Ex turned down invitation on behalf of our child

[CrispyDosa]

My ex has turned down a wedding invitation from his cousin for my 11 year old daughter because his wife’s children aren’t invited so they are going on their own.

My daughter’s step-sister told her. She rang me to collect her.

My daughter was close to this side of the family as a child. She rang my ex mother-in-law whose nephew this is and she said my daughter can go with her and she is disgusted with ex.

My ex is fuming with me saying it’s his family. I am arguing his daughter is his family and deserves to go to occasions with them that she was actually invited to.

Their relationship with his step kids isn’t anything to do with her.

He is destroying his relationship with his child, they can’t go anywhere together without one of his stepchildren tagging along. She is refusing to go to his house again.

Absolutely this.

It sounds to me like the OP, MIL and the ex's wider family have not been particularly welcoming to the new wife and step children and it is them that have weaponised the DD in all of this and this is just another part of alienating them from the family.

I agree with you OP. Your DD was invited and has a right to attend her families wedding. The step children might not have a relationship with the bride/groom so they don’t have to be invited. The step children probably do things with their mothers side of the family and does she invite your DD to those events? Does the new wife act as strict and “fair” as your ex husband and say “if DSD is not invited then my kids are not going”.

I think it's really interesting to read this side of the coin.

The situation is often on here, but from the view of the parents/stepparents not invited.

Usually I reply with 'don't go, kids should all be treated as family'

It's been quite eye opening reading this and I'm ashamed to say I had never looked at it from the POV of the child Invited and made to miss out.

This is part of the limitations of some people’s blind insistence that stepchildren should be treated exactly like your own. ‘Your own’ might actually find that pretty hurtful and like it devalues the relationship you have with them, and the thing about children is they’re not children forever and they will grow up and develop their own feelings and values and relationships for which they don’t have to ask adult permission. As OP’s ex is now discovering.

So they can reflect that in their own relationships with his family. They don’t get to choose to enact it through DD’s relationship with them.

His response seems to be that you treat all of the children the same.

Isn't this the MN standard response to these types of situations?

Either way the wider family (from what the OP has posted) has been sending out a very clear message that his blended family is not welcome and is continuing to do so.

And I realise that this is going against the grain of the thread.

And it would be interesting to know who will be looking after the DD during the wedding.

If my children are invited to a wedding or anything and I decide they aren’t going, then they don’t go. That’s up to me as the parent. This was absolutely none of your business. Stay out of your ex’s family. You are most likely the one putting it in your child’s head that the step children are an issue. Unless your dd is at risk then let her dad deal with it. It’s his family, both his stepchildren and his extended family. You are encouraging her feeling this way. If there are bigger issues then try with those, but your dd is not being damaged not going to a wedding that the other kids aren’t going to. You have no right demanding her dad should take her and then getting mil involved. I would be fuming with you if you were my ex.
She’s not old enough to go in her own right and until she is it’s her dads decision on his side and yours on yours. You are undermining him and so is his mum, so that’s another relationship you are going to damage.

The child was invited - in her own right. Why shouldn't she attend? You're missing the fact that it's still her family and her cousin.

I agree. At 11, she is more than old enough to have relationships in her own right. She's not simply been invited as her father's daughter but because she knows the cousin. That is a relationship independent of her father.

In any case, she's 11. At that age, she gets to decide (within reason) how and with whom she spends her time. If she wants to go and someone will take her, she gets to go.

OP, maybe gently start explaining to her that she's old enough now to decide what sort of relationship she wants with her dad and she doesn't have to accept the meagre scraps he throws her. And if she wants to see cousin/MIL/any other family members independently of her dad, that's also an option for her.

OP, maybe gently start explaining to her that she's old enough now to decide what sort of relationship she wants with her dad and she doesn't have to accept the meagre scraps he throws her.

I wonder how far that would go in a parent alienation case.

One of the inconvenient realities of children growing up is that they start to develop views and opinions of their own. For instance, they often start to de-prioritise those parents who haven't prioritised them.

Courts acknowledge this in the increased weight they give to the wishes of older children. 11 is borderline but, by the time she's 13/14, a court would recognise that she can form and maintain family relationships on her own terms.

From the sound of it OP has kept out of it bar picking her daughter up when asked. It sounds like the daughter told her grandma about her dad declining the invite and grandma decided to take her. Now dad is mad at OP for letting the grandma take her?

While he usually would be responsible for deciding, it looks like the daughter is acting as she wishes, and organising her attendance herself independently of him. She's growing up, that's what they end up doing. They decide where they want to go when and there isn't really much you can do to stop them. This is when courts take their wishes into account, and if OP and ex didn't get along people would be saying to let daughter communicate with dad herself.

He and wife have pushed the step kids on the family from the get go with incredible relentlessness. While it would be nice for his family to include them, their attitude seems to have pushed them further away with their intensity. Now he's going to ruin his relationship with his daughter over it.

The important point of your post is the word borderline.

And there is an important difference between a child coming to an opinion of their own and being 'guided' towards a response.

And as the ex doesn't seem to be dictating who the child can see its not him that seems to be preventing the DD from forming relationships.

Your final paragraph is interesting as it goes against the narrative on here about the dad not doing enough to try and blend families together, it seems that he isn't going to be be able to break even never mind win on here.

But I feel that I am posting to much, I will step away for a while and let others comment.

i feel so bad for her, this was my situation frowning up as a child i had to share my dad with stepbrothers and never got any time alone with him. this is so important to kids, not just kids of divorced families but for families that are together also.
i bet ur ex is just giving in for an easy life with his new wife. what an absolute dickhead.
your daughter is completely entitled to go to this party without her step siblings. get her a new dress, arrange with the gran to take her if she is definitely willing to do so. let your daughter be a part of her family. he dad is doing this for an easy life. fuck that, he does not have her best interests at heart. shame on him. your daughter was invited to this party on her own merit, let her go and have a ball and let the ex stew and explain what the issue is. what a dick.

MN loves kicking OPs. What posters love even more is hating on step-parents.
I have seen it not only on this but countless other threads step-parents/blended families can never win.
If they leave the step-kids at home it's 'you're all faaaamily, ALL OR NONE'.
In this situation it's the opposite. I'd bet £50 actually that the same people screaming about the new wife's 'intrusiveness' will be, with the same fervour proclaiming how cruel it is for step-kids to be left if the situation was reversed.

YABVVU OP. HIs side of the family, his decision.

There is no standard MN response. There are always a range of views and strengths of feeling on the topic. Personally, I certainly see how it could be insulting and hurtful to your own children to hold someone else’s parallel to them in your esteem, except perhaps in very specific and limited circumstances that don’t apply here. And especially when it means that you get uninvited from family events to which you’d otherwise be invited in order for your parent to demonstrate that parity of esteem.

So it's your daughters cousin once removed. I actually think it's fine to turn down a wedding invitation on behalf of your child and don't really know what all the fuss is about. Sorry.

But it isn't the OP that overrode him. The daughter called her grandma and it is the grandma that decided to take her if he wouldn't. The grandma is the one overriding her son. It is his side of the family doing it!

What do you want OP to do? Call her exMIL and refuse to let daughter go because ex said no? What do you think daughters reaction to that will be? If the daughter was 5yo sure, dad decides. But she isn't, she is 11 with her own willpower and ability to organise herself. What if she was 18? Would you still think dad could override daughter then?

My Dad did this once, and then another time he only took my step siblings because there wasn't space in the car for his actual children. What ended up happening was my the family on Dads side ended up sending my invite to my Mums address and they'd say she was more than welcome to take me if my dad wouldn't/couldn't.

He should not dictate if you take your child to an event with your family and you should not dictate with his

I would presume 'it's up the child' would not work if he tried to dictate what you did

also curious.. do the step kids have their mum and biological dads family, cousins, aunts uncles etc, that they get to visit and go to parties with....does DD get invites to all of this?

It seems somewhat provocative to me to send an invite to the dad's address if they are inviting the dd in her own right.
Surely it should have gone to the OP's address or even the MIL's.

What precisely is the OP meant to do here? Just curious.

If the wedding is on one of the DD's weekends with the OP, is she supposed to forbid her DD from going with ex-MIL even though she is fine with it and DD wants to go? Why should her ex dictate what the DD does during her weekends with the OP?

If the wedding is during the DD's time with her dad, then presumably ex-MIL and the dad will have to thrash it out together.

I agree.

Also, this won't help relations between dd and her step siblings. She will blame them for her not being invited.

Ex dp should have refused to attend and let ex mil attend with dd. I remember being 11 and weddings were the most glam fairy tail thing I would have loved to go to one!

You could help your daughter explain to her dad how she's feeling perhaps via a letter but I don't think you can dictate what he does here sadly