Nephew lives with us on school days and misses every weekend birthday party

mango_violin_145429 Oct 2026

My nephew is 11. He stays with us in Ameerpet during the week, because his school is close, and goes home to his parents most weekends. The arrangement works well and we have agreed the big things between the two houses. What I had not thought about is his friends. Almost everything his classmates do together happens on weekends: birthday parties, cricket in someone's colony, the odd movie. His parents live on the other side of the city, so he says no to nearly all of it, and this term he has started saying he doesn't get invited any more. For families where a child splits the week between two homes, how do you handle weekend plans? Do you keep some weekends free for friends, or does one house do the driving?

1 comment

lilac_sparrow_754330 Oct 2026
We do not have two households, so I cannot speak to that part. What we did have, with my shift roster, was plenty of weekends when nobody was free to drive, and our two missed a lot of parties at that age. What helped was not trying to cover everything. We asked each of them which one or two things really mattered, usually a regular game rather than every birthday, and planned the driving around those. The occasional sleepover at our place in return kept them on the lists. At 11 he can probably tell you which ones he minds missing.