It is 5pm and a piping voice fills the stairwell as my three-year-old granddaughter, Isana, announces that she wants to come and play. I willingly drop everything and prepare to spend the next hour giving a voice to her toy tiger while she assaults me with the “very naughty” fluffy flamingo. Or she might want to swing on the rope my husband Olly has put up in our living room, and before supper we will read one of her favourite books, flopped on the sofa. Later, her mother, my daughter-in-law, may come in, bringing 10-month-old Seiji, for a chat. Or our son, Isana’s father, might collect his daughter for supper and pause to share a glass of wine with Olly and me. For the past four years, my elder son and his family have lived with us as extended family.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/goodlife/11509226/Friends-warned-us-about-living-with-our-extended-family.html