To have nothing further to do with them?

[Pouticel]

I have one DC who only has one cousin (child of DH’s sister). I’ve always encouraged friendship on the basis that eventually they’ll be each other’s only family.

Both DC are 7. They love each other and are so excited when they get the chance to play together. But I’ve noticed over the past few years that SIL and BIL are increasingly not keen to facilitate any relationship. Visits are further and further apart.

We haven’t seen them for six months. I offered to have their DC to stay over the summer and they refused. I offered to take their DC on holiday with us and they refused. I invited them over for the day, suggested I could bring DC over to theirs for the day, but they always had an excuse. I offered to pick up and drop off their DC to make it easy for them but the answer was still no.

Their DC had a birthday last week. I thought it was odd that they weren’t having a party because they always do. They arranged to come over today with a birthday cake for a little tea party with PIL.

Anyway, their DC has upset my DC by talking about the fantastic birthday party yesterday. The party that they obviously hid from us and didn’t even mention to PIL in the family WhatsApp. Because they didn’t want us to know, because our DC wasn’t invited.

Understandably our DC has got quite upset at not being invited to their beloved cousin’s party this year. And I honestly don’t understand why. But this is just the latest in a long list, they clearly don’t want anything to do with us and I don’t understand why they’ve even come over today?

So I’ve gone nuclear. I refuse to have anything further to do with them. I went upstairs out of the way, I haven’t spoken to them since their DC announced this was their second party but they weren’t allowed to talk about the first party because it was a secret. I’ve left the family WhatsApp and blocked them on social media. I am just done with them.

AIBU to say I’m not having anything further to do with them, and neither is DC? If my DC isn’t good enough to be invited to the party yesterday then why have they come over today? I am so angry and upset. And DH is sitting downstairs having tea with them like everything is ok, because he doesn’t want to cause a fuss. Blaming me for going off on one. But it’s not me who has been nasty and excluded a child from a party.

I do acknowledge that - and I agree that it's sad.

It doesn't change the truth, though, which is that there are two little girls at the centre of all of this. OP needs to learn those interpersonal skills for her daughter's sake.

As for "kicking someone when they're down" . . . It's a family quarrel. The fact that it can bring OP to this emotional state is exactly why she needs to sort herself out. I don't think anything I said was particularly cruel. Maybe the words "deranged overreaction" - but the context was OP saying she wouldn't take in the husband's orphaned niece if her parents died! As a result of this birthday party kerfuffle? That is deranged.

I wish the best for OP, but she clearly needs a wake-up call. She's sabotaging herself with all this.

You're being a right drama llama!

Kindly, this is massively over dramatic:
Once your parents and grandparents are dead, you have to spend Christmas alone and you have nobody.

There are other poeple in the world apart from blood relatives and poeple can have lovely, close, fulfilling relationships with people they are not related to. Your child is not destined to be alone! Please don't pass on this attitude to your child.

I think, OP, that you have (inadvertently, I'm sure) placed a pretty significant burden on your seven year old niece.

I think that that is possible, although SIL seems to have pulled back from her parents and brother as well.

It's hard to know if it is influence from her husband or a general "things getting too much/too much expectation"?

Perhaps telling that PILs were also upset to not be invited to the party & weren't told despite there being a family get together?

I had a similar problem many years ago with my DS's cousin. They were good friends, and suddenly my DSIS started saying her son couldn't come over. I didn't throw a wobbler, I asked her if there was a problem. There was. It was simple. Her DS didn't want to see my DS so much as he had his own friends at school. I had no idea as they really seemed to enjoy getting together.

My DSIS was a bit embarrassed to tell me this, but I'm glad she did. They're both adults now and they get on really well, but there was a period when one of them felt overwhelmed by the other.

No need for drama. It's really up to the kinds. From what you say, I suspect there is a similar situation here. Their child doesn't a close relationship with your child. Stop being part of the playground and join the adults. The kids will sort it out if they want to.

and op hasn’t been downright offensive to her family and rude to other contributors.

saying an orphaned child can fuck off and live with non family members out of pure spite is what is nasty. The OP has a serious chip on her shoulder and using her ND as an excuse for that is not okay. Plenty of ND people on here have also called her out on this to which she’s not taken kindly to either so I maintain what I say… OP is quite probably the issue here

“Why should I say something untrue to pacify my child?”
Are you for real?????

You sound so angry and judgemental in all your posts. Really really hard work.

I am surrounded by autistic people! My DP, his DS, my dad, my SIL. I suspect also my own DD. All have friends. Autism isn’t a human repellant. You can have friends, but you need to stop trying to force people into your rigid ideas about how people should behave. You spoke about the play date that wasn’t reciprocated. And you were judgemental about the “type” of parent (drop and runs) as if they’re not bothered, not proper parents, can’t be arsed. You don’t know anything about them! I was drop and run parent. I worked full time. I couldn’t stick about and chat. It was hard. I’m sure you would have judged me too! The other parents you described as “a better parent”. Because they invited your child back. How judgemental!!!

Being friends isn’t about equal reciprocation. People have different circumstances. People have all kinds of shit on their plate that you won’t know anything about. You seem to have cut the unreciprocated friend off from your DD by not having her over to play anymore. Why? Because the play dates weren’t reciprocated and you decided that wasn’t fair! And your DD lost out because you felt affronted.

I will say this about all the autistic people in my family: all of them seem willing to cut their nose off to spite their face when they feel “wronged” in some way. They can’t see past what is right or fair in their eyes. And they will lose friends or miss out on things because they won’t let something go. They would probably just argue they have firm boundaries and won’t be taken advantage of, but often they’ve failed to understand there may be more to things than they can see. Most people are just doing their best to get by and sometimes people are a bit thoughtless. Cut people some slack. Don’t judge. Don’t take offence.

It doesn’t help you (or your poor DD) to have such rigid views of how people should behave and with no understanding or empathy for people being different to you. So your BIL and SIL have different ideas about family than you? That’s ok. They don’t have to think the same. You can still have a relationship even if it’s not the one you’d envisaged. But you’ve taught your DD (and I’m willing to bet your DH’s upset is also being fanned by the flames of your wrath) that if they don’t invite her to a party or reciprocate a play date then they should fuck right off. Cut them off! Have nothing to do with them! Is that really the right attitude for someone who is already lacking friends? Cut yourself off even more?

I think you have a hell of a lot of trauma and you’re blaming autism so you can say the rest of the world is to blame. NTs dont like NDs you say. That’s right. Blame everyone else!! But you seem unwilling to look inwards and wonder whether there might be aspects of your behaviour which put people off. Much better to blame everyone else for not tolerating autistic people. But as many posters have told you, autistic people can have lots of friends.

It isn’t your condition which is the problem. It’s your attitude. And you’re not helping your DD or your DH by dragging them along for the ride.

@BustyLaRoux unfortunately it also means OP is teaching all the wrong thing to her dd re reciprocal relationship, compassion etc…

One thing I’ve learnt with my own ND dc is that what you do at home, what they see, the scaffolding you give them ICan make a huge difference in how well said child will cope in the world as an adult.
And what the OP has described isn’t that. 😢😢

I’m honestly shocked an adult would have this reaction! From your post you sounds very hard work and dramatic! I would take this as a good opportunity to look at your behaviour and why you find people distance themself from you

I think you’re being super controlling and unreasonable

Hi op,

If you do feel that they choose not to be close then you need to show your dc how to handle this and I am afraid that going upstairs and show your upset by completely withdrawing yourself is not what you want to teach your child…

You need to go downstairs, apologies if needed and sit with them. You don’t actually need to be close and if they don’t want for whatever reason…you need to respect that.

It is hard to feel your dc is excluded but he will be times and times again because he just can’t be on everybody’s list unfortunately…you need to tell him and show him how to not get hurt or feel disliked because of this. “Another time, maybe” would be a good answer…”that is ok not to be invited” is also. That will save him some mental health issue to be running after the “want to be liked by all” trophey.

Good luck

OP isn't being bullied. She's just not being babied. She's a grown woman. As a reminder, this was her response when someone suggested she should take the heat out of the situation and downplay the birthday "rejection", for her daughter's sake:

Why should I say something untrue to pacify my child? When the truth is that her aunty and uncle have repeatedly rejected all contact with her and rejected the opportunity for her to be friends with her cousin. Then they turn up for a couple of hours and expect me to play nice and pretend it’s ok.

OP has issues around friendship and rejection. She interprets everything that happens in this light. She's not defending her daughter, she's defending her younger self. It's all about her. She has very rigid ideas about what family is "supposed" to do, and if they can't live up to that, it's all "fuck them" and going nuclear. Just look at the above. In her mind, she's been wronged, and that's more important than protecting her daughter's feelings. Aunt and uncle have "rejected all contact and rejected the opportunity for DD to be friends with her cousin" . . . except, they haven't, have they? They've come all the way to her house for a second birthday, actually. They've spent hours visiting. But it's not enough.

If OP won't sugar coat things for her own child, I don't see why we should all do so for her.

I feel sorry for your daughter, you've built her cousin up to be her best and wonderful friend, when that clearly isn't the case. She also hasn't been given the tools to cope with this kind of cooling off by yourself and DH.

You need to stop ùsing Autism as a reason why you haven't got friends..it's absolute nonsense as many people on the spectrum have close friends. Please do not teach your daughter that her autism is what makes it difficult for her to have friends.

Check your attitude and behaviour, learn from mistakes, be more creative with your daughters social activity. There won't be a dance class, brownie group, sports team without a ND child. It's not exactly rare.

As for family..they owe you nothing just because you are related. They are just people. Stop having ridiculous expectations of them.

Would love to hear their side of the story.

I’m sorry OP but I think you’re being awfully unreasonable. Once children are at school, parties are all about their classmates. And given your reaction I’m not surprised your in-laws tried to hide the details from you. You are behaving like a spoiled child who cannot have their own way! Perhaps they don’t feel the same about family relationships. Maybe they don’t see it as necessary that their daughter has a relationship with yours. Their daughter shouldn’t be pressurised as your child’s ’only’ future family member …

At first, I was totally understanding your upset and frustrations, OP. However, as the thread has gone on, its descended into absolute lunacy 😵‍💫 Just because your DC's are cousins and family, does not mean they will support each other in adulthood once the rest of you are dead. They may have their own families or friends they would rather spend time with. They may live opposite ends of the country, or the world! They may grow to dislike each other in adulthood even if they are the best of friends when children. I grew up with several cousins living minutes away. They were my first friends as well as being family. As adults we are spread across the country and barely see or speak to one another as we all have our own families and lives.

Stop placing all your hopes for the future on this relationship, and maybe teach your DC to be independent, sociable, develop hobbies etc so they can move into adulthood with a wide range of friends and skills.

It’s understandable that you are hurting.

Now that your DH understands how distressed you are, could he have a chat with his sister just to find out why this has happened. By going ‘no contact’ you will never get to the bottom of what caused her/them to behave the way she/they have and it will eat you up.

it strikes me that either your SIL doesn’t like you or your niece doesn’t like your daughter. Sorry but I suspect it’s your SIL that doesn’t like you.

looking back on your relationship with her, do you think that she could have felt that you were too full on or needy? Was there a time that she was really friendly?

I hope your daughter is starting to get over the upset she must have felt.

It’s really rough navigating life as an ND parent of an ND child. Are you on social media? I found a great private fb group of other ND parents of ND kids who live locally. We meet up with and without the kids and it’s so nice to be with people who ‘get it’ on both fronts.

I'm joining this conversation very late! But I don't think you're behaving unreasonably. Excluding your child from the birthday party was only the most recent instance of their deliberately preventing the two cousins from spending time together. And clearly SIL and BIL are disinclined from providing explanations as to why it's never convenient to schedule playdates. Just do what you intuitively feel is right. It's completely reasonable for you to stop contact with SIL and BIL, if you feel that's what is needed now. If DH disagrees, he can be the one to initiate contact and facilitate meetings between DC.

As is often the case, first poster succinctly nails it.

I disagree. OPs thread is over 30 pages deep. She has had ample opportunity to vent and instead of taking on board any of the sound advice given in this thread, she is sounding increasingly unhinged and immature in her responses.

I’m so sorry @Pouticel. I can feel your pain as the thread has progressed. This is clearly another let down in a long line of let downs and struggles with friendships / relationships, rather than you having a meltdown over one incident. I think we can accept our own pain and hardships but it’s so much harder when we see the same happening to our kids.

Your SIL is what she is and I doubt she’ll change. I think you need to decide pragmatically whether it’s better for your daughter to have a superficial relationship with her cousin, or none at all. Personally I’d go for the former and try to partially mend bridges, but I know you may not feel able to do that.

Maybe for now focus on your little family unit, and the love that you can all give each other. For what it’s worth I was an only child who was very happy with my own company and that of my parents.

Excluding your child from the birthday party was only the most recent instance of their deliberately preventing the two cousins from spending time together.

Except they were obviously meeting up at the time!

Not wanting their child to stay, holiday or have a day out with Op I don't think is unreasonable.

I think the adult thing to do would be to ask them if there is a problem and state the numerous times they have refused to interact , including the party. At least it will be put in the open.,

Poor poor poor DC.

You're making this all about you.

Hopefully your child will be able to salvage a family relationship with their cousins, notwithstanding your wrecking ball approach to family.

it's not all about you

Well, fortunately your child has a father who can maintain contact with his and his child's family, including of course the cousin