I know that I did it as a kid getting sent to my grandparents for some portion of the summer and I know my parents generation it was very common to send kids South for the summer.
Is this something y’all still see in your social groups or did you do this growing up?
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I went to my grandma’s every summer.
I was sent to my grandparents for a portion of the summer growing up as a kid. Early 2000s.
I don’t know anyone that did that.
I’ve never had that opportunity tbh
I grew up in the 60s and 70s and never heard of this being done at all.
Back then, Nana didn’t work. My mom worked up until she had ALS, so sending the kids to Grammy and Pops wasn’t an option for us. It’s too bad, those were some fun times. Our economy has changed to the point where 2 incomes are nearly necessary for all families, including the grandparents.
Our family lived near us. My parents are dead and my mil is to old to deal with our wild ass kids. She also doesn’t live that far away. I don’t know anyone that ever sent their kids away for the summer.
I’ve never heard of it. Kids go to day camp or sleep away camp.
Most people I know move closer to their parents while raising children for “the village” aspect, so not very common.
I’d help my grandfather on his farm in the summer, but I’d only stay for a few days per week because I had chores to do around my parent’s house. I’d go to summer camp for a week when I was in the Boy Scouts.
This isn’t a thing that I experienced growing up. I’m in my 30s.
If/when I have kids I could see us doing this, but it’s very situation dependent thing. My wife’s family lives in Beijing.
Having them spend an extended time in the summer in China would give kids an opportunity to develop stronger relationships with their grandparents and mother’s culture.
I see it occasionally but not much. In the US, we really don’t have a village to help with the kids.
It’s not common among my circles. Parents’ parents could still be working full time. Or too chronically ill to care for children. Or, having raised their own children, don’t have any interest in being childcare for the summer. And in many families it would take a hell of a lot of logistics. I live out west but my family is all 2000 miles away back east.
I don’t think I knew anyone who did this growing up.
My parents used to send me and my sister to live with our grandparents in Puerto Rico from 2008-2012.
I didn’t send my kids (now 24 & 21), but I took them for a month every summer. I only know of a couple other families that did that, and all of us had one set of grandparents overseas. That said, my parents lived close and they saw the kids most days.
I’ve never heard of this being done.
My parents live 4 hours away, my kids typically spend a week there during the summer and a week for spring break at their house.
I never did it as a kid because my grandparents lived 5 mins away and both sets watched up all the time.
I think it is highly context dependent. If my “family home” is in the same city where I(and my kids) live, it doesn’t make sense for them to go stay a couple miles away for weeks. But if the grandparents are 1)miles away and 2) available to spend time with the kids; then maybe.
Every summer I went to my grandparents, but today many people can’t afford to retire so summer camp serves to bridge the childcare gap.
So many places near me have gone to year-round schools, so “the summer” is two weeks.
Aside from a couple weeks of summer camp, no. It’s not common at all.
I grew up in the 90s/00s and lived very close to one set of grandparents (10-15 min). We spent a lot of summer with them (they they had a pool!). They retired when I was young but were teachers so had summer free, anyway.
We always visited the other set of grandparents for a week every July or August (about a 12 hour drive, bless my parents). Sometimes we’d stay with them a few extra days or with our very close aunt and have our own little kid-cation.
We never got shipped off for a summer or anything though.
I don’t have kids but my pets spend 1-2 weeks with my folks (6 hour drive away) when I go on vacation in the summer lol
I’ve never heard of “sending kids home for the summer” but I have heard of “sending the kids to grandma’s house for the summer”. I don’t think sending kids to their grandparents for the summer is as popular today as it was 30 years ago. So many parents of today are complaining about their parents being hands off or absent grandparents.
My grandparents lived across the street from us so there was no spending the summer at grandma’s for me and my siblings. We could just walk over to see them and then walk back home.
Do you mean when people moved to the midwest for jobs and then sent kids home with grandma back in Southern states?
But: Different times. Both grandparents often are working now. No more stay at home grandma as defacto babysitter.
I was sent away to grandma 2 hrs away during most school holidays. My mom and ILs live VERY far away so it’s not likely happening for my kid
I never experienced this, none of my cousins ever did this, and I don’t remember any of my friends being sent to their grandparents for the summer. Going to summer camp was expected, being shipped off to your relatives was not.
I was a kid in the 90s/00s and grew up in the midwest with middle class parents. Maybe this is specific to a region of the country or a particular social economical class that I was not a part of
I got sent to visit my grandparents alone for 1-2 weeks every summer when I was a kid in the 2000s. But that was more because I wanted to spend time with my grandparents but I my dad didn’t want to spend that much time with his parents lol. People that I knew would visit their grandparents, but usually with the rest of their family. I didn’t know anyone who was sent to live their grandparents for an extended period of time
Not really but my wealthier friends send their kids to summer camp for a few weeks
I didn’t know anyone who did that when I was a kid. I lived 3 miles away from my grandparents, so I wouldn’t have gone very far if they did send me.
These days, the only people I know who do anything similar are immigrants who visit family in their home country.
I taught plenty of students who would live in one city with part of their family during the school year and in another place with different family during the summer.
I think this is relatively common everywhere in the world
When I was a kid, my mom, siblings, and I would usually spend a month of the summer with my paternal grandmother at her cabin, and then a month with my maternal grandmother on the other side of the country. We were never sent away, but it’s because my mom was a teacher and had the summers off. My cousins (who are actually the grandchildren of my dad’s godparents) got sent to the cabin to be with their grandparents every summer, because both their parents had jobs with long hours. Their cabin was beside my grandparents’ cabin, so I got to spend a month with my cousins too.
I would spend weeks in Horseshoe Beach, Florida, with my uncle and aunt who had a house down there. All you could do is fish. It’s like that scene from Forrest Gump where Bubba lists all the things you can do with shrimp. Except fish.
Most of the people I know with kids live rather close to their parents/the grandparents. So while kids may spend more time at a grandparents house in the summer, they really aren’t being ‘sent’ anywhere for weeks at a time.
Another thing at play is A TON of grandparents are still in the work force. When I was growing up it was a lot more common to have at least grandma at home. But not in this economy.
Back in the 60’s and 70’s I was sent back to my grandparents because they lived 1500 miles away. Both my parents worked and it was cheaper to put me in a plane and send me to them for 3 months than to pay for child care. I was an only child and the only grandchild. My grandkids all live within an hour’s drive.
I taught preschool in an area with a lot of people from various other countries (big university town with people coming to study or teach from all over the world) and it wasn’t uncommon for those people to send their kids back to their home country for weeks or months at a time. But I don’t know any Americans of the current generation of parents that have sent their kids to stay with grandparents for an extended period of time. I’m sure it happens though. A lot of grandparents are working into older ages than they used to so I’m sure that impacts things along with parents just not wanting to be away from their kids.
Zero
Many Boomers are still working and thus can’t be summer care. Plenty don’t want to be involved at all, but I don’t think this one is a reasonable expectation. People are having kids later in life now. Our grandparents were 40-50 when we were kids. By the time my kids are old enough to drop off on a plane, I’m thinking 10, my mom will be late 60s. It’s a different ask. If my mom hadn’t had me so young, she’d be 70-80s before sending my kids off was a real option. That’s too old to be a primary caregiver for weeks.
In the 70s/80s I was a family outlier, as my parents never sent me home for the summer. We would visit for a few weeks, but I was never sent alone.
Doesn’t seem to happen as much these days.
“Sending kids home” is an interesting way of wording that, I assume you grew up somewhere different from what your parents consider home? Our extended family on one side all lived within a 30 mile or so radius so sometimes we’d get sent to one of their houses, usually grandparents but not always, for a few days but definitely not for the whole summer. I started working a summer job right around the time my grandparents retired, maybe we’d have done more of that sort of thing if I’d been younger, I don’t know.
My family did it in the 90s and early 2000s.
I’m 57, from NY, and don’t know anyone who did this.
My mom and dad’s parents didn’t do this with my mom and dad either (that would have been in the 1940’s and 1950’s)
It was important for us for our son to have a relationship/connection with his grandparents as well as all of his aunts and uncles and cousins that still live in the area. After we moved away from family, he would go home for a couple of weeks every summer. Around the age of 14 he began flying home by himself.
This year he went back to spend 10 days on his spring break. He is in college.
I went to my grandparents for a week or two each summer (about 2 hours away) until their health caused them to move near us when I was about 10.
I now live about 2 hours from my parents. My daughter is only 18 months now, but my mom already is talking about her coming for a week or two once she is older.
I’m 38 and I don’t know a single person who did that
My parents did this once but it was to my uncles house for the summer.
I think this was much more common in black families who’d originally lived in the South and whose younger members sometimes migrated north for better opportunities and less resistance in terms of racism. There was typically a core group of the family remaining in the area they all grew up in, and kids would be sent from up north to visit grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins. I think the custom has pretty much died out.
I spent a lot of time at my grandparents in the summer. But they lived in the same town as us.
It was just better at their house.
My daughter (when she was young) spent two weeks with my mom. But mom and step dad both worked until kiddo was in her 20s.
But that is the difference now. My grandma was a sahm and when I was old enough to remember by grandpa was retired.
Now, my youngest is the same age as I was when I had my oldest, neither child has kids, and I’m still working.
I used to spend most of my summer at my grandparents, but it was because they had a farm and were getting older and needed some help lol, plus I think my dad wanted to get some of that experience he had growing up
When my nieces and nephews were little around 2010, my mother would have “Grandma’s Summer Camp” and have them all for a week and take them to do things like the Zoo, Botanical Gardens, Aquarium etc, my Brother ans sister in law would take the time to go to the beach.
Both sets of my grandparents lived within 20 miles of my hometown in small (like really small) farming communities. Both my parents worked.
I spent more time with my grandparents in the summer than my parents until I was probably 10-12.
When I was growing up, in PA, I used to spend a few weeks over the summer with my favorite aunt and uncle in Ohio. That was in the 80’s. My kids never spent time away since we lived down the street from my parents, who weren’t very involved anyways, until we moved to SC 5 years ago. Now my kids are too old to want to go, even if they had any desire to leave SC in the summer for the crappy summers in PA. In my area I do see a lot of kids going to spend time with either grandparents or the non custodial parent for several weeks over the summer, or to a sleep away summer camp. I live among a high concentration of military families so that may affect the numbers a bit.
I don’t think it’s very common anymore. My mom did it, my older sister did it, but it stopped with me. No real big reason why. I’m also not sure how widesread the practice was in the first place.
My spouse was sent to the Outer Banks to stay with relatives for a few weeks during the summer one year.
They were already home for the summer.
I was never sent anywhere for the summer and never heard of anyone I know who was sent away. I was just home and went to my cousin’s house or friends’ houses to play for the day, but they all just lived in the same town.
I never saw this growing up. One set of grandparents lived around the corner and we visited them all the time but not for a whole summer. We rare visited the other grandparents in another state. My mom would never have sent us to her parents.
None of those places were “home.”
My parents worked when my kids were growing up. My mother is/was still working when my youngest graduated high school. This probably only works when grandparents are retired.
Yeah sure, it’s common now in New England – a few weeks of “grandparents camp” we call it. Kids may go to an expensive sleepaway or day camp for a few weeks in the summer, but summer vacation is like 10 weeks. So, 3-4 weeks paid camp, 2 weeks grandparents visit, 2 weeks family vacation. And a week or two to sit on their butts watching YouTube and sleeping.
I used to send my kids for a week and we called it “Grandma Camp.” We lived overseas when my kids were young, and I would send them for a week before we headed back to India for the school year so that I could get everything organized before we left. We’ve been back for a while now, but my daughter is 15 now and she asked for a week of Grandma Camp this summer. She and my mom had the best time.
It’s not the most common, but also far from rare. I know plenty of students who go out of state for the summer to family.
I was sent to suburban Cleveland some summers 💀
I grew up on Long Island. My grandparents lived on Long Island, along with most of the extended family. We may have slept over for a few days here and there, but nothing long term.
I don’t recall any of my friends being “sent home” for the summer except one year a friend got to spend a summer with family that lived in Scotland
In the 90s I went 45 minutes north to my great grandparents house for a week or two in the summer. Great memories. I learned to swing a hammer from a life long carpenter. My great grandmother was an odd duck though.
My grandparents lived 2 blocks away… so it was more like “Everyone Loves Raymond”.
There was nowhere “south” to send us or my parents… or any of my friends for that matter… this was not common in my experience.
I was only taken to places I wanted to go to. I’d spend a couple of weeks at my grandparent’s house (dad’s side) during the summer. They lived about an hour and a half away near a lake. They retired there with other family members. My grandpa and my grandma’s siblings lived there along with my great grandma (on grandma’s side). I’d also stay with my mom’s parents sometimes, but not overnight. They just lived 15 minutes from our house. Sometimes I’d go to sleep away camp with a friend. When I was of working age, I worked all summer.
Never heard of being sent away like that. My parents were divorced and my sisters and I always had to spend a month with our dad every summer. We absolutely hated it.
I spent a week or two with each set of grandparents, each summer in the 1980s. I think it was to give my parents some vacation time.
My parents sent me up the my grandparents every summer. I was up there for weeks, sometimes a month, until I got to high school. Then it stopped because I was doing other things over the summer like working or volunteering. This was in the 90s.
The only people I know who still do something like this are those who have custody arrangements that require it. I don’t have kids, but if I did, I would possibly do this but to their (not hypothetical) cousins via my in-laws. We live in a different country than most of my husband’s family, and my in-laws go back and forth several times a year. I’d want my kids to spend time with their cousins and other family as much as possible.
Yes, during the 1970s, my sisters and I were sent (on the Greyhound bus) to our grandparents for two weeks. The cousins were all there as well, which made 7 of us in total. It was always a fantastic experience, and we all looked forward to it, although now that I’m old, I have to wonder how exhausting it must have been for my grandparents!
We were shipped off to the grandparents every summer for a month. 70s and 80s kid.
We went to my grandparents for the summer. My gma was a homemaker so there was someone home at all times. My kids would never be able to do that because my parents worked or were not interested in having kids for the summer.
My parents were sent home to the south every summer. It was very common amongst kids of the Great Migration.
i think it used to be more of a thing for people living in cities before climate control to send their families somewhere more rural in the summer just to get them out of the heat (but the fathers or the parents would still have to work). but that was like a specific group of people at a specific time
My sister’s kids are currently with my parents. I think it just depends on families. My mom was always off in the summer (before she retired) so she often took the kids to do fun stuff.
We just got our kids back from 3 weeks with one grandparent set and they’re about to do 3 weeks with the other set. All of the parents we know think we’re very lucky to be able to but aside from my sister we don’t know anyone else that does it.
My parents sent me to my aunt and uncle in Montana for summers in the 90s and 2000s. I worked in their restaurant when I was old enough or just on their ranch. Both my parents were sent to be with family during their summers as well. It was always “back East” or “back home”.
If I had kids, I would definitely send them to my best friends for visits with them and their kids. My best friend sends me her daughter for two weeks in the summer. Lots of my friends and family have a SAHP in the picture though.
Super common among immigrant families (my parents were immigrants). Kids would get sent “back home” during summers to hang out in the old country with grandparents or other relatives.
Nah, the boomers sent their kids to their own parents for weeks at a time but can’t arse themselves to babysit their own grandkids once a month.
I’ve never known of anyone to do so in my communities or family, but I also grew up in an area that was rural, poor, in the south, and where multiple generations all lived close by so it may simply have been lack of opportunity.
My son-in-law grew up in the 90s on a farm in Maryland and his cousins who lived in Detroit and Boston used to stay with them for the summer. Those kids are all in their 30s and 40s, but they’re still incredibly tight.
I mean I knew a bunch of Hispanic kids that got sent to relatives in Mexico and Spain for the summer
I sometimes went to the South for the summer. It was a great experience that helped me survive being an only child on the West Side of Chicago. The experience connected me to my family and our history. I learned how to garden, shuck, cook, and can.
Even as a young adult, I received psychological and emotional sustenance from escaping the anonymity of Chicago and LA. I would get off of the “gray dog” on the side of the road, and the people in the first car would stop and offer me a ride.
They never asked my name. They would only ask: “To which house on the Ridge are you going.”
I replied: It doesn’t matter. Being around my aunts helped me appreciate my broad shoulders, my big feet, and my booming voice.
This was my homeplace, my village, and everyone was kin. Hugged, taught, fed, and affirmed, I was able to return to the big cities ready to fight on my own. I survived. I even thrived.
For my children, visiting relatives for the summer meant a couple of weeks in LA.
Social media and DNA are giving us the opportunity to reknit some ties.
The people that I knew who were sent to their grandparents were primarily Baby Boomers/Generation Jones. They were maybe a handful of people I knew. Usually it was a couple of weeks. Sometimes the parents would drive them to the grandparents home, drop them off and come back in a few weeks. Other times it was the entire summer. If it was a long-distance when they got older, then went by plane.
All of these people enjoyed staying with their grandparents and looked forward to it. As they got older, the time period was lessen to maybe a couple of weeks or a month as opposed to the entire summer.
The grandmothers didn’t work for the most part back in the day. So they were available to the kids when they were young. Now that’s not the case as many grandmother now work.
I don’t know of anyone currently or the younger generation of parents doing this. It’s not done as much.
In my circle, it was common to go to a summer camp. The individualist streak in our culture makes it look bad to “dump” childcare on family, but working parents can’t take three months off to supervise a kid home from school.
That said, basic sports/nature/theater camps were dirt cheap and fairly bare-bones back then. There’s been a big pressure for summer programs to become more educational and enriching, and a decline in cheap summer labor from older school-aged kids. I think this is driving my generation to reconsider “sending kids home” as an option.
I used to get sent to Spain to be with my cousins in the summer and to learn how to be a Spaniard like my family. It’s totally a thing.
My brother and I were sent south for the summer. I appreciate it now since I lost my grandparents before the age of 22 but at least I got those summers with them. I don’t really see it done now.
I do that! My kid spends a week or so with my husband’s dad and wife. And then a week or so with his mom. And my mom. It really knocks down on summer camp costs. It’s why we only have 1 kid.
My sister is talking about sending her 12yo to live with our parents next summer. I’m excited about it because I live a few streets away from my parents so I’ll get to see her all the time
I am in the middle of picking my son up from Grandma’s after he spent the last two weeks visiting her and we focused on the baby. We do this every year since my family lives 10 hours away and gives time for kids to see that side of family
Yep. Sent to the grandparents when we lived 10 minutes away and when they lived a few hours away. And you bet your ass I sent my kids to both sets of grandparents when they were younger in the summers.
They flew more as unaccompanied minors than I ever did!
Chicano kid in the ‘70s, mom would put me (9yo) and my little sister (5yo) on a plane to fly cross country and spend 6-8 weeks with my grand parents out west. Other times she’d drive us out and drop us off. One time my dad drove us out. Anyways, while we were little, she liked to have us gone for the summer.
With my gen-z kid, could not imagine being apart from my kid, although job/moving did once keep me away for 6 months. I made sure to set up an early web cam so I could spend time with family every day, even from work. Hell, I’d connect when no one was home and talk to the dog.
I used to spend a few weeks at my grandmother’s. I just sent my grandchild home yesterday after about 6 weeks with us. We live on opposite coasts and it’s hard to visit because of our work schedules. We haven’t retired yet.
This hits hard. Every summer I got to go to both my grandparents homes. Four weeks at Dad’s parents and four weeks at Mom’s Mother’s. Both sets of grandparents were fun and interesting in their own ways. It was basically my whole summer between them all, and loved it. They loved it too. They’ve all passed now but my best childhood memories are going to the Grandparents all summer.
Extremely common growing up in the 80s and 90s. People were bags packed last day of school to fly to DR and PR for the summer. I send my kids for a couple of weeks and thats it. But i remember plenty of people who just put their kids on a plane and sent them home for a solid 2 months a year. Crazy work.
We were expats. Sending younger kids home to The US for the Summer or over holidays and school breaks, was pretty common in the many different overseas communities we were temporarily part of. Military, foreign service, or not, lots of expat families did that.
We did it when we lived in The US full time too, though. Our own parents would send us to the grandparents for two months every Summer, until we were in about 10th grade. And, we sent our own kids to my sister for three weeks each Summer so they could reconnect with their cousins. My husband’s family sent him and his brother to Greece or to California, to spend time with their famiy (but in alternate years, his cousins came to his house instead).
I grew up in MD. Only child, both parents worked. They sent me to stay with my grandparents in Miami for most of the summer when I was a kid. I loved it tbh. My grandparents were the kindest people in the world… I treasure the memories of those summers.
Edit: born in the 80’s
We were the home but yes. My mom’s family came down and stayed over summer, once they left id dip off to my grandparents for the rest of it. Ride horses and atvs and swim in the lake for 2 months.