My parents insist all three siblings visit together, so none of us gets a real relationship with them

My parents retired to a small town about three hours from all three of their adult children. They love having everyone under one roof, so they ask us to coordinate our visits. If my sister proposes a weekend, Mum immediately starts a group chat to see whether my brother and I can come too.

This sounds efficient and warm. In practice, it means visits happen less often and contain almost no individual conversation.

My brother has two children, my sister works weekends twice a month, and I travel for work. Finding one date can take six weeks. When we finally arrive, the house holds eight people, two dogs and a rotating argument over the shower. Mum spends the visit feeding everyone. Dad entertains the children. We leave with family photographs and very little sense of how either parent is actually doing.

Last month I had a free Tuesday after a work trip and offered to stop overnight. Mum said, ‘Let’s save the drive for when everybody can come.’ I told her I was already nearby. She still hesitated because my siblings might feel excluded.

I visited anyway. It was the best time I have spent with my parents in years. Dad and I fixed a loose porch board. Mum told me about a friendship that has been troubling her. We ate leftovers instead of producing a holiday-sized meal.

When my sister heard, she was not jealous. She said she has wanted to visit alone too but assumed Mum would be hurt. My brother admitted that the group weekends exhaust his children and that he would rather bring them for shorter visits.

We suggested alternating: two larger family weekends a year, plus individual visits whenever they work. Mum became tearful and asked why we were trying to divide the family now that she and Dad finally have time for us. Dad said separate visits would make them repeat the same conversations and would create comparisons over who stayed longest.

The strange part is that their attempt to prevent exclusion is flattening every relationship into one group event. We are present together but rarely close.

How do we help them understand that separate time is not a vote against family unity? Should each sibling simply begin planning individual visits, or do we need agreement before changing a pattern our parents treat as the definition of togetherness?