Am I 'stuck' or have I reason to be upset!?

[whatashitshower]

I am divorced and have a child of 12. He has a history of being difficult, trouble making and antagonistic. He has matured substantially over the last year. He has had a terrible few years.
I dont have any support with my son. He has no ffirm friends but gets on with his group.
My child has no contact with his dad.
I consider myself to be a good friend and aunt to my friends children and my siblings children.
I take them in day trips, have them on sleepovers, bring them to various activities and mind them when their parents need child care or an weekend away.
I have found that one of my siblings generally likes to blame other children for their child's behaviour. Their child is adorable but a bit of a cheeky chap and towards his parents , can be rude and disrespectful. It's everyone else's fault!

My son has been blamed for so much through the years , he almost became the default villian. I called a stop to it last year after a nonsense too many.

I have found now that despite my son having no one to hang out with really, that he is not invited to hang out with my siblings families in the way that I have included their children.
It hurts me so much.

He doesn't cause trouble but their children decide exactly who they want to hang out with or not. Whereas I prefer to teach my kids tolerance and that they won't get their way all the time . Sometimes they need to suck it up when an adult makes a decision for them.

I may add that my siblings kids always come along with me and always have fun so it isn't a case of them not wanting to hang out with my son.

Am I overthinking. Am I stuck or are my feelings warranted ???

Are the other children the same age as your son? At his age I would expect them to be choosing who their friends are rather than hanging out by default with cousins/friends mum has made for them. He’s almost a teenager, not a little kid!

I don’t understand what you mean by being stuck.

I ruminate a lot and these thought go round and round in my head and I find it hard to move on . I'm just very hurt . That know he's home alone with no one. There's is no reason why he couldn't tag along.

YABU. Of course at their ages it’s up to them who they invite and they shouldn’t have to have another child forced upon them.

None of them should be forced to hang out with someone they don't want to. At 12 he's old enough to manage his friendships himself.

Just stop taking your nieces/nephews etc out

Why doesn’t he have anyone else to hang out with? Doesn’t he have any actual friends, at school/hobbies? I think that would be a more important issue than kids you are forcing him on not wanting to hang out.

It's completely understandable that you should feel hurt.

Your siblings are being less than generous and making your son the villain is unacceptable. Hopefully the other siblings recognise that the parent who was doing this is wrong.
However, i think stepping back from nephews and nieces when you've all had fun and built a good relationship with them would be counterproductive.
If you were planning another outing, I'd go ahead with it. You say that siblings always want to take up the offer.
In a way it doesn't matter if the siblings are doing this for selfish reasons. Forget that if it still has the desired result for your son.
At the same time if they do accept your usual offer, its a good opportunity to say "Im so glad that x y and z want to come along with us on an outing. We enjoy their company. But I am curious as to why you don't reciprocate.?"
Also ask if they think they are being fair excluding him but accepting your outing offers and get them to explain themselves.

Ultimately if it works for you and your son, it doesn't matter what siblings think and perhaps its better that you get the cousins together on your terms, rather than on siblings. If they all have fun, there's no reason not to and it will plug the gap for the time being. Don't let your son suspect the siblings attitude.

At the same time, with changing to secondary everyone needs time to settle in, and your son would benefit from making more of his own friends too.

You can't force friendships but you can organise similar out-of-school get-togethers or sign up to clubs, sports etc anything to develop interests, activities, giving him things to talk about to others.
If it feels like that is not working, keeping busy and having outings with the two of you, is also great distraction. These things will happen naturally and in their own time and you sound very capable already encouraging this for your son.