The thought of living near your parents might send you into a tailspin, and that is totally fair. Sometimes, grandparents can ignore boundaries, be overbearing, and generally just throw off the vibe of your nuclear family.
However, one mom swears that, if you respect each others’ boundaries, living close to grandparents can be a complete game changer.
“If you’re deciding where to live because you’re gonna have kids soon, this video is for you,” TikTok mom and content creator Emily Belson explained.
“We saw a bunch of friends this weekend and a lot of them are either engaged, just married, or like, have been married a couple years, thinking about kids. And one guy said, ‘Yeah, we’re thinking about moving near her family, but we need to be at least an hour away. We don’t want pop-ins. When we have kids, we just don’t want to be too close.’ And I bit my tongue, but I wanted to be like, ‘Yes, you do!’”
“You do want pop-ins. You want a text at 6:45 p.m., that’s like, ‘Hey, can we pick up the boys and take them to get ice cream?’ You want that!”
She admits that things were a bit wonky when she first moved closer to her parents.
“Before we had kids and we moved here, I was like, ‘This is way too close,’ because there were some pop-ins. Took a little bit of work on the whole boundaries idea, but since having kids, it is the greatest blessing to be near my parents,” she said.
“I cannot tell you how amazing mentally it is knowing I have someone to call if I need to. Like, there was one time where my older son fell, he was like bleeding, and then my younger son got hurt at the same time. They’re both bleeding. I called my mom kind of in a panic because I’m just like, ‘What do I even?’ and she had to go somewhere, but I was like, “Can you just stop by for five minutes and help me?’ And she was like, ‘I’m on my way.’ Just knowing I have people like that to call, it is so comforting.”
She continued, “I feel like I really have a village and I get not everyone is really close with their parents. Like I say, it hasn’t been perfect. It’s taken actually a lot of work because turns out when you see people a lot, you have to figure s**t out. You can’t just see them a couple times a year and like go on your merry way. Like, you have to deal with stuff. So we’re closer.”
She also says because of the close proximity, her children are super close with their grandparents.
“I just feel like I should say for anyone thinking about it who’s like scared to be too close, I get there are bad situations, but I think that being in your family, if you have an okay, pretty good relationship is so invaluable when you have kids.”
After her video gained traction, several TikTok users shared their own experiences of living near grandparents.
“Living close to the grandparents is the biggest flex we have. We are so lucky!” one user wrote.
Another said, “My dad stops by my house any time he goes to Home Depot to take my son with him.”
One user wrote from the opposite point of view, writing, “Sadly, this wouldn’t be the reality for a lot of us. Mine would ‘pop in’ and not help whatsoever.”
“growing up it is the best… I now pop in at my grandparents as an adult,” one young TikTok user wrote.
The OP replied, “Aww that’s wonderful!! Hoping my kids have that lifelong close relationship with their grandparents.”
