12 year old wants to go to wedding where sister hasn't been invited

[Stuckinthemiddlewithnoone]

Essentially we have declined an invitation to husband’s nephew’s wedding in the summer as he has not invited my 15 year old daughter (16 by the time of the wedding) from a long ago relationship. We simply declined without saying why.

Sister-in-Law asked if we were on holiday etc. so I told her the truth. She seemed very embarrassed as did mother-in-law. We were told that she would ask, well that was a month ago and we haven’t heard anything. Husband all along said he wouldn’t go anyway even if they changed their mind.

Now here is the AIBU! 12 year old wants to go. She has completely lost it saying that she has a right to make her own mind up and that elder sister isn’t related to cousin.

I have lost it back at her saying she needs to support her sister.

However, husband thinks we should let her go and we shouldn’t put her in the middle of this.

So, what would you lot do?

If it was the grooms friend (instead of brother) who had a step child and a child would it ever be acceptable to invite one child and not the other?

Step children are family even if not a blood relative and treating them differently for a wedding invite to save the cost/space of one person is awful.

maybe they dont like her.

That's terrible! I have cousins where the eldest isn't my blood uncles child, she is and always will be family, love her far more than my blood relatives TBH
She did say our DGP could be a bit like that, and it really upset her, so I'd be 110% behind eldest DD

I would have had your dh and 12yo go to the wedding. I understand you not going to support your eldest dd, but it seems unfair not to let your youngest go to her family celebration. If I was the nephew, I would have invited you all, as you are all a household, but putting it coldly, your dh and your 12yo are family, you are his plus one, effectively.

I would not be getting a card and I would think very carefully about having any sort of relationship with these people.

your child has been around since she was a toddler and raised by your DH who is de facto her father, and they still dont see her as family. What else might she be excluded from? Fuck that shit.

even if they don’t see her that way for horrible and nasty reasons, it would have been polite to invite her, knowing your DH does.

you cannot condone this by allowing DS2 to attend.

Honestly this entire situation has bothered me so much, even though I don’t know you.

someone in my family was adopted. Around a similar age to your Dd1.

they are family, blood or no blood. And what makes them family isn’t a piece of paper either, it was everyone wanting them and making them family through loving them and including them and just being there.

why on earth should your husband have needed to legally adopt her?! You got married and became a legal unit and he has raised her as his own from tiny.

I honestly can’t believe people still think it’s ok and are banging on about blood and poor D12 missing out on “her family”. It’s not just “her family”. I’ll bet DD15 has always considered them both of their family. It’s just so fucking damaging, what they’re done.

I wouldn’t let DD12 go because the nephew and his new wife and cunts.

For those saying that the children shouldn’t have been told, is it fair for the 12 year old to think she hasn’t been invited when the rest of her cousins had been

Wow. This way of thinking about family is so bizarre to me. Surely the whole point of marriage is that you become family? I regard DH's family as my own, and mine is his. He is so much more than just my "plus one" at any family functions, and I would be truly offended if my in-laws saw me in that light.

I find it quite sad that some people define family in such narrow terms.

well done for standing by your older DD and great that DH is on the same page. Awful behaviour by the bride and groom .

I get why DD2 would want to go but surely she is old enough to understand why sometimes certain principles of support for your nearest and dearest come first. Just see if as a life lesson for her.

This is ridiculous. A 12 year old is hovering around puberty, her brain is rewiring and she will basically have the empathy of a toddler. You should not be making these judgements about a 12 year olds developmentally appropriate behaviour, when the grown adults having the wedding didn't manage to think it through. This is not a sign of her values, selfishness, superiority - it's a sign that's she's 12.

Although, OP has posted about this before and the younger DD was 10 in that post so

This reminds me of a thread where the dm wouldn't allow her younger children to do anything with their father's family that didn't prioritise her older child, and actually as younger children stopped them from seeing the extended family as 'it wasn't fair' then was all shocked and upset that as they got older didn't want to adher to her strict guidelines that if older dc didn't get to do something/see someone, they weren't allowed to either.

There would be no practical considerations in her attending without us as it is a huge family.

Here is the problem. They had to put the limit somewhere, and you don't like where they put it.

I'm sympathetic. I'm from a blended family that included 'more relatives than you can shake a stick at' in my dc's words.

I invited no one to my wedding, as it was too much of a minefield. A few people showed up anyway, and half a country got offended.

You can't please everyone, so sometimes you just have to please yourself and deal with the fallout.

I think YABU about your younger dd. You have a right to draw your lines where you want, so does she. I would let her go.

How many other weddings has the younger sister been to? I suspect that she just wants to go to A wedding — whose it is doesn’t bother her. If you haven’t been to many/any weddings they seem very exciting.

No solutions here — what an awful situation. I would be inclined to stick to your guns, but if you do decide she should go with your DH I would not be getting a new outfit for her or making a big deal of it. She’s going to see what a wedding’s like. That’s all.

Her sister isn't her only family, is she? She has aunts and uncles and cousins. Again, it's not her fault that her sister doesn't have a relationship with her paternal side.

But presumably DD1 also considers all these people to be her own aunts, uncles, cousins since they’ve been in her life since she was 2??!

Yes and in an ideal world the older daughter would have also been invited (and I do agree that it was really wrong for her not to have been ) but that doesn’t mean that dd12 should then also be expected to miss out.

Miss out on what, exactly? Socialising with the kind of people who'd behave so badly to a child they've known nearly all her life?

The 12 year old isn't really old enough to understand how divisive this invite is, it's disgusting, especially the fact that there was no calm in advance explaining it. Just an invite excluding one child of the family.

I think I would talk to the 12 year old, lay out the facts, if she still wants to go, she can go with her dad. Then plan your 15 year old her dream weekend away just you and her so she doesn't need to be there for the before/after.

I mean how the fuck do you even send them a card, what names do you put on it!

I think your youngest will be upset by this in a few years time when she is older and more able to understand the nastiness towards a child.

The only thing the 12 y/o can understand at the moment is that her parents are stopping her attending a party. In the short term, I am sure she will be pissed off with her sister. However, if the parents allow the 12 y/o to attend, they are condoning the dismissal of their 15 y/o and condoning the 12 y/os attitude that this is acceptable because ‘she is not family’. In the long term, this attitude being allowed to fester will cause a huge rift between the sisters, far bigger than any ramifications from 12 y/o missing out on a wedding.

So in your view, if OP and DH were not married, you would see fit that OP should also be excluded from the invite, despite having been in a relationship for 13 odd years? Because she is not legally family?

Apologies. I misread.

Me? I wouldn't have excluded any of them. But this isn't my wedding, nor am I arrogant enough to think my opinion is the right opinion. "Family" means different things to different people. You can't force other people to accept your opinion of what family is. The cousin doesn't view his uncle's wife's daughter from another relationship as family. That is his right. DD2 shares that view. That is her right. Her mother imposing her own view on her younger daughter isn't going to make her change her mind. If anything, it will make DD2's stance even stronger.

DD2 is a child. It's therefore simple: if her parents are not going to the wedding, then neither is she. DH can hardly be expected to compromise on his own principles in order to pander to what she wants. She's 12. She does as she's told.

That said, it's pointless wishing that she will think as you think, OP. Kids are notoriously selfish, they think first and foremost of what they want in the given moment, and the role of us parents is straight-up to spoil their fun. What parent of children this age doesn't recognise the perennial protest of 'stop trying to run my life!' followed by the 'get to your room!' bit?

DD2 should not be blamed for this, or for her seeming lack of loyalty. She's a kid. Neither should she be given her own way. She will soon get over it: it's only a wedding, and weddings are really only important to the bride and groom.

DD1, having been given the pointed message that she's not really considered family, might not bounce back quite so quickly. Your DH's response is very important here, and your response overall is good parenting, IMO.

YANBU.

The other thing is - she’s 12. In reality, she can’t go unless you facilitate her going. This is the line I take with my difficult, elderly mother. Eg “I’m going to start driving again”. She’s clearly not fit to drive and wouldn’t be allowed to by the DVLA given her medical history - but will argue until kingdom come that I’m wrong about this. So it’s pointless. I just say “Ok - then you’ll need to go to the post office, get a form, fill it in, get some passport photos taken, get yourself to the GP and get an appointment for her to sign off that you’re fit to drive”. And I know full well that she can’t even get to the post office. So it doesn’t happen. It’s a bit like this with a 12 year old and the wedding. “Ok - so you’ll need to write to X and accept the invitation and say you’re coming on your own. And you’ll need to sort out a lift there and back; you’ll have to phone Auntie X or Granny and ask them to take you and bring you home? Oh - they are staying in a hotel? Well - you’ll have to ask if they’re happy to have you sleep in their room as I don’t think the hotel will allow you to stay in a room on your own…..”. And so on and so forth. You don’t have to say “you can’t go” - but you don’t have to facilitate her going either.

On a recent thread where a poster threw a shit fit about her husband assuming her parents would treat his son the same way as their daughter, the overwhelming response was that she was right and he was out of order, his son is not their grandchild, etc. She was even told to leave him.

Now this happens and you get posters telling OP to act like the fucking mafia or eastenders characters, and berate lecture a 12 year old about family loyalty?

I have not read every post but some of those I have horrified me .this child had been in the family since toddler hood given her and sisters age and now she is been treated like second class .no younger daughter would not be going ..our eldest granddaughter was a baby really when she came to our family. She is loved and adored by all .no way would my son allow this ..either both his girls went or non ..it really makes me sad when I read of folk thinking it OK to treat children like this ..our granddaughter knows the truth but she also knows her position in this family is that of very much loved eldest grandaughter ... maybe the fact she was adopted by my son because her biological father was not in picture helps but even if she had seen him through the years it would never have diminished anyone's love for her ..

That’s just what happens when you are a kid though, right?

Like most 12 y/os, she is prioritising herself. It’s up to the parents to make an informed decision about what is best for the family. This is not an adult with their own personal invitation we are talking about here, it’s a child who has been invited as an extension of her parents. Just because the 12 y/o would prefer to flounce off to the party and leave her sister at home humiliated, doesn’t mean the parents are obligated to allow it. Parents get final say.