or not mean, to your family.
How Vital Is It to Come Home for the Holidays?
Some families stick together like glue. You might have adult kids that grow further into adulthood, but they elect to stay close to home. Your adult kids might still live in the same city as you, and if that happens, you will probably have the chance to see them often.
The other scenario is that they will move further away. They might do this just by chance or because of a job or relationship, but some adult kids don’t get along all that well with their parents, and they may have moved away on purpose to create some distance.
If so, the holidays might become even more critical. They may be a day when your family can see each other when you don’t spend time together for most of the year. You can use the holidays as a convenient excuse to draw together and catch up.
If that happens, your adult kids should be careful. There are many driving accidents when coming home for Thanksgiving. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says there were over 800 Thanksgiving holiday weekend crashes from 2012-2016.
Your Kids Will Probably Follow Your Lead
Every family is different, and you might decide that certain holidays don’t matter all that much as a time to get together. For instance, you may not celebrate something like Mother’s Day, and you might just hope for a phone call on that day from your adult kids. You may mark certain holidays on the calendar, though, as days when you feel strongly your adult kids need to visit you.
Thanksgiving might be one of those days. It’s a time when you can cook a big meal and when you might invite not just your adult kids to come, but also your lesser-seen relatives from further away. Maybe you’d prefer July 4th as one of your family’s special days, when you can invite everyone over and have a barbecue.
Try to Establish the Tradition Early
If you want there to be certain holidays when everyone gets together, including your grown-up children, you need to try to establish that tradition early and stick with it. Again, it’s probably going to be a lot easier if your kids have not gone very far. If they have gone to the country’s other side, or they have expatriated, getting together takes much more of an effort.
As a mother, you should realize that kids are not mind readers. If you don’t tell them how important something is to you, they shouldn’t just be able to use telepathy and know.
If you tell your kids specifically once they are adults that you want them home on particular holidays, they will know what those days mean to you. If your family is very close, you might want your adult kids home as often as once a month. If you all live so far away from each other that long drives and flights need to happen, these reunions might take place once or twice per year, if that.
Try to Stay Close
Family matters and you should try to stay close. If all of you live in different cities, you need to make that effort, or it’s easy to drift apart. You can start to go for longer times without seeing each other, and then suddenly, you’ll realize years have passed.
As a mom, nothing says you’re the one to keep the family together when your kids are adults, but you may want to take on that burden. It’s all about how much you want to stay in touch with the humans you raised.