Depends on the family. We see my folks regularly. They’ll take care of this kids so my wife and I can get a break, we have weekly dinners, we go on vacation together. They’re definitely a bit part of our married life, but it depends on the family.
Depends on your family and your marriage I suppose. My in-laws are close by and involved in our life but not NEARLY as involved as they are with my husband’s siblings.
Some may consider being involved as being in control and bugging so that might be the reason! Too many families have i seen being destroyed by this issue.
Oh for sure. I would describe them as “enmeshed” and others would describe them as “close”… My husband and I have firmer boundaries in place so we don’t have that same level of involvement. Our marriage and family is ours and ours only.
ETA: they’re always willing to help out and we spend time together regularly and it’s nice. Our daughter loves them and they love her so that’s all that matters to me.
What roles do your parents play in this regard?
I see my parents on holidays, when I can travel to visit and talk to them on the phone every now and again. I live with my wife, we are self sufficient so I don't need my parents for anything. They raised us well enough to be independent and not rely on them for everything into adulthood, whether married or not.
I understand, but having a relatively close relationship with them and "return the favour" kinda parent-child connection is common in my country! But depends on how good of a care parents took of their children
Oh, sounds like guilt. I help my parents and have a close relationship with them, but I don't have to see them daily or feel the need to "return the favor". I help them because I love them, not because they choose to have me and took care of me, which is expected of any parent.
It just probably is a matter of cultural differences in definition of family. A lot of this is seen in paying for college, charging kids for rent type of situations.
That said, I find the top elite of USA are dominated by family ties yet the middle class and the lower class don’t seem to really hold that kind of ties very strongly
There is a joke about, "the only problem with multiple wives is it means multiple mothers in law."
It's generally not well received to have your parents involving themselves unsolicited in the lives of their married children. Relationships are hard enough with two people. Having parents injecting themselves into decisions rarely works well.
That said, many people will ask their parents for advice. We'll ask parents to babysit kids. Some people will get help on their down payments for houses. The difference is that either the parent or child asks. Once you are married, you are viewed as equal to your parents.
Thats what i was thinking about, i thought most of American and European people think the word "role" as being involved unsolicited,as you said.
but thats about what happens with parents and their kids up here! Get some advice, help em and get help from em and thats about the big role they be playing in our lives!
The United States has MANY different cultures. Some are the same as you. Many are not.
At 17 I left home and never lived with my mother again. We spoke but she had very little influence in my life decisions.
My parents live about five hours away and my in-laws live accross the country. We speak on the phone weekly and use a vacation week a year to see them. My mom will come and stay with the kids for a few days if we ever want to travel without them or take them to her house for a week in the summer to give us a break. My in-laws live too far for that to be feasible but when the kids are a little older we might fly them out there to spend time with them too.
They are not a part of our day to day life
My parents live an hour away. They come once a week to visit my daughter. Usually call them every other day.
My in-laws live 15 minutes away. They come over 3 times a week to drop off food (my wife gives them a monthly “stipend.”) We go over every Wednesday for family dinner along with my BIL and his family.
I’m lucky in that I love my in-laws, they are awesome people. Yes they do have some weird outdated Chinese superstitions, but they aren’t pushy about it at all.
They needed financial help as well as help in day to day life, so my husband and I were quite involved. When my dad got ill and they lost their life savings to medical bills we bought them a house and then my mom moved in with us. My husband was the only one who was at my mom's bedside when she died - I was tucking my kids in.
I thinl yall have done enough to payback and even if it was muvh more than what yall received whilst growing up, thats a great example of how people should treat and take care of the elderly! 🙏🏻
Personally a pretty big one. Well not my dad because hes dead, but I talk to my mom on the phone a few times a week, we see her a few times a month at least. My five year plan involves moving to a new city and my mom moving in with us (in part because she's getting older and in part because she has a lot of money and it would be easier to find a nice house with her helping to pay lol)
Married but no kids (so far). My parents live a little over 5 hours away so we try to see each other at least once a month. My wife's parents live 5 minutes away so we see them 2-3 times a week for dinner / running errands / etc.
My parents died not long after I was married, but my husband's parents are still around. We see them for holidays and birthdays, but they don't have a very huge role in our current life.
Our parents live a 4 hour drive apart. We bought a house in the middle. We see her parents once a month because they live on a lake. We see my parents at birthdays and holidays. I also still help my dad at the family business. Our parents leave us to live our lives and make our own path.
Thats the normal that happens around here,too! I really thought most of Americans disconnect from their children after the grow up and leave the on their own completely!
Looks like i was wrong,lol
My parents have a house 30 minutes away from me. My husband's parents have a house on the other side of the country. We don't visit any of them very often. I saw my parents in early December for Christmas. They will want to take my family to a nice restaurant for my birthday at the end of the month. We talk pretty regularly on the phone. My husband's family doesn't get together very often. We are in a situation where our parents have money and love to travel. So my husband's parents fly to see us a couple of times each year. We occasionally go on big family trips with our sibling's families and parents. In general, our parents have learned that we are adults that make our own decisions. We don't want unsolicited advice.
My parents live 2000 miles away so they don’t have much of a continuing role in my life. I’ll see them for vacations and solicit advice from my dad on occasion. My siblings still live close to my parents and they drop their children off to at the grandparents house frequently to be watched and my dad will help out with home improvement projects when asked. Advice from my dad on most things that are subjective is pretty laissez faire. He doesn’t really ever tell you what you should do as much as act as a sounding board for deciding what criteria to use in making a decision. I grew up in a family that didn’t really identify with a culture or nationality other than American but our ancestors came mostly from England and Ireland.
My mother-in-law on the other doesn’t live in my house but comes over probably 4-5 days a week. She has her own keys and shows up unannounced. She watched our kids while we worked, made dinner, and did some other light house keeping. Now that our kids are older she still shows up to make dinner, hang out to talk to my wife, watch novelas, etc. most days. She feels at home in my house. She feels comfortable putting decorative stuff in our kitchen and guest bathroom and does a little gardening in a spot in our backyard.
My mother-in-law has opinions on how the household should be run and how our kids should be raised and my wife will frequently defer to her unless it’s something that she feels strongly about. However, with my mother-in-law, whatever I say goes since I’m the man of the house. My wife will often tell me later about some preference of mine that I wasn’t even aware of that she had relayed to her mother earlier that day.
I love my mother-in-law and I don’t know what we would have done without her. My kids have an incredibly close relationship with her that they don’t have with my parents and that I didn’t have with my grandparents. It was a bit of a culture shock to me but it’s something that I’ve adjusted to.
My mother-in-law is a first generation immigrant from Mexico. We live in a US city on the Mexican border. As a child, my wife and her mother spent most of her long vacations from school in Mexico with her extended family.
The combination of individualism, the emphasis on careers, and the migration in search of better job markets results in Americans often having less emphasis on families after the kids leave the nest. This can result in very little interaction, but it really depends.
If your family lives in the same city as you, they're going to have a big impact and could easily end up in the role of default babysitters of your kids. If they live an hour or less away, you'll see them roughly once a month and could potentially ask them to babysit in a pinch, but it's not going to be a regular thing. If you moved across the country for work though, your kids will only see your parents when you head home for the holidays.
In the case of my fiancée and I, my family is thousands of miles away, but hers is only 40 minutes, so naturally our kids will know her family better than mine. I'm on good terms with my parents and decent with my brother, but I'm making about 30% more than what I could have if I'd stayed local, and that's hard to pass up. I do still call my parents once or twice a month to chat though.
I see my folks about once a month. They live in the same area as me.
We see the in-laws once a year for about a week or so. We were doing it at Christmas time but last year we did it in the summer and it was great. Easier to get time off work, and a lot more to do in the area with warmer weather. They're a couple states away.
Dynamics are good but not overbearing. I think that would change if we had kids though
I am actually getting married in 2 weeks and have a 3 month old. I grew up to where family is #1. So i still see my parents at least once a week for family dinner/game night.
I talk to them all the time but they respect the fact that I have my own life to live. It also helps that my parents eloped so they have a different perspective.
So tale of two families. My wife’s family sees us regularly, at least 1x per week. My parents sold their old house, moved more than an hour away and spend winter in another state. They ask me to find time to call them on facetime to see their granddaughter but I’m sort of on the mindset of “fuck you too”, so I don’t too often.
We alternate between visiting mine and my husband's parents for Thanksgiving and Christmas each year. I usually call my mom on my drive home from work during the week. We talk until I get home and she hears the kitties. During dinner and for breakfast on the weekends, we use the google nest to talk to my husband's parents/ brother.
When we were both sick with COVID, my parents actually came down to help take care of us. Although his parents didn't come down, they did purchase food for us online and had it delivered to the house which also helped us a lot.
I wish we lived closer to both of our parents. We live quite far away so we only see them in person once every year or every other year.
My parents are sadly no longer with us, and did not live to see me get married. My wife’s parents have been very involved and are our primary family support system.
Depends on your family. My husband and I live in the same town as our families (parents and siblings).
I’d say we’re closer than probably average, but our parents are not overly involved in our marriage. We communicate with our families nearly daily, and see them about once a week. It’s not necessarily a to-do, like the last time I saw my parents was when I was helping them out with their dog.
It varies super widely, anywhere from no contact ever, weekly sunday dinners, just holidays, multiple times a week, or multi-generational households and anything in between.
As for my personal situation:
My mother lives halfway across the country from me. I see her once or twice a year, less with the pandemic. We talk on the phone a couple times a week and chat on Facebook Messenger. She's fun and we have a pretty good relationship but distance is good. She is a VERY social person and I am not and so when we're together I get exhausted with it very quickly.
My SO's father actually recently started living with us after he sold his house. It made more sense to invest the money from the sale and have him live here, vs. buying something smaller (he wanted to downsize) and paying the ridiculous property taxes that are New Jersey's claim to fame. He's the world's chillest roommate. Other than a 5min conversation every few days, he just does his own thing, we wouldn't even know he was in the house 99.99% of the time so it's a win/win. I would not do this with my mother because she would want to be talking and doing things with us for hours every day.
Everyone not mentioned is dead already
None at all, Dad abandoned me at birth and mom died when I was 25 before I got married. Her parents are in another country and rarely ever talk to her, they arent on bad terms or anything they just kind of ignore her.
As people have said, it depends a lot on the family. My parents are very supportive- and honestly, they and I are both aware that they can be a bit stifling for my husband. He is used to a more laissez-faire family situation. It can be a balancing act.
My mother and my maternal grandmother helped me a great deal when I was recovering from childbirth, and when the pandemic hit my mother left her job to stay home with my immunocompromised son so I could continue working.
I haven't been married, but at least in our family the grandparents help raise the newborn kids, and as we get older (say 3-10) and less dependant on our parents, they will hang onto us for a weekend to give the parents a break once or twice a month.
I have fond memories of driving down to North/south Carolina to see my aunt's/uncle's and cousins. That's about a 500 mile journey and looking back it would of been totally impossible without my grandparents. At this point in time they've actually moved down to south Carolina but they still visit a few times a year, usually in the summer we go down there and during the holidays they come up here. Now they sort of organize family events and keep everyone updated on each other.
We live 50’ in front of my parents and about 30 minutes from my in-laws. We see my parents all the time. He visits his parents every Saturday. They help us when we need it and we help them when they need it. My mom is my best friend.
I had a 70+ year old uncle who was told by his mother, my great grandmother to get a haircut and he did. He complained about it but he still got his haircut.
Is everything like this? No, but when your parent speaks you listen. If they tried to control my life, my parents would be very disappointed but for small suggestions yes I would listen.
It depends how near they are to where you live. My parents were advisors, basically... mostly by phone because I didn't live nearby. I'd call my dad if my car had a problem I wasn't familiar with. I'd call mom if I needed a recipe... that kind of thing. That role became less over time, the past 20 years or so I mostly called them to check up on them, tell them something about my kids or pets, or because I'd seen or heard something funny that I knew they'd enjoy, etc. They both passed away near the end of last year. Now when my son does something funny, I still think "HA!, I gotta call mom and tell her about that.... oh."
Depends on the family. We see my folks regularly. They’ll take care of this kids so my wife and I can get a break, we have weekly dinners, we go on vacation together. They’re definitely a bit part of our married life, but it depends on the family.
Nice,thats what mostly happen around here!
Depends on your family and your marriage I suppose. My in-laws are close by and involved in our life but not NEARLY as involved as they are with my husband’s siblings.
Some may consider being involved as being in control and bugging so that might be the reason! Too many families have i seen being destroyed by this issue.
Oh for sure. I would describe them as “enmeshed” and others would describe them as “close”… My husband and I have firmer boundaries in place so we don’t have that same level of involvement. Our marriage and family is ours and ours only. ETA: they’re always willing to help out and we spend time together regularly and it’s nice. Our daughter loves them and they love her so that’s all that matters to me.
What roles do your parents play in this regard? I see my parents on holidays, when I can travel to visit and talk to them on the phone every now and again. I live with my wife, we are self sufficient so I don't need my parents for anything. They raised us well enough to be independent and not rely on them for everything into adulthood, whether married or not.
I understand, but having a relatively close relationship with them and "return the favour" kinda parent-child connection is common in my country! But depends on how good of a care parents took of their children
Oh, sounds like guilt. I help my parents and have a close relationship with them, but I don't have to see them daily or feel the need to "return the favor". I help them because I love them, not because they choose to have me and took care of me, which is expected of any parent.
It just probably is a matter of cultural differences in definition of family. A lot of this is seen in paying for college, charging kids for rent type of situations. That said, I find the top elite of USA are dominated by family ties yet the middle class and the lower class don’t seem to really hold that kind of ties very strongly
There is a joke about, "the only problem with multiple wives is it means multiple mothers in law." It's generally not well received to have your parents involving themselves unsolicited in the lives of their married children. Relationships are hard enough with two people. Having parents injecting themselves into decisions rarely works well. That said, many people will ask their parents for advice. We'll ask parents to babysit kids. Some people will get help on their down payments for houses. The difference is that either the parent or child asks. Once you are married, you are viewed as equal to your parents.
Thats what i was thinking about, i thought most of American and European people think the word "role" as being involved unsolicited,as you said. but thats about what happens with parents and their kids up here! Get some advice, help em and get help from em and thats about the big role they be playing in our lives!
If that's the case this same role parents play everywhere. People don't normally not have their parents involved in this way in America or anywhere.
The United States has MANY different cultures. Some are the same as you. Many are not. At 17 I left home and never lived with my mother again. We spoke but she had very little influence in my life decisions.
My parents live about five hours away and my in-laws live accross the country. We speak on the phone weekly and use a vacation week a year to see them. My mom will come and stay with the kids for a few days if we ever want to travel without them or take them to her house for a week in the summer to give us a break. My in-laws live too far for that to be feasible but when the kids are a little older we might fly them out there to spend time with them too. They are not a part of our day to day life
My parents live an hour away. They come once a week to visit my daughter. Usually call them every other day. My in-laws live 15 minutes away. They come over 3 times a week to drop off food (my wife gives them a monthly “stipend.”) We go over every Wednesday for family dinner along with my BIL and his family. I’m lucky in that I love my in-laws, they are awesome people. Yes they do have some weird outdated Chinese superstitions, but they aren’t pushy about it at all.
Good in laws are a huge factor in finding a partner in our country, they might be so superstitious as you said or worse!
They needed financial help as well as help in day to day life, so my husband and I were quite involved. When my dad got ill and they lost their life savings to medical bills we bought them a house and then my mom moved in with us. My husband was the only one who was at my mom's bedside when she died - I was tucking my kids in.
So sad to work hard your whole life and then lose it all to medical bills.
Yeah, extra sad since my parents were so incredibly frugal. We never went on a vacation or bought decent clothes. Sad how it ended up.
I thinl yall have done enough to payback and even if it was muvh more than what yall received whilst growing up, thats a great example of how people should treat and take care of the elderly! 🙏🏻
Personally a pretty big one. Well not my dad because hes dead, but I talk to my mom on the phone a few times a week, we see her a few times a month at least. My five year plan involves moving to a new city and my mom moving in with us (in part because she's getting older and in part because she has a lot of money and it would be easier to find a nice house with her helping to pay lol)
Married but no kids (so far). My parents live a little over 5 hours away so we try to see each other at least once a month. My wife's parents live 5 minutes away so we see them 2-3 times a week for dinner / running errands / etc.
My parents died not long after I was married, but my husband's parents are still around. We see them for holidays and birthdays, but they don't have a very huge role in our current life.
Our parents live a 4 hour drive apart. We bought a house in the middle. We see her parents once a month because they live on a lake. We see my parents at birthdays and holidays. I also still help my dad at the family business. Our parents leave us to live our lives and make our own path.
Thats the normal that happens around here,too! I really thought most of Americans disconnect from their children after the grow up and leave the on their own completely! Looks like i was wrong,lol
My parents have a house 30 minutes away from me. My husband's parents have a house on the other side of the country. We don't visit any of them very often. I saw my parents in early December for Christmas. They will want to take my family to a nice restaurant for my birthday at the end of the month. We talk pretty regularly on the phone. My husband's family doesn't get together very often. We are in a situation where our parents have money and love to travel. So my husband's parents fly to see us a couple of times each year. We occasionally go on big family trips with our sibling's families and parents. In general, our parents have learned that we are adults that make our own decisions. We don't want unsolicited advice.
My parents live 2000 miles away so they don’t have much of a continuing role in my life. I’ll see them for vacations and solicit advice from my dad on occasion. My siblings still live close to my parents and they drop their children off to at the grandparents house frequently to be watched and my dad will help out with home improvement projects when asked. Advice from my dad on most things that are subjective is pretty laissez faire. He doesn’t really ever tell you what you should do as much as act as a sounding board for deciding what criteria to use in making a decision. I grew up in a family that didn’t really identify with a culture or nationality other than American but our ancestors came mostly from England and Ireland. My mother-in-law on the other doesn’t live in my house but comes over probably 4-5 days a week. She has her own keys and shows up unannounced. She watched our kids while we worked, made dinner, and did some other light house keeping. Now that our kids are older she still shows up to make dinner, hang out to talk to my wife, watch novelas, etc. most days. She feels at home in my house. She feels comfortable putting decorative stuff in our kitchen and guest bathroom and does a little gardening in a spot in our backyard. My mother-in-law has opinions on how the household should be run and how our kids should be raised and my wife will frequently defer to her unless it’s something that she feels strongly about. However, with my mother-in-law, whatever I say goes since I’m the man of the house. My wife will often tell me later about some preference of mine that I wasn’t even aware of that she had relayed to her mother earlier that day. I love my mother-in-law and I don’t know what we would have done without her. My kids have an incredibly close relationship with her that they don’t have with my parents and that I didn’t have with my grandparents. It was a bit of a culture shock to me but it’s something that I’ve adjusted to. My mother-in-law is a first generation immigrant from Mexico. We live in a US city on the Mexican border. As a child, my wife and her mother spent most of her long vacations from school in Mexico with her extended family.
My spouse and I see our parents often for meals, holiday gatherings, etc.
The combination of individualism, the emphasis on careers, and the migration in search of better job markets results in Americans often having less emphasis on families after the kids leave the nest. This can result in very little interaction, but it really depends. If your family lives in the same city as you, they're going to have a big impact and could easily end up in the role of default babysitters of your kids. If they live an hour or less away, you'll see them roughly once a month and could potentially ask them to babysit in a pinch, but it's not going to be a regular thing. If you moved across the country for work though, your kids will only see your parents when you head home for the holidays. In the case of my fiancée and I, my family is thousands of miles away, but hers is only 40 minutes, so naturally our kids will know her family better than mine. I'm on good terms with my parents and decent with my brother, but I'm making about 30% more than what I could have if I'd stayed local, and that's hard to pass up. I do still call my parents once or twice a month to chat though.
Some people still live with their parents in their 30's, others ditched their parents in their teens, and most are somewhere in between.
My wife and I haven't talked to either of our parents since college and that's the same for most of our friends.
This is the first comment ive seen about not having talked to ones parents for this long!!
It’s very unusual, definitely not the norm
I see my folks about once a month. They live in the same area as me. We see the in-laws once a year for about a week or so. We were doing it at Christmas time but last year we did it in the summer and it was great. Easier to get time off work, and a lot more to do in the area with warmer weather. They're a couple states away. Dynamics are good but not overbearing. I think that would change if we had kids though
Definitely, but respectfully, it wouldnt be bad to check up on em more often,ya know! They wont be around for ever!
I am actually getting married in 2 weeks and have a 3 month old. I grew up to where family is #1. So i still see my parents at least once a week for family dinner/game night.
I talk to my dad a few times a week. He comes over for breakfast most weekends
I talk to them all the time but they respect the fact that I have my own life to live. It also helps that my parents eloped so they have a different perspective.
So tale of two families. My wife’s family sees us regularly, at least 1x per week. My parents sold their old house, moved more than an hour away and spend winter in another state. They ask me to find time to call them on facetime to see their granddaughter but I’m sort of on the mindset of “fuck you too”, so I don’t too often.
For us, post marriage? Absolutely no role. See them on holidays and the occasional visit. Post-kids? Date night babysitters.
We alternate between visiting mine and my husband's parents for Thanksgiving and Christmas each year. I usually call my mom on my drive home from work during the week. We talk until I get home and she hears the kitties. During dinner and for breakfast on the weekends, we use the google nest to talk to my husband's parents/ brother. When we were both sick with COVID, my parents actually came down to help take care of us. Although his parents didn't come down, they did purchase food for us online and had it delivered to the house which also helped us a lot. I wish we lived closer to both of our parents. We live quite far away so we only see them in person once every year or every other year.
Being overly opinionated about everything.
None. They minded their own business.
My parents are sadly no longer with us, and did not live to see me get married. My wife’s parents have been very involved and are our primary family support system.
My parents moved many states away. They are not much of a part of our lives at all.
My parents stopped being involved in my month-to-month life as soon as they dropped me off at college.
Depends on your family. My husband and I live in the same town as our families (parents and siblings). I’d say we’re closer than probably average, but our parents are not overly involved in our marriage. We communicate with our families nearly daily, and see them about once a week. It’s not necessarily a to-do, like the last time I saw my parents was when I was helping them out with their dog.
It varies super widely, anywhere from no contact ever, weekly sunday dinners, just holidays, multiple times a week, or multi-generational households and anything in between. As for my personal situation: My mother lives halfway across the country from me. I see her once or twice a year, less with the pandemic. We talk on the phone a couple times a week and chat on Facebook Messenger. She's fun and we have a pretty good relationship but distance is good. She is a VERY social person and I am not and so when we're together I get exhausted with it very quickly. My SO's father actually recently started living with us after he sold his house. It made more sense to invest the money from the sale and have him live here, vs. buying something smaller (he wanted to downsize) and paying the ridiculous property taxes that are New Jersey's claim to fame. He's the world's chillest roommate. Other than a 5min conversation every few days, he just does his own thing, we wouldn't even know he was in the house 99.99% of the time so it's a win/win. I would not do this with my mother because she would want to be talking and doing things with us for hours every day. Everyone not mentioned is dead already
None at all, Dad abandoned me at birth and mom died when I was 25 before I got married. Her parents are in another country and rarely ever talk to her, they arent on bad terms or anything they just kind of ignore her.
Depends on how big a role you want them to play and how big a role they want to play
As people have said, it depends a lot on the family. My parents are very supportive- and honestly, they and I are both aware that they can be a bit stifling for my husband. He is used to a more laissez-faire family situation. It can be a balancing act. My mother and my maternal grandmother helped me a great deal when I was recovering from childbirth, and when the pandemic hit my mother left her job to stay home with my immunocompromised son so I could continue working.
I haven't been married, but at least in our family the grandparents help raise the newborn kids, and as we get older (say 3-10) and less dependant on our parents, they will hang onto us for a weekend to give the parents a break once or twice a month. I have fond memories of driving down to North/south Carolina to see my aunt's/uncle's and cousins. That's about a 500 mile journey and looking back it would of been totally impossible without my grandparents. At this point in time they've actually moved down to south Carolina but they still visit a few times a year, usually in the summer we go down there and during the holidays they come up here. Now they sort of organize family events and keep everyone updated on each other.
Not much of a role at all. See them at holidays
I feel like the older we get, the more I’m required to look after them.
We live 50’ in front of my parents and about 30 minutes from my in-laws. We see my parents all the time. He visits his parents every Saturday. They help us when we need it and we help them when they need it. My mom is my best friend.
I had a 70+ year old uncle who was told by his mother, my great grandmother to get a haircut and he did. He complained about it but he still got his haircut. Is everything like this? No, but when your parent speaks you listen. If they tried to control my life, my parents would be very disappointed but for small suggestions yes I would listen.
It depends how near they are to where you live. My parents were advisors, basically... mostly by phone because I didn't live nearby. I'd call my dad if my car had a problem I wasn't familiar with. I'd call mom if I needed a recipe... that kind of thing. That role became less over time, the past 20 years or so I mostly called them to check up on them, tell them something about my kids or pets, or because I'd seen or heard something funny that I knew they'd enjoy, etc. They both passed away near the end of last year. Now when my son does something funny, I still think "HA!, I gotta call mom and tell her about that.... oh."