(© Bonnie Schiedel. Originally published in Glow, May 2007). 

While you may dream about a close, loving extended family that gets together for regular Sunday dinners, for a lot of us the reality is a hurried visit a couple times a year (or decade!) and the occasional e-mailed photo. A lot of Canadians just aren’t raising their kids in the same town where they grew up—but that doesn’t mean that family ties can’t be strong and affectionate. And many experts agree that keeping those connections going can be really important to your kids. A number of studies, for example, note that meaningful grandchild-grandparent relationships have an impact on kids well into adulthood. Tenessa Gemelke, author of Stay Close: 40 Clever Ways to Connect With Kids (Search Institute) points to what she calls the “web of support.” In other words, whether it’s a cool older cousin or a doting granddad, having a positive non-parental adult involved in your child’s life does a lot of good, both long-term and short-term. Here are 10 fun and easy (really!) ideas to help your kids keep connected with long-distance relatives. 

1. Pass along art (and declutter your fridge at the same time)
Anastasia Frisby, mom of Samuel, 12, Caleb, 10 and Margaret, 7, routinely slips her kids’ colouring pages and other school projects into a jumbo envelope and mails them from their home in Ignace, Ont., to grandparents and uncles in Newfoundland, British Columbia and southern Ontario. “It’s kind of like having a pen pal, because our relatives will mail back a little note or a pack of gum. They love seeing the kids’ work, and the kids like to share it with them.”

2. Display a picture
Hazel Ling and her daughter, Maren, 9, live in Whitehorse. Maren’s two-year-old cousin, Sophie, lives a continent away in Florida. The families do manage to get together once or twice a year and make a point of getting a portrait of the two girls done at a department store or photographer’s studio. “We hang the photo in the girls’ rooms so they can see it regularly. Maren likes having the picture of the two of them, and talks about the matching ‘fairy’ dresses that the studio provided,” says Hazel. 

3. Send a postcard. 
The goofier, the better. Talk about quick, cheap and fun!

4. Watch hockey games
Start a special project, suggests Kara MacNeil, adult and family program facilitator for the Halifax Military Family Resource Centre. “If dad’s away for work and is a Canadiens fan, put your child in charge of keeping track of the score and telling him the latest hockey news.”

5. Turn on the camera
A web cam is the perfect way to show off a new karate belt, listen to a piano lesson song or put on a puppet show. Or, just hang out, says Krista Gothard of Burnaby, BC, mom of two-year-old Zachary. “When I talk to my mom on the phone, I often turn on the web cam so she can see him playing and laughing. Zach will point to the screen and say ‘there’s Grandma’ too.” 

6. Share an interest
Give a ski magazine subscription to both your son and his uncle, plan to watch a meteor shower from different cities, swap reggae CDs, go to the same movie on opening weekend; then compare notes. A common bond goes a long way.

7. Say checkmate
Head on over to a free online game site like http://ca.games.yahoo.com or http://zone.msn.com, suggests Gemelke. You can “meet” in an online room and play anything from backgammon to Go, fish.

8. Set up a site
“Our family website is a great, easy way to keep in touch with our families, who are all over Ontario,” says Laura Smyk of Wakefield, Que. “We regularly post family pictures and videos, and it’s a lot faster than e-mailing images. Molly, who is almost 4, and Finn, who is two, definitely recognize grandpa and grandma’s pictures.” Look into a simple, password-protected site such as MyFamily.com, which costs US$30 per year. 

9. Create a scrapbook
Pick up an inexpensive notebook at the dollar store. Take turns mailing it back and forth. You may want to start a story (complete with illustrations) and see if the other person adds an outrageous plot twist. Or, glue in pictures of, say, cute animals clipped from newspapers and magazines. 

10. Read Dr. Suess together
“When our second daughter Kali was born and her sister Erin was three, her grandma, who lived in Saskatchewan, would send Erin a book in the mail, often a classic that my mother-in-law had on hand already” remembers Vancouverite Anna Sanders. “When Erin wanted a bedtime story from grandma, my husband would hand the phone over to Erin, and the two of them would talk about their day and then read the book together.”