Invitation for one child

[ThatRubyMoose]

When I first met my in-laws I bought Christmas presents. My elder sister-in-law who has always been friendly as have they all, thanked me profusely said that she gave up buying presents and writing cards. Fair enough. Her choice. The following year I asked her if she minded me buying for her children. She didn’t but reiterated that she didn’t. Totally transparent not an issue.

What she did do though was take MiL and SiL and the kids to The Palladium every year and a meal in a chain like Spaghetti House, Pizza etc. Fair enough again.

A few weeks ago she asked DH if our daughter who has just gone 4 is now old enough to join them. He said she was.

But I have a daughter who is 9 who lives with us all the time and only sees her father around her birthday and if she’s lucky at Christmas for a ‘tea’ with the rest of his family.

I said no to pantomime, I texted SiL saying it would be unfair to eldest, a child the same age as two of the kids going. Her reply was ‘that was a shame.’

MiL said to DH that it was none of her business how he raised his child but she thought that not being allowed to go on this t
outing with them was a slippery slope.

DH would have let her go but won’t challenge me. What would you do?

Spot on, but as it has already been mentioned by somebody astute, blended families are created for the benefit of adults, not children, unfortunately.

Maybe not but it reflects badly on her mother who criticised her own child to people who don't care for the little one.

Children don’t need nor want step mummies and daddies.

adults want New Romantic partners.

but my husband who does treat my eldest as his own said that my youngest will be allowed to go if asked. He wants her to have a relationship with his family.

You see, of course he does NOT treat your dd1 as her own, otherwise he would have been incandescent with rage and there would have been no question about dd2 going anywhere.

I don’t see how saying it is a criticism of the daughter.

She was pointing out the obvious to someone who either has zero emotional intelligence or is unbothered about her emotional impact on young children.

Agree.

That fine. I'm not interested in making you think the same as me. I'm just saying what I think.

When I texted to say youngest wouldn’t be going because eldest would be jealous she could easily have offered to take her then but she said it was ‘ a shame’ .

Better to say 'hurt and upset not to be included' if it comes up again. At least then you'll know your SIL understands what she's doing and you can respond accordingly.

Wow your SIL is not a nice person. Absolutely I would not have that for a second.
Protect your child
x

So I have now been reliably informed by my husband that should his sister ever invite my younger daughter again that she will be going!

If my husband ever tried to dictate to me like that - especially where the best interests of my children were concerned- the marriage would be over.

protect your child.

And then the shared child could have many outings with her family while the ops other child’s gets even less with her dead beat family and zero anything from stepdads side. Win win… no didn’t think so.

So shocked that there are people on here who think it's okay to treat the elder DD as if she's not part of the family. Horrific. Imagine if this happened to your child with their new step family if you died or something. Awful.

They did accept my son as a grandchild until my daughter with OH was born. And now they are treated completely differently, like he is the poor relation. My son was 2 when we got together and it was all he knew and then at aged 5 was pushed out.

I wish I had in laws like you! Mine will say they treat mine as they do their own but the £100 gift vs the £25 gift card and set of pants 2 sizes too small says differently. I never asked them to consider the dc’s as theirs but I believed they were genuine about wanting to include them. Thankfully, my DH has put distance between us and them as he regards the DCs as his own and couldn’t stand the behaviour that could cause hurt to them.

That would be absolutely fine. as long as the elder child isnt forced to blend with a family that treats her like she doesn’t matter/ is a second class sort of person, she’ll be just fine.
No one benefits from breadcrumbs from a step family- much better to have no step family at all.

That would be absolutely fine. as long as the elder child isnt forced to blend with a family that treats her like she doesn’t matter/ is a second class sort of person, she’ll be just fine.

Which raises an interesting point. You never see parents seeking absolute parity between their children by different fathers/mothers where the second partner’s family is less well-off/giving/loving. Where the first lot of extended family is amazing, those amazing grandparents/aunts/uncles are never prevailed upon for the benefit of the second child’s deadbeat family. This sort of situation is 100% about the parent of both children feeling guilty that the consequences of an earlier mistake is being borne by their child and lashing out at the nearest person.

They’re not treating her as a grandchild or niece, neither of which she is. That isn’t the same thing as treating her like she’s ’not part of the family’.

OP’s situation isn’t in any way uncommon when it comes to blended families.

And that’s all on the parent who decided to blend a family rather than put their child first. Leading to then two children separated from their other parent.

No, it’s because the second child isn’t forced to blend with the first child’s family. In fact they typically have nothing to do with them at all.

These arguments are so ridiculous. It’s not about “parity” it’s about not forcing your child to be part of a family who treats them like shit. Because that can destroy a child’s self esteem.

I cannot for the life of me understand why people don’t understand this.

I think this is incredibly cruel and also could have ramifications for sibling rivalry and adversely affect the family dynamics in the future. I would find it very very difficult to support contact between my children and a family like that. It's inexcusably rude and hurtful.

I would offer to pay for the older child in order to highlight their pettiness and if they still declined I'd tell them where to stick their matinée!

If money was tight and I couldn't afford to invite my niece's half sister somewhere with us, I'd just change the activity. We invite my niece's half sister whenever we take my brother's daughter anywhere. I never call her a step niece or intimate in any way that she isn't loved as wholeheartedly as a blood relative.

so in summary, your hubby's family are absolute twats in my opinion!

@ThatRubyMoose My step parents treated me as their own but their families did not, despite both parents remarrying before I was 3. I had half siblings in both homes and it was never hidden from me that they were treated differently by their other families. I was given a selection box token gift at Christmas and my half siblings given full gifts, usually in front of me. I did not care. I grew up with no emotional attachment to those family members and under no illusion of them. I was simply told they were not my uncles/aunts/grandparents. None were invited to my wedding day, as they weren't my family. I don't believe any cared or complained. We hold lovely conversations and see one another at family events but they are nothing to me.

Oddly enough just one family member did treat me the same and buy me the same as my half siblings (his biological nieces). I liked him very much and, when I was 16, his wife left. That year the gifts stopped for me but continued for my half sisters. I realised his wife had been facilitating it, not him.

So please do not cover for people or ask if your daughter can be involved in anything. The sadness of her forging a false bond and then finding out if you pass away or can no longer facilitate is horrible. Far worse than growing up knowing these people are not your family so not to expect or to treat them as such. On the days your younger child sees her family take the opportunity to go on a special day with your older daughter and make your own family traditions that you can later include your own grandchildren in.

She's a step-grandchild and step-neice, which for a child should feel like the same thing as a full grandchild or neice. She's being treated differently to the full biological relations and as such will feel rejected and unequal. What does it cost an adult to be nice to a child? And what does it cost a child to grow up knowing that one side of their family doesn't see them as equal?

But why isn’t the second child forced to blend in with the first, when the relationship between (say) the grandparents of one child to the other is exactly the same regardless of whether it’s the first child or second? That is to say, unrelated. It just so happens that the second child’s grandparents are there - so the onus is put on them.

Imagine if the eldest DD’s grandparents were absolutely minted. The new DD’s grandparents struggling to make ends meet. Stark difference come birthdays and Christmas. You never hear the common parent saying “my eldest child’s grandparents are excluding my youngest DD, making her feel awful and excluded by lavishing gifts on their GDD but not her half-sister”. That would be daft, you’ll say, because the second child has nothing to do with the first lot of grandparents. She came later. Well, same goes the other way. The second lot of grandparents can well feel they have nothing to do with the first child: she was already there so no need to be intentionally cruel and exclude her (my very first post on this thread said as much, because in this particular situation it’s no skin off anyone’s nose and very detrimental to the elder DD potentially). Generally speaking, though, it’s the same point: they’re unrelated, so there’s nothing on which to build ties of duty and responsibility.

It absolutely is about parity. That’s what the OP is complaining about: the difference in the way her children are being treated by the same people. Nobody wants to force the second DD to be a part of the first DD’s family…so they can both be treated equally poorly. It only ever goes one way, these complaints. The family with more resources (emotional, space, time, money) required to give more to make up for the failings of the other lot of absent family. This is for the new family to give freely if they want to, not for anyone else to expect because to do so would be unreasonable.

Because she’s step step step.

Because if the op and her husband divorce the child is gone. Long long gone.

She is not connected legally by adoption or biologically. Just as family’s connected wife’s and husbands by marriage. Family sticks together and love it or hate it that means legally and biologically and even as such often when shit hits the fan and push comes to shove pit legal vs biological and biological will win again.

Your mother in law and father in law love you nothing like their son or daughter. Just as they wouldn’t love your child like a biological grand child.

Why should she, when she isn’t? She’s being treated differently because she is different. The relationships in a blended family are not the same as nuclear ones, and you can’t force them to fit that mould, however much you may like to.

Op’s daughter has her own paternal family she visits, so she can already grasp the concept of being different to her sister.