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Home › Articles › Family › Long-distance Grandparenting

Long-distance Grandparenting

Bonding with Grandkids Who Are Miles Away

By Mark Stackpole

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alarm clock is really cool; we started saving special tokens on the cereal box when he was here for a visit. Unfortunately, we had to keep eating the cereal after he left." Is there no sacrifice that a grandparent won't make?

Sue Johnson knows a little bit about being a long-distance grandmother. In fact, her experience as one inspired her to team with her daughter-in-law, Julie Carlson, to write Grandloving: Making Memories with Your Grandchildren (Heartstrings Press, 2006). From her perspective, it doesn't really matter how you let your grandchildren know that you are thinking of them as long as you are letting them know.

"What you say or what you send isn't half as important as that you communicate frequently," Johnson says. "Remember how long a week or the summer seemed when you were a child? Well, it's the same thing with your grandchildren. Though time for us goes quickly, you have to remember that it doesn't for a child."

Something as mundane as the aforementioned mailbox can become magical with the smallest of efforts. "Even if your grandchild lives just down the street, someone is going to her house six days a week ready to deliver something, and what child doesn't love having her mailbox turned nto a treasure chest?" she says. Johnson keeps personalized address labels for each of her grandchildren close at hand. They get to feel special and it makes it easy for her to send off a stick of gum with a note attached telling the kids that she loves and misses them.


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