To expect that grandparents should be included in Christmas?

[Mishaps]

If you take yourself on to Gransnet you will find a thread that will illustrate to everyone here how deeply hurt some grandparents are at not being included in the family Christmas. There are women there who have been the lynchpin in creating wonderful family Christmases for their children over decades and who will be on their own on the day.

I know that some families have rifts in them and not all parents make a good job of their role, but might this not be a time to heal some wounds and act out of kindness?

Lots of grandparents say they do not mind being left out, but please bear in mind that sometimes they just do not want to admit out loud how hurt and lonely they feel.

There will be many grandparents for whom a lonely Christmas day will bring tears.

Mishaps - I hope that you will read the responses here more carefully and learn from them that not everything is quite as it may seem from the outside . And perhaps you will judge a little less and understand a little more.

It sounds like you've had a very sheltered life so you find it hard to have any empathy for those who haven't had things so lucky . Perhaps this thread will help you see a different side of things and help you be more compassionate towards those who are hurting .

Mishaps don't spout such nonsense. I adore my parents. MIL is fine and DH loves her very much. He's very much less keen on the father who fucked another woman and then fucked off and left them to scrape by but still expected to be treated as 'pater'.
Given the choice between MIL and FIL who would you pick?
DH is well aware that if he abandons his dc then he might not be the most welcome Xmas guest.
You do reap what you sow.

I was 37 when I got my first Christmas waking up in my own bed, eating what food I wanted, when I wanted, my DC opening presents when and how we wanted to, watching what we wanted, at a volume that we like. After 20 years of going from one side of the country, often within the space of a week, always in turns maybe it's their turn to include me?
Food may not appear that important but when you're staying in somebody else's house, Christmas or not, and the only things available are MIL's though bountiful are mostly rotten, (for example once we arrived and 4 huge raw joints of meat where on the worktop, we left 4 days later, they had been cooked but never been in the fridge, with two small DC it gets more dangerous) and badly cooked food (runner beans boiled for an hour?) or my DM who still thinks we have rationing, despite not being born then, and if you don't eat fast enough Dad will polish it off or it get covered in cling film and frozen, which is hard to work round with a small BF baby.

DH has invited the IL's, all of them for boxing day, with out talking to me first. I've smiled and started making plans. The only reason M/FIL might come is they've, as usual, booked a holiday that requires a night with us so they can go, they phoned and informed us of the arrangements. I doubt they'll make the effort to arrive a day early, the mouthy BIL (wails, but it's family) certainly wouldn't make the effort. They will all say horrible untrue things about me and my family and lack of seeing my DC, but they'll never make the effort.
I'm going to enjoy waking up in my own bed and not going hungry on Christmas day.

Yes, I get on very well with my inlaws and parents, most of my friends and family seem to do too. Any little irritants and faults we all seem to be able to get over and look after each other because we know that underneath we all loving and well meaning people. We may have our little grrr moments, go grrrrrrrr to our partners, breathe deepy a few times, then move on. I can still emphasis with those in very diferent situations, or situations where people are exhausted racing aound the country every year.

What I can also see is my own mum, who I love very much, becoming increasingly hard on my SILs. More and more she is perceiving little things as a slight to her and bitching about them. One day I am going to snap and tell her to stop before they withdraw their levels of contact. I honestly don't think she has a clue how she is coming across and how critical she is. SILs have been incredibly kind in return.

People will start threads about the more extreme situations so they're hardly representative of most people. Tbh I can't remember that many threads where someone has posted that they want to just please themselves on Christmas and sod the wonderful elderly family member who is completely on there own.

Their own

"Some of my children choose to have the day together as a nuclear family, but they always ring and we chat to the GC and hear what they have been enjoying. But between them they always include us one way or another; and they would be shocked at the idea of not doing so."

So why do you think this is not the case for the other families doing the same thing?

If it's okay for your children to spend Christmas without you, why is it not okay for anybody else to do the same?

Why would you think those people won't ring their own parents on the the day, the way your children ring you?

And if they do, why is that phone call not good enough for the "deeply hurt" people on Gransnet?

It's fine for children to do whatever they wish - I am not judging, but just saying that there was a post on Gransnet which was full of sadness about this issue and wondered whether the folks on here were aware how deeply some grans feel about it. I do not think that I would have been aware when a mother bringing up my children - I was too busy chasing my tail with them all. It is fine hygge for anyone to do whatever they wish - I just initiated a discussion about the other side of the coin.

Do you think people are too stupid to have picked up on the enormous social expectations surrounding family and Christmas?

Why not just live and let live, and trust that other people are doing the best they can, given the peculiarities of their own family situations?

In other words, wind your neck in.

I lost my grandparents years ago, and we did spend every christmas together beforehand, but that said

WHY IS IT ANY OF YOUR BUSINESS WHO PEOPLE WANT TO SPEND THEIR CHRISTMAS' WITH

Seriously, the amount of butt clenching going on at the moment about who people do and don't choose to spend their Christmas' with....

You don't know these people. You know literally sod all about their circumstances, reasoning, etc.

It's fine for children to do whatever they wish - I am not judging, but just saying that there was a post on Gransnet which was full of sadness about this issue and wondered whether the folks on here were aware how deeply some grans feel about it.

So there was one post from a grandmother about how she was sad about this issue and despite the fact that her experience is not similar to anyone you actually know, and you know nothing about her or her family (other than what she posts) you decided to go on mumsnet to tell the "folks on here" to think about how they might be "hurting grandparents" as if we are all inconsiderate little children who need the benefit of your superior wisdom.

This will be the second Christmas without my DHs parents.
I'm sure she has told people how upset she is, she doesn't know why, she doesn't get to see her son or grandchildren and she just loves them all so much.
I'm sure she could write a heartbreaking thread on Gransnet about it and have them all rooting for her and hating us.

What she fails to mention is why, why we don't see her and why DH doesn'the reply to her messages. Her version and our version is very different.
And I have many years of texts and emails to prove our version is the truth.

It's not always a question of "being included". Ever since we got married, we have spent Christmas at our house (with children when they came along), my parents have spent it at their house and my in-laws have spent it at their house, with the sole exception of one year when the boys were quite young, when FIL was doing a house-sitting job over Christmas so we invited MIL to our house. It's just the norm in our families. No-one feels resentful because they haven't been invited anywhere, Christmas is just not a time when any of us traditionally get together. I can understand people being upset if they have always been invited to a particular family member and then suddenly they aren't, but not the assumption that all extended families should get together for Christmas and you're doing something wrong if you don't.

Let's have a link to this incredibly sad gransnet thread then, op.

I have a neighbour who is now in her late 60s/early 70s. Over the years I have heard her talking about her adult children and her grandchildren. She has two sons and two or three daughters. Every summer she talks about plans to move to be closer to one of her sons, and every winter she talks about how she'll be alone this Christmas.

Sounds just like one of those poor grandmothers in the OP, doesn't she? No doubt if she were to post on Gransnet, the tea and sympathy would be pouring in.

Except when she's talking about her children during the rest of the year, the conversations include such delightful gems as:

"I hate girls. Bloody useless, the lot of them. I wish they'd never been born. I should've just had boys."

"My useless bloody daughter visited yesterday. Don't know why she bothers. Useless bloody cow."

This woman is completely unrelated to me, and I've only ever heard her side of the story. And still every year I wish her children all the luck in the world and can completely understand why she's on her own every year. She seemingly has no idea why her family don't want to be around her.

My MIL is a lovely woman. My own mother, not so much. Grandmothers are all different, and very few fit the saintly stereotype depicted on the TV.

I would rather shit in my hands and clap than have my mother near me or my dc at christmas, or any other time of year.

I think you need to butt out of what other people are doing with their families at christmas.

But I suppose it's the same on threads where dils go on about how horrible their mils are - or their dh's come to that. You only have one side of the story. There was a poster on here a few years ago who regularly savaged her pil. I started to think, because her rather aggrieved and aggressive style on other threads, that maybe there was more to this than met the eye and her pil were possibly not quite as bad as all that.

Anyway, I think the theme is not that you should invite psychopaths to Christmas dinner, but that some people clearly want to airbrush in-laws out of the picture, especially the Christmas picture.

But I suppose it's the same on threads where dils go on about how horrible their mils are - or their dh's come to that. You only have one side of the story. There was a poster on here a few years ago who regularly savaged her pil. I started to think, because her rather aggrieved and aggressive style on other threads, that maybe there was more to this than met the eye and her pil were possibly not quite as bad as all that.

I completely agree. On any thread you only have one side.

Of course people get on fine with their families. I get on great with both my parents and my PILs or at least I think I do. We're all human, after all. BUT I acknowledge that I am lucky to do so, and that far from everyone does. In my extended family (including DP's) I can think of plenty of family fallings out, which makes me all the more grateful for my own circumstances.

The thing about getting on well is that no one needs advice on that. No one is going to post a thread saying "I get on great with both sets of parents, and there is nothing about our Christmas arrangements that is troubling any of the parties involved!", are they?

On GN, as always, you'll only be getting one side of the story. They could well be some of the Stately Homes thread contributors parents. But we'll never know that.

for those who have god-awful family. Particularly hygge, whose post really stuck out.

Also some people just like being alone at Christmas - especially people who work in an industry that is busier than normal at this time, eg retail, or who are introverts and have a very sociable job. For some of us, a Christmas alone is a lovely bit of peace and quiet and I hate it when I get the 'but you mustn't be alone at Christmas!!!' stuff. It's my choice! I go to midnight mass the night before and have a lovely long lie in on Christmas morning, followed by lazing around watching Christmas telly and stuffing my face while a naice festive candle burns. It's ace.

I tend to see people for New Year now.

Hell would have to have frozen over before I would let my mother or mother in law near me and my children again. Yes it would be nice to have the movie Disney type family Christmas but life is not often like that. There are 364 other days in the year and if you can't tolerate someone's behaviour on those days, or they can't control their behaviour why would it be any different just because it's December 25th?

I have a lurk on gransnet occasionally and there are plenty of threads where grandparents find themselves cut out of their families lives and the resulting emotional impact. In some ( not all ) of the threads it is easy to see why families have taken this action as there is a shocking lack of self awareness but an astonishing level of " what about me?".

I sneaked a look at that Gransnet thread and - while the OP was very heart-rending - it was a bit short on detail. There was a lot about how very sad and upsetting she would find it, but not a great deal of insight into WHY she was going to be alone or HOW this situation had come about.

I don't mean to criticise the OP of that thread - she can post whatever she likes - but it was frustrating to see how quickly the thread descended into "I'd like to give those Mumsnet beeatches a piece of my mind - they're all so selfish!" (Mishaps has bravely picked up that gauntlet!). There was an immediate assumption that the GN OP was alone because her children (or - more likely - her DILs) were selfishly excluding her.

I find on MN on the other hand, a lot of debate, a lot of soul-searching and a lot of posters being moved to explain exactly why they aren't spending Christmas with their parents or ILs ( Hygge). More often than not, it's not selfishness, but simply that they're spending the day with her parents instead of his (or vice versa) and there's no practical way of spending it with both sets of parents. The GN OP could well have been one of these - we have no way of knowing.

I do wonder if there is a generational difference here. I recognise shades of what some people are describing in both my mother and my MIL - we rub along fine most of the time, but neither are averse to turning up the emotional blackmail when they want to get their own way; or to making a big deal of their grandparent status while offering little practical help or even engaging much with their GCs. They behave similarly to each other in ways that I wouldn't dream of behaving.

But maybe it's age - when my children are grown, married and have children of their own, I'll suddenly stop noticing that they have problems of their own or other priorities to attend to........

I wonder if some of it is because we have different kinds of lives now and some of our mothers don't understand what that is really like.

I just planned my schedule up to Christmas and it is bloody awful. I'll be working late into the night just to keep up. As Christmas is a break in that, where I actually get to see my children, I wouldn't want to waste it cooking, travelling or with people who make me miserable. (I don't have any family who will be alone by the way.)

I can imagine I would feel very different about this if I didn't have to work so hard.

Ah well I have sober years cooking Christmas dimmer for my parents and my lovely inlaws( now gone sadly) brought up 4 kids, youngest 16 and we are having a grandchild soon.

We tell ours they are welcome anytime for dinner Christmas or otherwise but totally up to them what they do. We can seat 12 so that's our limit got sit down meal but would rather have a fantastic ongoing relationship with my kids and their partners than make such a fuss of one day.

In general in life relationships you reap what you sow.

sober years lol never that! What a typo.