Nobody announces this one. A visit to Mom's house used to come with a wish list, a drawing to deliver, and a running count of days. Then one week the kids just go, and the packing becomes something you do at the door with a bag and a prayer. The kids have not stopped loving her. They have started treating the visit as one more thing on the schedule, and kids notice a schedule long before adults admit it has changed.
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What goes wrong first
The first signs are small. The kids stop asking what is planned at Mom's. They say "do we have to" where they used to say "can we." The bag that used to hold a favorite book or a half-built project comes back untouched. Their talk in the car gets shorter, and the phone wins more often than it used to. Sometimes a kid starts bargaining over the length of the visit instead of the treat.
None of this means the relationship is failing. It usually means the visits have become logistics, so the kids have quietly stepped out of the planning.
How to check without making it a test
Ask one open question in the car, not across the dinner table, where the pressure is higher. Something like "what would you want to show Grandma this week?" works better than asking whether they liked the last visit. Notice which kid answers and which one goes quiet. Count how many visits in a row were planned by you alone. If the answer is most of them, the kids have had no room to shape the plan, and that is an easy thing to change.
Small moves that bring the kids back in
Give each child one job at Mom's house. One picks the music for the drive, one brings the cookie tin, one decides the game they will play after dinner. Shorten the visit before you cancel it, so a two-hour window replaces a full afternoon and everyone still gets to go. Let a kid say no to one week without a fight, and then keep the next visit on the calendar anyway. The point is to give them a real say in a visit that is still going to happen.
If you are not sure where your own family's week stands, the Kids' Week and Mom's Week page lays out the two rows side by side, which can make the thinning easier to see.