to desperately want them to stay here?

Baggy - you're so right about having a positive frame of mind. I'm definitely a "glass half full" person but I live with a "glass half empty" and his down moods sometimes have an effect on me. He misses the grandchildren more than me I think as his life is not so busy.

Ambergold - the waiting and indecision is the worst part. Now that mine have finally gone it's actually easier. I know it sounds peculiar but, to me, it's true

I think they are moving to the decision of going there. The waiting is really stressing me. Crimson you are so right. This has also shown me (yet again) how suddenly life can change. 11 days ago I would have said that life was damn near perfect; now it's all come crashing down. So, never take anything for granted and never postpone.

The problem is that my kids did move back, and they're living just up the road! At least the husband, who moved out at the same time, never came back........

Bang on, crimson. My own feeling has always been that one's responsibility as a parent is to move away, as it were inch by inch (or even millimetre by millimetre) every day of our children's lives while they are dependent on us. It's not pushing them away, but allowing them and encouraging them to become very gradually more and more independent.

I also think that, although change can be hard, having a positive frame of mind about it, is more inducive to happiness in the long term.

Do you not think that, if your children move away at university time and then never move back [having married and started a family in another part of the country] it's easier than having them nearby and then suddenly losing them? What this thread has made me do is realise that my life could change dramatically over the next few years, and I should be slightly prepared for it. Almost like the way I felt when they were at school and I knew that one day they would go away to university.

I'm with you Baggy.
It is very very difficult to cope with, but, as said before, you give birth to them, you raise them, you give them the best and then - you let them go to do their own thing. If I think about it too hard, I crumble but I don't think about it; I just look forward to skyping, phoning, photographs and as many visits as we can all cram in or afford and in the meantime I just get on with my life and involve myself in lots of things and concentrate on my other children and grandchildren. I know that my daughter is happy where she is, with her family, and that her children are having a wonderful open-air upbringing. She has not much support from her local in-laws but has built up a good support network with her friends made through nursery, school etc. Life is what you make it. I, an only child, moved 500 miles from my own parents when my children were very young and I know how she suffered from not seeing them regularly and I suffered from not having her help when I needed it, but times were different then. Now it is almost the norm for children to live far far away and, sadly, it's just something we have to get used to.

It really depends on your ability to adapt. Twice in my life I have moved with young kids without seeing the house into which I was moving. I trusted my husband each time — each time a different one. We couldn't afford for me to travel the length of the country house-hunting as well. Each time also, I rang the local school to give them my children's names and to say when we'd turn up. The first time, we moved and DD1 started at her new school next day. She'd been at her old school for two terms and was just five. She settled in no bother. The three year old demanded a playgroup (there was no nursery school, although she'd just started at one in Edinburgh). We spent the first day walking round the new town putting her name down in reachable (by foot) playgroups. She soon got a place at the nearest one and settle in no bother. Then, twenty years on, I did the same thing again with a five year old. She settled into her new school no bother. And each time, I settled in to the new community by making an effort. I have never had family members nearby for support and have always had to be self-reliant.

What am I trying to say? Well, simply this. It's not that difficult if you just get on and do it and believe in yourself and your kids. Kids, especially young ones, are very adaptable. Home is where their parents are.

Cultural difficulties do exist, but to be honest I find a great deal of British "common culture" very alien, so the only biggy is a language barrier if that exists.

I've moved about a lot and have found people welcoming wherever I've been. I think it's possible to worry too much about what might happen.

Yes - agree with Joan - migration certainly not always an easy or good choice. It is hard to adjust to other cultures even if they are English speaking. One of my sons tried a couple of years in Ireland and really felt like an outsider the whole time. He has however found NZ a "fit". My other son tried NZ and felt like a outsider. He is finding life a struggle in Australia. Unless you have a profession like medicine which gives you a soft landing it is really tough. That is before cultural issues and having no-one who can have the kids for an hour.
It think your daughter should definitely go to have a look at the place she is relocating to (even if it is not supposed to be permanent). If her H was applying for a job in another part of UK she would naturally go and have a look around. Check out the local nursery schools etc. The USA is a big place and very various. We only have a hint about what it is like when we watch movies or go on a trip to NY or Disney. I remember one tiny example - in films, until recently, LA was depicted as a city full of white people. When i went there I realised it was very hispanic and always has been.
It will not be easy for her having a toddler and a baby somewhere where she has no support networks. it would be very different if she had no kids and she had no family and was to pursue her own career and meet people through that. (I am making an assumption there.... but moving, having a baby and finding a new job as well.... it is not going to happen in the short term methinks) Quite apart from anything else this is the worst possible moment for her to try to do this very difficult thing. The arrival of a second child combined with moving away from family support is a huge thing to take on. It is a huge change on top of another huge change. Many women with one child find the arrival of the second a huge shock. More I think about it the more crazy it seems to do this now. Is your SIL perhaps very anxious about supporting a growing family.

So I would put these points to her and try to leave aside your own feelings. Try to persuade her at least to go and look and to contact some others who have gone the same route.

Wise words Joan and certainly all dreams of foreign travel will disappear on both sides when savings go on trips between London and LA. I just feel sad abut the potential family "breakdown". My son and daughter are also so close and he will pop to London to see her when he can, seeing her about every 3 weeks. He is probably going to Afghanistan next year too and co-inciding his leave with her visits will nigh be impossible so goodness knows when they will see each other.
grannyactivist, of course we will give them our support and blessing if they make the decision to go. My daughter says they are not emigrating like yours, so that is some consolation - though who knows once they settle down.

My daughter and son in law are moving to live permanently in New Zealand next year. We have a lovely relationship and I don't pretend that I won't miss them, but I do understand their reasons for leaving and have done my best to say things to help our parting to be positive. They really have appreciated our situation and know that we are sad and will miss them, but as they are definitely going to go I want them to feel they go with our blessing and the hope that their new life will work out well for them.

Ambergold, I think your daughter is in the same sort of denial that I was. I believed visits would be easy, and we could all 'un-emigrate' if we didn't like it. Reality is different. At first you can't afford to come back home, and you don't realise how hard it can be, for various reasons, for parents to visit.

Later, when you could afford to come back home to live, invisible threads hold you - job, new friends, children being settled, and a reluctance to 'fail' or to be seen to have failed.

Visits are lovely of course, when they do happen, but bittersweet. Mum came twice, once when the lads were 2 and 5 and again when they were 5 and 8. After that Dad's stroke-related needs stopped her.

Later still, when you have absorbed, like it or not, the new cultural values, or at least some of them, you start to realise that you no longer belong back home. You may well be thoroughly settled and this doesn't matter.

Your best bet is to impress upon them that if they don't like it, you would understand completely, never judge them for their decisions, and you would help them settle back in any way you could.

The grass isn't greener on the other side - it is simply different.

It's a funny thing with children AmberGold - they seem to think that their parents have no life of their own, no responsibilities or outside interests now that the children themselves have left home. "just come and visit" they say as though they are doing us a favour...
To be honest, I'm not sure that I could consider visiting just yet, the pain is still too great. Perhaps my feelings will change with time - be positive

Thank you again for all your support. Yogagran, I feel for you and hope that the pain will lessen and you will be able to visit soon. My daughter at present seems to think she will come over to visit often and that if I go, I will stay for an extended visit - up to 2 months. This may be possible if we were retired but far from it. We both still work and I run my own business. I think I need to point these things out but do not want to come over as just negative on everything. Ah well, we will see what is decided. I'll keep you posted! Many thanks again.

I've just heard [not read the article myself so may have got it wrong] that Rolls Royce are planning to move some production to Germany. It seems that all manufacturing in this country is going abroad, so I feel that, in future, a lot of us will be saying goodbye to our children and grandchildren [because these compnaies then need staff from this country]. I don't know what the future is here for many young people any more.

Only one consolation - they do not forget their grandparents.

Skype; overseas travel; easier 'phone connection - they all help.

My granddaughter has a "Grandma in Italy" - they rarely meet, since "Grandma in Italy" has too much going on in her own life. Yet my granddaughter speaks to her regularly via 'phone/Skype and talks about her as if she sees her daily. She is looking forward to a visit next year.

My nextdoor neighbours' daughter emigrated to Canada, choosing precisely the same time that my neighbours were planning to buy a house still closer to them than the 12 miles that previously separated them. My neighbours were brave but devastated.

But now... they visit for good long periods twice a year; they are now selling their house to go and join their family (daughter; son-in-law and three grandsons) in Canada. This year the family visited them and it was plain how much the children still loved my neighbours.

So hard, but things often work out in unexpected ways.

Ambergold (lovely name btw) - That is so very sad, and awful for you. I think to be absolutely honest with you I would do and say anything at all I could think of to stop it happening.

Its not the right and proper thing to do, of course its not, but its what I am pretty sure I would do.

There is only so much a granny can take.

I so hope he doesn't get the job.

It is ok to feel the way you do but they are at the start of their lives and you have to be supportive. My daughter has lived abroad since she was 19 and we have had many wonderful holidays visiting places we would never otherwise have been. We are in switzerland at the moment and you should have seen the welcome we received from our 7 year old grandson. We keep in touch all the time with our 2 grandchildren and are really close to them. Look on any move as a great opportunity for the whole family.

In 1978 my ex-husband,myself and my 20 month old son moved to New York. I remember the dreadful feelings of guilt I had depriving my M-in-L of her beloved grandson. [both my parents were dead]. She had 2 older GD's she barely saw so my son was very precious. We had a chance to improve our life and this amazing opportunity arose, we would have been foolish to turn it down. She realised this and didn't once beg us to stay. She was very supportive. We wrote weekly to her [I have all her letters and mine during this time and it makes interesting reading], direct dialling to the US had started then so we also phoned each other once a month. I went home with my son, and later my daughter, once a year.
Nowadays we would have been able e-mail each other not to mention Skype - which I use now to talk to my GD in London. Ambergold they will come home to visit and you can go there and stay longer then the usual amount of time as you will have free board and lodgoings. I do sympathise as I would be devasted if either of my children decided to move abroad .

I think she knows all that sylvia; she just wants carte blanche to feel what she's feeling. She's not being selfish, just honest about how she feels inside.

I agree, sylvia. I've said something similar on another thread.

Neither my husband nor I would ever ask our son to consider our feelings if he wanted to take his family to work abroad if it meant a better future for him and them. The only problem is he would never do it, not because he would be thinking of us, but unfortunately he doesn't have that sort of get up and go. But if he did go, we would miss him and my grand-daughter but it would be their lives, not ours.

Having lived and worked in the USA I would say go for it - it's the only country in the world where success is not condemned, as in this country.

My mother, many years ago when I was 21 and going to work overseas, was left on her own here in the UK but she actively encouraged me to do it because she wanted me to broaden my horizons and see how the rest of the world was - and if I hadn't done it I wouldn't have met my wonderful husband.

As a parent you have to let your children go - they don't belong to you, ever. You give birth to them, you rear them, and then you let them go to do what's right for them, not for you - to do otherwise is selfish. Yes it's sad, but it's their lives and their futures.

PS Good luck - I truly hope they don't end up going to the USA. I know England has problems, but you have to think how they affect your family personally, and most of the time, if you're honest, they don't. That was our mistake - we thought of Thatcher and her politics, but didn't think about ourselves and where we belonged. Anyway, as hard workers we'd probably have prospered....

As it was, we had to bring up our children without extended family, and we never realised how much we all missed that, the lads included, until my husband's brother came for a holiday and the lads reveled in having a real uncle with real family memories.

Ambergold, I think you do have to point these things out, at least once. This would not be putting them on a guilt trip, it would just be giving an objective view of the whole picture.

We left with our 4 month old baby to go to Australia. We felt his future was compromised in Thatcher's Britain. It was 1979. I felt bad for Mum and Dad but they had other grandchildren. Now of course I realise how bad it really was for them - I didn't back then.

BIG GIANT HUGE mistake for us two, but a wonderful life for our sons - one born here three years later.

My brother was offered a promotion if he went to Texas where his firm's head office was. He said No. They gave him and his wife a trip there to show how wonderful life in the USA was. They came home and said NEVER, and spent the rest of their lives, to this day, in Scotland.

I don't think today's USA is a good option. I would say so once and then force myself to shut up.

AmberGold - I totally understand your feelings having gone through two years of the same awful experience. My DS, partner and 3 year old GD have just gone to live in Canada (6 weeks ago) and it has been simply dreadful. I kept hoping that something would happen to stop them going but it's now happened. We bring our children up to be independent adults but when they make decisions like this we want so desperately to step in and stop them, but it's their choice. How it hurts - my thoughts are with you

It has happened to me with my elder daughter and is happening again with my younger daughter. To be honest it is like them going off to university only worse and it doesn't get better. skype-buy the best camera you can so you can scrutinise them when you connect up-my mind's eye picture of them otherwise stands still . The parents have to go where their talents are appreciated-it must be infinitely worse to see them off to a war zone. I don't think babies have a sense of time-the new one will be fine as soon as he sees you-and bombard the boy with postcards and email photos of you about your daily life so they keep the connection. we plant seeds and bulbs when they come and email photos of their progress-the children photo their drawings and email them and read to us on skype. It is a very lonely place but as your husband says be supportive and a stiff upper lip is a great help!