To buy a “family present” for SIL

[staedtlerpencil]

SIL has never bought us birthday or Christmas gifts. Not even a card. MIL buys stuff and pretends it’s from SIL sometimes (she’ll buy us a set of plates and wrap one up from SIL 😐) but this is happening less since we thanked SIL for something and she didn’t know what we were talking about and MIL got embarrassed.

SIL has four children, no partner. We have one DC. Every year we spend £20-£30 on each child of SIL’s and get nothing in return for DC.

I begrudge this, especially as we don’t get thanked and sometimes even get complaints!

Last year SIL sent via MIL a list of what her children wanted. One gift was £40. We’d already bought gifts so ignored it but MIL was annoyed saying we were “the rich relatives” so should give more.

I’m fed up of the anxiety around Chrismas gifts now, so have decided that we will spend a reasonable amount on a family gift for SIL - board games, hamper, voucher for activity, subscription... something like that. It will save me having to find he time and money to shop for five gifts and I won’t feel I’m letting the children down.

MIL is going to go ballistic though.

I don't understand these threads. Why don't you just speak to your SIL? What's with all the passive aggressive behaviour, just discuss?

With respect, you’re being idiotic.

If the kids are moaning, SIL is ungrateful and mil is driving all this, just STOP!

Send a Christmas card to them, no hamper, no voucher, nothing.

If Mil even squeaks you say to her that you’re spending a lot of money on presents for them and not only do you not even get a card, you don’t get a basic thank you. In fact, the comments that come back are ungrateful and rude in the extreme. So enough. Mil can wrap up plates and say they’re from you/dh, but you’re out.

I think a board game with a label with all their names including SIL is a lovely idea.

The list they sent last year was definable done by the children but MIL knew where to buy everything. She was annoyed that W had bought gifts already because she had told the children we would get them 🙄.

Just stop this and if MIL 'goes ballistic' then you let her. This is bullshit and your point about if you didn't do it, your H would get them nothing is you out.

The hamper idea won't work well as two of these 'kids' are 20 and 18 and the youngest is 10.

I'd ignore her list entirely and get them a subscription or voucher for all, nothing for SIL. Or tell the MIL now and let her start going mental, fuck her. If it weren't for you, her precious daughter and kids would be getting nothing.

Let them go spare, think of the liberty not having two bitches who don't give a fuck about you tell you what to do with your time and money. FUCK that!

Also sets things up so your child doesn't grow up thinking he/she has an obligation to these entitled CFers.

My dh's family are not normal that's for sure!

I just take it with a bucket of salt although this year is my sils 40th (on xmas eve) on her 30th her parents rang dh up saying how upset she was not to receive anything from him, they'd never exchanged gifts in their lives at that point, she never phoned him or bought him a card.

That was my first baby's first xmas and we'd got married two weeks before but no it was all about her, I didn't say much then but I do wonder if her parents realised how little contact their had, i don't know what sil had told them over the years. I regret not saying anything at the time but I'm older and wiser now and prepared if there is a repeat performance this year!

I’m asking whether I should send one family gift instead of five gifts (6 if SIL has a big at the time, none of whom we’ve met either!)

You need to stop now. You've barely know any of this family far less a boyfriend. I would never buy a gift for someone I didn't know far less one who expects one with not so much as a thank you.

Text..
Dear sil / mil
Due to various reasons of which we wont go into. We're no longer buying Xmas / birthday gifts. I'm sure you understand

If. Mil is that bothered she can buy all the gifts.

You and MIL are over-involved here. Your husband needs to decide how he is going to deal with his sister. Nobody else.

I'd give the kids a selection box each and that would be it. Or the family present option would work...stuff the hamper. She's a grown woman, and in our family Xmas presents for extended family are for the kiddies not the grown ups when cash is tight.

Also - why is this your problem? She'd his sister, he should be gettng her stuff not you. I don't buy my in laws cards or presents, my DW does. I do my side of the family.

Ha we had this once from the women next door who is a real busybody and complains about everything to cars being parked outside her house (she does not drive) wreaking her view (of the house opposite) to the other neighbours grass not being cut every week.
Me and DH were outside having lunch and she pops her head over and said we were disturbing her trying to sunbathe by talking.

I suggested she goes in doors or gets some headphones if it is bothering her.
She opened her mouth like a fish and stormed inside.
She has never bothered us again we just get nasty looks to which I give her a cheerful wave
I stopped giving fucks quite a while ago

Yep, send a board game with a note saying they hope they have a lovely Christmas Day playing the game. If you are feeling very generous, pop in 4 selection boxes.

If MIL says anything at all, tell her it is none of her business.

That would be my dream present 💝

^ the goat. Clearly I can’t reply properly 🤦🏽‍♀️

DH isn’t bothered. If it were up to him they wouldn’t get gifts at all as he’d never get around to it.

So why on earth are you even giving this head space? You are not answerable to his mother or his sister. Don't buy them gifts and if they say anything I'd bloody well call your sil out on her over inflated sense of entitlement. Tell her after all the years of buying gifts, not getting thanks and not getting a gift in return for your own child that you have finally copped on that sil doesn't want to exchange gifts at all. Apologise profusely for taking so long to take the hint, and assure her you won't be buying any more gifts for her or her kids for birthdays or Christmas.

DH parents made/make everything all about their DD my SIL. I sometimes think overt favouritism like this ruins the person. She is quite frankly unbelievably self centred a bit like my sis who was also the very obviously favoured. We are all late forties, early fifties and neither of them have ever had a successful relationship. As children and also as adults it’s very hurtful but when you step back you realise that favouritism has a price to pay.

Other dynamic is levels of success financially when it’s hugely disparate between siblings. This is the situation I am in with my family, I’m one of six dc. There has been genuine hatred and jealousy from favoured sibling and then one sis who really is very hard up just always says how proud she is of me, whilst refusing any kind of financial help.

Send the nieces and nephews that are dc the gift you want, ignore all their drama.

Maybe she isn't in a financial position to treat all 4 of her children to nice presents and all her relatives as well?

OP never complained that the presents SIL sent were not nice enough. SIL hasn't sent as much as a card.

I like the idea of a cinema voucher £5 x under 18s plus a box of pic n mix.
Job done
If ungratefullness occurs then just stop

Don't buy. I'm the SIL that doesn't buy for one of my SIL kids. I don't see them, they don't know me, I don't see the point. Every year without fail they send stuff for my kids. Every year I ask them not too. I don't send thank you cards because I have asked them not to. Has your SIL ever said she doesn't want to do present giving? I'd say it's a big hint not to do presents, and she'll be happy for it.

I would buy for the children but not the adults.
Or you could buy a gift voucher for a local bowling alley, or something like that.

DH isn’t bothered. If it were up to him they wouldn’t get gifts at all as he’d never get around to it.
and
DH will back whatever I do as he really doesn’t want any part of the soul destroying charade!

So why on earth are you even giving this head space?

Agree.

That should have closed the thread early on.
His family, his problem to deal with. He buys, or not, the presents.

My DP and I are doing this for his family this christmas. There is MIL, SFIL, 3 adult siblings and 2 grandchildren all living together. We in previous years have spent £30-40 on each person to receive 1 gift for DP from all 7 of them in return (usually a t-shirt). We also have had numerous complaints about gifts instead of thank yous, which forced us to reevaluate gifting. Now christmas stuff has started to appear in shops, I plan to get a big box and over the next few months fill it with a family game, some cheap family movies, hot chocolate, mugs, sweets and christmas themed snacks. And if they whinge, next year they get nothing.

kanga quite the opposite. Although as PPs have pointed out, all communication is through MIL who could be making it up. One year the parcel arrived late (delivery strikes or something) and MIL was on the phone Christmas Eve asking why we hadn’t sent anything 🙄

Another year we sent SIL’s present early, about three weeks before Christmas, because it was time sensitive. She complained, via MIL, that we hadn’t sent her anything for Christmas and DH had to explain she’d already had it!

I believe SIL does complain but doesn’t have the guts to talk to us herself so sends Mil. Actually MIL probably offers. But there’s been too many “SIL says...” stories to make me think MIl does it all on her own.

For example, we bought one of those photograph experiences (sold in Boots etc) that did your make up and you got three paid for photos with it and you could buy more. Big mistake! SIL said she’d want all the photos so wouldn’t do it! MIL told us quoting SIl directly. I was shocked. I don’t think MIL would have made that up. MIL didn’t even understand what the gift was until I explained.

SIL is undoubtedly a huge CF, but I think MIL is the real culprit here. Instead of bringing up her children to become independent adults who learn to manage their own budgets, she's never properly taught her daughter that you don't remain financially reliant on your parents forever once you're a grown-up yourself. SIL has never actually been encouraged to become an adult, where finances are concerned (although she has chosen the easy path and not made any efforts otherwise).

I wonder whether MIL tried to bring up DH the same way - forever dependent on mummy - but he didn't comply and decided to follow the normal path to adulthood in spite of her sterling efforts to the contrary. Now that he's broken away from her, 'disobeyed' her and married, and his own family is now self-sufficient, she's lost that aspect of her grip on him and is now trying to punish him by guilting/expecting him to spend his money on his sister. MIL might not even be doing it chiefly out of concern for her DD but rather primarily as a way of keeping her matriarchal control over her grown-up children (and, in SIL's case, her children/grown-up children too). Either way, she sees the family money as hers to control and distribute as she sees fit.

Does she definitely pass everything on that you give for SIL and her family? The complaints could all be completely fabricated as well, for all you know. SIL could in fact be very grateful and MIL promises to pass on their heartfelt thanks (not that SIL couldn't do it directly herself, of course) and she replaces the thanks for the presents with made-up criticisms of them. She might be projecting her disgust at her adult son's determination to live like an adult on to those presents.

Her narrative could be along the lines of "Son, you disobey me by trying to become independent of me and thinking you can handle it all just fine - you and that wife of yours - well, let me tell you that you're useless and you still can't get things right, even in spite of all the help that I offer you."

Instead of stepping back like most parents do as their children grow up, she needs to assert her eternal dominance. You're all NOTHING without her and her 'correct' way of doing things; just maybe, SIL has bought into that way of thinking and now knows and understands no other way, whereas your DH did the wise thing from an early stage and has (at least financially) broken free of her clutches.

Not saying that SIL is blameless - very far from it - but I see MIL as very much the main agitator here.

‘If your child isn't getting a 'cover' present from MIL on behalf of SIL, I'd ask why not given all the covering up MIL has been doing for SIL for everyone else. ’

This