Am I being unfair to eldest child?

[nettle86]

I have dd(8) ds(5) and dd(2). We settled away from my family (think an hour on plane or 8 hour drive and ferry) so now with the 3 kids we only go to my home town once a year (but my parents visit once or twice too).

Last November my best friend back home had a baby and I took both my dd's back for a long weekend. DS didn't want to go and was happy to have a daddy weekend. It was great as bonfire night and my older dd had never seen a big firework display.

This year my ds has asked to go for the weekend as his birthday treat in Jan, he wants to have a sleepover at my dad's (he has a jacuzzi and a puppy lol) and my dad is happy to pay, it's about £100 but that would be a big expense for us with Christmas coming up too. We will be back for his actual birthday.

I'd love to do this, with 3 children and him the middle child he often gets overlooked, 2year old is understandably taking a lot of time and dd1 has had lots of special days out etc over the years. However dd1 is upset and says its not fair as ds had the chance to go last year and turned it down so she should get the choice this year.

For context we did go back home for a fortnight as a family over the summer, my mum is just back from a weekend visit and my dad is coming for Christmas so it's not like she hasn't seen them recently.

I'm feeling guilty about leaving both the girls (I work full time) and her reaction is just making it worse, or should I just give ds the weekend he wants and dd1 will have to accept it.

Can your 2yr old go to someone else so your DD can have 1 on 1 time with her father.
It is hard to balance 3 children's needs and wants, but it sounds like your DD feels there is an unfair balance and I would listen to that, it's all well and good saying she's had lots of special days over the years but of course she would, she's the eldest.
You run the risk of creating a situation where DS gets to do single activities with either parent and your DDs get lumped together, they are not the same experience.

I think it’s fine to take DS alone for his birthday as long as you’d do the same for her if that’s what she wants to do in her birthday. She is comparing this trip with the previous one but they’re different things and I think you just have to point that out to her, one was a general family trip and this is his birthday treat. It would be different if you were planning another general family trip and deliberately excluding her.

The other option is to turn this into a general family trip and invite everyone along, using DS’s birthday as the reason/occasion for the trip, but it sounds like that would be currently unaffordable. It is difficult though as I can understand a kid feeling that it’s unfair that one sibling gets to hang out with grandparents and they can’t when they’d like to go too.

Do you know what I think you might have given me an idea! Tbh I don't think she'd be that impressed with 1:1 with her dad for the weekend (he's sah dad so they get plenty of time) but his parents live close and she'd love a couple of days with them by herself, so I could offer her that.

@nettle86 I hope she enjoys that, and your son has a great birthday, good luck.

You seem to be worrying more about your daughter complaining with the age old 'it isn't fair'. Why aren't you more worried that your son has asked for this special treat for his birthday. Why should his treat be compromised? Your daughter sounds a bit spoiled tbh. It's his birthday and this is what he's asked for. Just like she got what she asked for for her birthday. When you have several children, sometimes treats are at different times, and children need to learn that.

I think it will be hard for her at her age to understand why it is only DS that you want to take away alone on a trip. That you don’t think she deserves the same. It seems that both the holiday park trip and last years trips were with her siblings.

Not everything has to be exactly the same but it does seem you are showing some favouritism in who you enjoy spending time alone with.

This is what I was going to say.

Don't teach your dd that she can a) get what she wants and b) spoil things for her brother by wailing "It's not fair". That's just setting everyone up to be miserable for the next 20 years.

So you have no intention of taking Dd1 on a special 1:1 trip for her birthday? Just to be clear. It very much seems like you're playing favorites. The centreparcs trip isn't comparable because it was a family trip. Last years trip wasn't for her either. You were going and took the kids with you. Ds just chose not to go. The fact that dd1 had a good time is irrelevant.

Completely agree with this

If next birthday she wants that, and you'll be happy to do it, then it'll be fine. If you're already doing excuses in your head as to why she can't have it, then I don't think you should do it for him.

But I can see her point. She went with her little 2yo sister. I'll be surprised if most of your concentration wasn't on the 2yo because 2yos need that. Or maybe you say to her "can you help...?"

You certainly can't say because she was at Centre Parks it's fair unless it was only you and her at Centre parks.

One of the issues I've found is that with 3dc the oldest can be left to get on a bit on their own. It's also possible she would have loved to ask for that, but thought that she couldn't because you had the younger two to think about. I've certainly had conversations with my oldest (now an adult) where she had made assumptions that it wasn't possible, so never asked. The younger two (well, the middle one especially) is a ask-for-two-ice-creams-before breakfast type on the basis that if you don't ask, then you don't get.

I also wonder whether the "special days over the years" is before she had siblings, or when they were too young to realise? It's not the same taking the one and only, as leaving some behind.

And also this: You run the risk of creating a situation where DS gets to do single activities with either parent and your DDs get lumped together, they are not the same experience.

I'm one of three, 2 girls and a boy, and me and dsis got lumped together in all sorts despite us being very very different in pretty much everything.
Presents: get the girls something identical/together (if one of us liked it the other generally wasn't interested) and the boy something different.
Take the girls to this together/boy to something different.
The girls can do this job together/not fair to ask the boy to do something on his own.
Most of the time dsis would have preferred what dbro got/did, but it was never given as an option.

Fair certainly isn't always equal, but you need to ask yourself how equal is it actually. Does she ever get time just with you?
And sometimes we can lean ourselves over backwards to make sure it's fair and not notice that actually it's unfair the other way.