If your family forgets your kids at Xmas

[LottieMeDownAgain]

I'm the youngest sibling with a 10 year gap between myself and the next youngest. We are four siblings.

My kids were born when my siblings' kids were teenagers and young adults.
My kids are 10 and 12 so still very much enjoying Christmas and needing their family.

We all lost our Mother last year and I am trying hard to keep the family relationships going - phone-calls, messages, suggesting holiday meetups etc.

However my kids did not receive any Xmas gifts or calls or anything from my brothers and sister this year. They rarely (never) receive any gifts or calls or cards from my siblings. This year there was absolutely nothing. There's a joke in our family that we are crap at gift giving but I find it very lazy, as I am good at gifts and think it's an important part of childhood that roots kids into a family.

I send gifts to my siblings and have been there throughout their kids childhood and I still send my now adult nieces and nephews gift cards. I love them very much and would love to give them more if I could. I don't always manage sometimes due to financial issues nowadays, but I try.

So my chat is - how would you react to this? What would you do (if anything) and how would you feel? How would you frame your family story for your kids now, after previously telling them how close a family we all are.

We get together a lot. Whenever possible.

So you think I just sack it off? They don't give a fuck?

@mumsnet please take this down

I hate this forum

@ThisFlakyBeaker 🙄🙄🙄🙄

@mumsnet

Please take this down

However my kids did not receive any Xmas gifts or calls or anything from my brothers and sister this year. They rarely (never) receive any gifts or calls or cards from my siblings. This year there was absolutely nothing

It seems a little odd that you buy gifts for your nieces and nephews yet your siblings don't bother acknowledging your children. While I don't equate gifts with "caring" necessarily, I would find this weird and it would bother me.

Obviously up to you if you want to keep buying gifts for people that don't reciprocate, but personally I'd just stop.

Do your siblings make any effort to maintain a relationship with you and your children? Is all the effort on your part?

There's a large gap between me and my siblings; they are 14 and 16 years older! To be perfectly honest we just don't have much in common and after my parents passed we rarely see each other. I do get where you are coming from, but it's impossible to have a "close" relationship when the effort is one-sided.

I’m sorry OP. I think you know you are fighting a losing battle. I would stop buying them gifts. If they ask why, you tell them.

I’m sorry you are getting such awful responses! I totally get why you are upset but I think it’s hard to raise with your siblings, without sounding grabby, when it’s not the value of the presents that you want for your DC but the interaction. Did you see your family over Christmas and did they just turn up empty-handed?

It's very common that there is a common denominator that keeps a family together and when they die a family drifts apart.

Your siblings don't do gifts so it's time to stop spending on them. Effort comes from all angles and it's not fair to just put all the work in. You're getting taken for granted that way.

I'd just stop. No more family story. Just focus on your kids and own family unit.

Hi @LottieMeDownAgain. You've been unlucky that your thread attracted this persistent, odd behaviour from @ThisFlakyBeaker.
I found after my parents died that maintaining many family relationships got more effortful, just because we lacked that centre to the family. Well done for making the effort to keep connected and showing your siblings they're important to you.
I wouldn't throw the baby out with the bath water over the gifts thing. I can see that it's disappointing, but gift giving and receiving genuinely means less to some people and I think you are probably reading too much in to it. Are they good with your kids in general?

Not sure why you've had these responses OP. You've bought gifts for your nieces and nephews and they have failed to do so for your children, it's poor behaviour or just plain lazy. I'd stop buying for them, use that money on your DC instead!

Why do you want it taken down?

I'd stop buying if I were you. If they can't be bothered with your children why bother with them.

You are faced with multiple issues. Your mother dying before all the grandchildren were grown changed the dynamic. the same thing happened in my family and it definitely makes it harder to maintain those connections without the matriarch at the center. The second is the age gap. Your siblings likely never really think of you as a fully fledged adult with children. Even when you had your kids, they didn’t really integrate them in their brains as nieces and nephews in the same cohort because of the age difference. I saw this with XH family. He was a surprise baby, 10 years younger than the closest sibling and nearly 20 year away from the oldest. They loved him, but they never saw him or me as adults. It was bizarre.

Not sure why some people are being dicks about your post. It’s hurtful. I wouldn’t completely write them off though if your relationship is good otherwise.

Perhaps you could try coming at it sideways- kind of like ‘hello older siblings I know maybe gift giving isn’t your thing at Christmas, but my kids are really still young and they are still into Christmas just like your kids were back in the day.’ then say ‘how about we find a space to have a family party before Christmas next year and we all get together and bring food to share/ or we call get together to go for a walk locally and have tea or pub after/ (or whatever your whole wider family like doing together.. )?’

That way you create a natural point to say you want to keep the relationships good and you just don’t want it to be all about presents if your older siblings are not into presents. And to remind them that all young kids like to be thought of on a big occasion by their family.

You’re also very recently bereaved as a family so maybe on a completely separate note you could try to get together as siblings to just remember your mum and support each other. Christmas is very hard after such a big loss.

I understand exactly why you are upset. It's quite shitty of your family not to make a fuss of your children, given that they have had the benefit of presents from you into adulthood and also the huge benefit of having a loving grandparent into adulthood too. If it was me I would be making a huge fuss of your children and trying to give them a magical Christmas. It's also sad for you as you have lost your mum a decade earlier and they don't understand what it's like when you lose your mum while you still have young children. Sorry for your loss 😞.

We were in the same situation with my in-laws, as my DH's siblings are all over a decade older than him and their kids were virtually grown up before ours came along. Our kids didn't have the same Christmas get togethers as their cousins as everyone was out doing adult stuff.

There's not much you can do except keep in touch and arrange meetings if you feel like doing it, but if I were you I would stop all gifts from today and redirect the money to buying extra surprises and experiences for your own children.

Not Xmas but birthdays here. BIL is just rubbish, forgets our kids, whereas we always buy for his. It has worn really thin this last year. I’m going to suggest we don’t bother going forward. No money issues their side either.