How to Become a Beloved Aunt or Uncle
I was lucky: as a child, I had great examples of how to be a fun aunt, and even as a teenager, I knew that this is the role I want to play as an adult. And since my younger brother has autism – serious enough to have a family of his own – that’s not an issue – that meant I had to marry someone who had siblings who wanted children.
When I met Jeff, he had two nieces. Number 3 came up a year or two after we met. Nos. 4 and 5 appeared after we got married. I dig these little girls so hard and it’s important to me that they know they can count on me and that I love their snot.
This is how I try to show it to them, and this is my best advice for achieving Favorite Aunt or Favorite Uncle status:
Get them while they’re young …
This is a trick that I honed as a teenager, when my older cousins had children. I adore babies, but if you bring a child, say, on Christmas Eve to an Italian family’s home, that child will disappear into the hustle and bustle of exclamatory relatives.
When that happened, I controlled myself. The turmoil inevitably subsided right by lunchtime, when I pounced and offered to cool off with this nugget while everyone else, including Mom and Dad, ate. So I got the coveted one-on-one time with my baby and started to strengthen our bond early.
… But don’t force him
My love language is physical touch. I hug. Come and sit on my lap, or hug me, or hang from my back, or let me kiss your fabulous face. However, as much as I want to squeeze them, I am not going to grab a child who does not want to be hugged. It’s just not okay .
Instead, I greet them when they enter, and if they don’t need Aunt Jacqueline, I step back and sometimes go out during the day to see if they’ve warmed up. I will insert myself into blocks or dolls and wait for them to come to me, even if it takes years.
One of my nieces in particular was an incredibly shy little girl. She didn’t like it when everyone was looking at her, even during the song “Happy Birthday”. (For one year we all just stared into space while we sang. Seriously, that helped.)
Then, towards the end of the summer, when she was about five years old, my husband and I visited our relatives. As we turned the corner into the backyard, she shouted, “Aunt Jacqueline, sit next to me!” I almost tripped over my feet as I ran to the bench.
She is now firmly in Team Aunt Jacqueline, but if I forced me to interact every time I saw her before, I suspect she would continue to be afraid of me.
Play with them
It may seem like an easy task, but you can’t overestimate the time you spend crawling on the floor with your baby or playing old lady at the kitchen table.
Last summer, I spent a few days with my best friend and her entire clan at her parents’ lake house. Her kids and nephews were between the ages of 2 and 8, and Stephanie made special mention of bringing something she could do with the kids: for example, one afternoon, she and the kids made an elephant toothpaste that turned into exploding foam (completely). not dangerous) from a glass beaker.
No dry yeast or hydrogen peroxide in the house? Pull out a board game or start a round of hide and seek. My relatives have a finished basement with a bunch of different rooms besides the main living area. It’s an impressive hide-and-seek playground, and during Thanksgiving past, it seemed like there was always a round going on.
Find ways to communicate over long distances
Sometimes it can be difficult or even impossible to show up regularly when your niece or nephew is far away, but there are certainly ways to show, “Hey, I’m thinking of you.”
Four out of five of my nieces live about two and a half hours from home, and I’m all about the packages. I usually time them for Valentine’s Day or Halloween and fill them with a combination of candy, stuffed animals, silly socks, and the like. The year I sent them the mustache, the result was an especially delightful photo.
My oldest niece recently got a mobile phone and texting her is fun, be it a happy birthday message or just a gif. And many sources praise Skype or Facetime. If you can plan an event around chat, even better: Irish lifestyle site EVOKE.ie offers breakfast via Skype. A trucker dad writes on Parents.com about his son making video calls to chat every time he worked on a puzzle dad gifted to him.
Connect one on one
This is not always easy, especially if you have more than one or two nieces and nephews. But one-on-one communication makes every child feel special.
For example, one of my nieces loves back scratches. I know we all love, but trust me, her love for them is greater than yours and mine combined, about a hundred times. She knows that at least once per visit, I am eligible for a fairly long session of back scratching. She waits for everyone around the kitchen table to chat, and then she comes up to me and smiles. Sometimes, even in mid-sentence, I bounce, letting her jump into my lap, and it’s time to scratch.
While she wasn’t nearly as shy as she used to be, the first niece I mentioned can still feel overwhelmed at times, especially when there are extra people around that she doesn’t know very well. During one vacation with a large family, after dinner, when everyone was scattered and relaxed, I whispered to her: “Do you want to see a movie?” We curled up on the upstairs couch and looked into the movies. We didn’t even see the whole event, but we did have a one-on-one visit and this is one of my favorite memories of the whole day.