Grandma will have to wait.

• Position: Family Traditions - Brief article

For many, the holiday season is the road trip season. A professor at Indiana University, Bloomington, urges families to slam on the brakes. Instead of traveling for hours or days to spend the season with grandparents, stay home and begin creating unique traditions that let children know their family comes first.

"When people are first starting to create their own family, there's still that very powerful urge to maintain very close contact with the parents, say, in the old family," notes Robert Billingham, associate professor in the School of Health, Physical Education, and Recreation. It has not always been so. "This used to be unusual. Parents used to raise their children to leave and start their own families. Now, with helicopter parenting, it seems like a lot of parents are raising their children so that they don't want to leave."

Billingham is not suggesting a moratorium on family visits. He thinks it is important for the visit with the extended family to be added on to the home-based family plans. Otherwise, the kids will see their family as...