One of our grandkids lives in Canada.  For the last four months she and her folks were in Florida, while she got special therapy after Selective Dorsal Rhizotomy surgery at The Conductive Education Center of Orlando. 

Sunday they dropped by on their way back to Canada.  It had been over a year since they’d visited us here on the farm, so it was a special treat to see them.  Since it had been so long, all the goodies in Ellie’s toy bin were like having new toys to play with.  She took a special liking to the toy phone.  A child of her times, she alternated between calling and texting people. 

“See Grandma, this is how you text!”

One of her favorite people to text is her favorite Sesame Street character, Abby Cadabby.  She got to “see” Abby when she and her folks visited the Sesame Street part of Busch Gardens in Tampa, Florida.  So now when she calls, she talks to Abby in Florida, and says that Abby is visiting Elmo, one of her other favorite characters.

All too soon they had to be on the road again, and early Wednesday morning headed back to Canada.  No more non-stop flights to visit.  Nope, it takes at least two lay-overs to get from here to where they are in Canada.

So it’s back to long distance grandparenting!

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Grandparenting Tips: Always keep a bin full of toys for visiting grandchildren. One of those plastic bins with a snap-on lid works well, because then it’s easy to store the bin somewhere when they aren’t there.

And don’t let them talk you into taking a bunch of stuff out the bin home with them.  It’s good for them to have some toys to look forward to playing with when they visit their grandparents!

I think most grandparents, especially grandmothers, would love to have their grandchildren nearby.  However, to be able to drop in and see your grandkids anytime you want to is a luxury many of us do not have.  And I think we long distance grandparents sometimes worry our grandchildren will forget us, and often feel left out of their lives.

However, if your kids are rovers at heart, or must move because of career changes, or for whatever reason they live far from you, there’s no choice.  You have to grandparent long-distance.

But it’s not all bad.  Seriously.  There are some silver linings to those long distance clouds.

When you visit, it’s a special event.  Having grandma or grandpa around isn’t taken for granted.  When it’s time for a visit, the grandchildren are excited.  Most of the time, your kids have been priming them with, “Guess who’s coming?”   So when you make an appearance, man, it’s a BIG DEAL.

You’re not so tempted to tell your kids how to raise YOUR grandchildren.  If the time you have to spend together is limited, you’re concentrating more on doing fun things.  There’s not as much time or temptation to tell your kids what you think they should be doing differently when it comes to raising their kids.  That makes for better family relations all the way round.

Babysitting the grandchildren isn’t taken for granted.  You’re not around all the time to watch the grandchildren, so when you get to do so, it’s a BIG EVENT.  It’s lots of fun and a special time for everyone.   It’s not like you’re there every day, and taken for granted as a convenient babysitter.  Nope, your kids and grandkids think it’s a great treat.  And so do you.

You’re probably not as fixated on your grandchildren.  You can’t run over and see your grandchildren everyday, so you’ve got to find other things to do with your time.  That’s not such a bad thing, because you don’t have a laser focus on grandkids, period.  Let’s face it, not everyone wants to hear every tiny little thing your grandkids are doing – who’s being potty trained, who got their first tooth, who said the cutest thing – you get the idea.  You may have grandchildren, but you’re still an adult, and most other adults appreciate some “adult” conversation.  If all you do is spend every minute with your grandchildren, what else are you going to talk about?

Long distance grandparenting is probably not the first choice for most of us, but just the way things happened.  If you’re one of the many with grandchildren scattered far from you, take heart. 

There are actually some benefits to being a long distance grandparent, after all.

That doesn’t sound very nice, does it?

Well, I’ve done it, and I can tell you it’s loads of fun.

Of course, I’m not really talking about flattening your grandkids. But have you ever heard of a “Flat Stanley” letter? For those of you that don’t know who Flat Stanley is, he’s a character in a series of books by Jeff Brown (author) and Scott Nash (pictures).  The main character, Stanley, and his younger brother Arthur, get a big bulletin board from their Dad so they can put pictures and posters on it.  He hangs it on the wall over Stanley’s bed, but during the night it falls down on Stanley and flattens him in his sleep.

Flat Stanley

Thus, “Flat Stanley” is born.  He has all kinds of adventures in his flattened state, but one of his most notable abilities is the fact he can visit his friends by being mailed to them in an envelope.

An innovative teacher in Ontario, Canada, named Dale Hubert got the idea back in 1995 to start the Flat Stanley Project. Teachers have their students to host flat visitors from other places. The students make journals of what Flat Stanley does while he’s visiting and send it on to the next person.

Other teachers have done their own Flat Stanley projects, and that’s how I got involved. A very nice teacher in California was looking for farmers to host a student from her elementary class — one student to each farmer. Once they had enough participants, she had the kids draw a picture of themselves, and they cut them out and sent to the farmers.

At first I wasn’t going to participate, thinking I really didn’t have time for that. However, I got to thinking that it would be a good way to do something special for my far away grandkids at the same time. When I took Flat Stanley around to different places and did stuff with him, I took a lot of pictures and journaled about where he’d been and what he was doing.  I love getting more than one use out of a project!

For instance, he went out with me when I checked on newborn lambs.  (Please excuse the poor quality pictures… it was my first digital camera, and they weren’t too clear then!)

The lambs didn’t seem to mind him resting with them, and I got to talk about what it was like on the farm during lambing season, and how we took care of the little lambs.

Another time I went to visit a friend who was showing me how to spin.  She also had a big loom, so I took a picture of our Flat Stanley on top of loom.

Then I told a story of how people used wool and spun it up, then used it on the loom. I also sent enough samples of wool for every kid in the class, and of course, I sent several samples to the grandkids when I did their story.

Our Flat Stanley even went to the racetrack with us when my husband went to a special driving school, and we got a picture of him in a helmet.

Of course I sent the grandkids a lot of pictures of their grandfather driving around the track!

It’s just a great way to share with your grandkids.

To do your own Flat Stanley project with your grandchildren, you can either have them draw a caricature of themselves and mail it to you, or take a picture you have of them and blow it up to poster size. With a poster you could put a whole group of grandkids in the picutres!

Then all you need to do is take the picture with you when you go places or are doing some project, and don’t forget your camera!  Get some pictures of the flat grandchildren in the midst of the action, print a few pictures and then write a letter telling all about what was going on and send it to the grandkids.

Of course, you could also do this in blog format or some other way online, but it’s much more fun to get pictures they can look at any time, and a Flat Stanley letter in the mail is also a lot of fun to get!!

I’m sure you can think of all kinds of Flat Stanley ideas you can turn into Flat Grandkids projects.  On vacation, to the store, visiting someone… wherever you go, take your flat grandchildren!  The real ones will get a real kick out of the pictures and story letters you send.

It’s a great way to stay connected with your far away grandkids!