I wish my children knew their grandparents the way I knew mine

Hi there, I’m Aarti, Founder and Lead Counsellor at Incontact. Over the years, I have noticed a type of grief surface in many parents who have built meaningful lives away from their countries of origin. They speak about opportunities, careers, education, safety, and the many reasons they chose to raise their children abroad. Then, almost as an afterthought, this soft yet strong emotion emerges.

I wish my children knew their grandparents the way I knew mine.

It is rarely spoken of as grief. But I think it often is.

It’s not grief for what was lost. It’s about parents feeling that they aren’t able to give their children something they themselves received.

1 Story — The childhood we cannot pass on

Many of us grew up with grandparents woven into the fabric of ordinary life. They were not special occasions. They were everyday people.

The grandparent sitting in the corner chair. The unexpected stories after dinner. The familiar smells from the kitchen.

Your grandparents were the people who knew your parents before they became parents. They were the ones who quietly witnessed your life unfolding, just like they did your parents’ lives unfold.

Many of these moments we shared with our grandparents felt unremarkable at the time. Only later do we realise how deeply they shaped our sense of belonging.

Then we become parents ourselves.

And suddenly we notice the distance…

The video calls that feel rushed.

The birthdays celebrated through screens.

The children who know their grandparents, but do not quite know them.

And somewhere in those moments, a quiet sadness appears.

As parents, neither are we sad because our children lack love. Nor because we made the wrong choice.

We feel sad because there are experiences that cannot be digitally transmitted.

The casual familiarity, the accumulated moments, and the feeling of growing up in someone’s daily presence.

What many parents are grieving is not simply geographical distance. They are grieving the impossibility of giving their children the exact childhood they once had.

1 Insight — Sometimes the grief is about comparison, not connection

One of the hardest transitions in parenthood is accepting that our children’s lives will not mirror our own.

Even when we consciously choose a different path.

Part of the sadness many expatriate parents feel comes from comparing two versions of childhood.

The one they remember. And the one their children are living.

The comparison feels natural, but it can be misleading. Children do not experience absence the same way adults experience memory. Your child is not comparing today’s video call with the grandparent relationship you had thirty years ago.

Only you are carrying both realities at the same time.

Your grief often lives in the space between them. This does not make the sadness any less real. But it changes what the sadness is about.

The grief is not necessarily that your child lacks something. The grief may be that you cannot recreate something that mattered deeply to you.

Those are not the same thing.

Recognising this difference can soften the guilt many parents carry.

2 tools to honour the connection you wish existed

Tool 1 — Notice what you are truly grieving

The next time you feel sadness about the distance between your children and their grandparents, pause and ask yourself:

“What am I missing right now?”

Is it concern for your child? Or is it a memory of your own childhood?

Often, both are present.

Separating them gently can help you understand the grief more clearly. Sometimes what hurts most is not what your child lacks. It is what you remember.

Tool 2 — Focus on continuity, not replication

Many parents unconsciously try to recreate the grandparent relationship they experienced.

But every generation builds connections differently.

Instead of asking: “How can I give my child what I had?”

Try asking: “How can my child build their own relationship with their grandparents?”

The answer may look different.

More stories than visits.

More video calls than shared meals.

More intentional moments than spontaneous ones.

Different does not automatically mean less meaningful.

Some parts of parenting involve providing. And other parts involve grieving.

Grieving the versions of childhood we cannot recreate. Grieving traditions that do not travel easily across countries. Grieving relationships that geography inevitably changes.

Yet children do not need our childhood. They need their own.

The task is not to reproduce the life we had. It is to help them build a meaningful life with the reality they have.

Perhaps, in doing so, we can hold both truths at once:

The sadness of what could not be passed on.

And the possibility that something beautiful can still be created in its place.

With warmth and care,

Aarti ❤️