To say something to my family about this?

ilovetea69 · 2016-01-18 10:53:29

Last Monday was my birthday; Tuesday was my brother’s birthday; Wednesday was a special day in my culture where you can celebrate a big event that has happened in the previous year – so we were celebrating the birth of my niece (aforementioned brother’s baby who was born in December). My brother organised a meal out. Because I have a big family, we usually lump occasions that’s are near to each together, rather than doing something separately for each occasion. We all went along and at the end of the meal my mum distributes gifts (gold earrings) to all the girls in the family from my brother and sister in law (me, 2 sisters and 2 nieces), again a traditional part of our culture. She then pulls out a pair of earrings for my sister in law (who she actually hates) – this isn’t part of our culture but I get that MILs sometimes want to spoil their DILs – my mother in law is like that with me. Then the waitress comes out with a cake. I say to my sister in law ‘who’s birthday is it’, she says my brother’s name. Then they all sing happy birthday to my brother and not one of the mentions my name or acknowledges that my birthday was a day before my brother’s bday and 2 days before this cultural festival. No cards, no gifts, no mention – NOTHING! Part of me thinks I’m nearly 40 and to say something would be petty but the other half of me thinks why should I walk around and be upset and have this playing on my mind? To give you a bit of background, my mum favourites my older sister and my brother - evident by getting my sister biggest/most expensive pair of earrings and loudly declaring she thought my niece’s earrings where her favourite and she ‘just loves them’, yet not saying anything about the earrings she brought my other niece. Why not just buy them the same? My SIL and mum don’t like each other, they just try and get on for the sake of my brother. Only last week I stopped a massive argument between the two of them by intervening and smoothing things over. What thanks do I get for that? I know it might sound silly, and there’s nothing they can buy me that I obviously couldn’t buy myself, it’s just the sheer thoughtless of it all.

Please or to access all these features

Add post

Watch this thread

Save thread

Start a new thread

Flip thread

Hide thread

My feed

Saved Active Unanswered threads

Getting started FAQ's

Unanswered threads Acronyms Talk guidelines

Hide shortcut buttons

Talk

AIBU?

This thread has been deleted

The OP's really grateful for the advice given at the time but is concerned this old thread could be identifying. We've therefore agreed to take it down for privacy reasons.