to think that if my sils don't come and visit us I shouldn't have to bother to go and visit them?

[froken]

The background is that I have 3 sils who are much older than me, they have kids who are mostly in there late teens/early 20s. My dp is their younger brother. we have an 8 month old ds. I have had ups and downs with my sils, pre baby we would see them fairly often and have drinks on a friday night or go over for dinner at some point in the week. They are all really good fun and I enjoy spending time with them. Oldest sil was there at my birth and she was amazing. I felt a bit like they were too free with their advice (judging) when ds was a newborn and when we ignored their strange advice they were put out. we spoke to them about the unwanted advice and they have stopped giving us advice and everyone seems happy with that.

Sils all live within a 10 min drive of us. I live in dp's home country but I am English.

The culture of visiting in dp's family seems to be if you are free just phone up whoever you want to visit and say "hi are you free? shall I come over?" this seems odd as in my family you wait to be invited but I accept that it is the way things work in his family so I go along with it.

The thing is none of my sils ever come and visit us, one sil has visited once since my ds was born, all the other times I have taken ds on the bus (sometimes in temeritures as low as -20) and walked from the bus stop to their house to visit them. they all drive so it would be very easy to drive over to us. I have been seeing them about once every other week mostly when dp is at work but sometimes we go over on a weekend evening.

Ds has now learnt to crawl so being in an un childproofed house is stressful because I am forever stopping him eat dangerous things or wreck things. Ds also has started having a proper bed time and bed time routine which works really well, I know that if I put him down at 6 i get an entire relaxing evening.

I have decided that I don't want to constantly visit the sils, I want them to sometimes (ideally every other time) call and visit us. It is more fun for ds because he has his toys here, and it is more relaxing for me especially in the evenings. I am not at all precious about his routine we do go out but it is just easier and I feel like they should be doing half the work to maintain the relationship.

So basically I just have not been over, now dp has said that I am cutting out sils and they will feel like I am keeping ds from them. Dp told one sil that i was in all week (ds had a childs illness not contagious to sil) and when she finished work at 11am maybe she could pop in and see us as we'd love to see her and we were stuck in all week, couldn't take ds on the bus incase he infected other small children. she just never came :(

I am just fed up of chasing, if it was a friend who never made contact I would just let things die out but what should I do with family?

If this was me I would feel exactly the same. What would i do? maybe I'd invite them over (for an advanced date, eg call and say do you fancy popping over next Friday) and see what they do/say. I wouldn't bother going over to see them unless your dp comes with you. If you dp asks why you haven't been over just say something like "oh, I haven't got round to it" or "I couldn't face the bus ride today with DS".

Do you like them (unsolicited parenting advice aside)? If not and you aren't that bothered I'd just let you dp make the arrangements to keep in touch, it's his side of the family after all. If you do like them, then could you ask them outright why they never come over?

Does your DP know why they don't ask to come over?

I'd do as Lilly says and invite them. And tell your DP what you've said here, especially about childproof house and the bus.

Maybe they have taken the fact you don't want their advice as you don't want them interfering at all? Not that they would be but maybe they see it that way. And despite their customs involving just popping usually, they aren't comfortable with thus now. Have you tried inviting them over?

I agree invite them. They could be trying to be respectful of the fact that you find the ' I'll just pop over to yours now then' culture and are waiting for you to invite them

Not sure how my phone managed to post that already, but I was just going to add that I would personally not ignore myself round if I knew that the person in question found it odd that people did so. If they are nice people who you want to have a relationship with them make an effort to do so. maybe even ask them if you have offended them as they don't just pop over and say something so they know you do actually want to see them.

Thanks for all the advice! Inviting them over seems like a good plan.

I think they see dp as a young man who needs his big sisters to give him dinner and expect our home to be like a teenagers bedroom ( dp is 36)

They seem to love ds lots, there hasn't been a baby in the family for a long time.