To be hurt children were excluded from a family day out this weekend?

[ladyrushford]

Hello. So - bit of a thing this. I married the oldest son of five siblings (4 boys, 1 girls)!and three of the siblings have children of their own. My DH and I have 3 - DS1 (13), DD (11) and DS2 (4). Two of my husband’s brothers have two kids a piece so there are 8 cousins in total. Our DD gets on really well with one of her cousins, a girl who is 9. Our oldest son has severe cognitive delays and tends to keep to himself. He is also the oldest of all the cousins (there are 8) but he loves his family and loves seeing his cousins, just expresses it differently.

Anyway, my SIL invited my daughter over for a sleepover with two of her cousins. There was no invitation for my two sons, which I put down to age and perhaps need as well. My oldest son was quite upset he wasn’t invited but I tried not make a big thing of it and said it was likely he was a lot older than the others. But it didn’t sit well with me. My DH shrugged it off as he doesn’t like conflict or confrontation of any kind.

My BIL actually collected our DD on Saturday (off his own back). We live an hour away, the majority of the family are relatively close to one another. I am not very close to my IL’s though I tried for years to get on better terms with my SILs (wives of my husband’s brothers) but all invitations/suggestions were always politely rebuffed. I am not invited to a lot of events - baby showers, engagement parties etc. i find out after the fact. It stings but what can I do? We’ve never fallen out but something is rotten.

DD goes for the sleepover. On Sunday I see a big host of photos on WhatsApp. Two of the brothers and their families were in the pictures with all their kids. Only myself, DH and two sons were excluded. They didn’t even hide it - but took photos as if to brag about what a lovely day they were having?? I can’t think why they thought this would be ok and for the first time my DH is quite shocked by the behaviour towards us and also can’t understand why this would happen? I feel like it comes back to their dislike of me (without making it all about me) because what possible reason would they have to exclude their nephews? I do wonder if they just don’t want my older, complex needs son around which would make me very, very angry. I can’t work out why they don’t care about my 4 year old?

My daughter had a great time but I realise now we can’t let this happen again as we’re essentially allowing the exclusion of two of our kids. I don’t need to be best mates with everyone but I’ve never had a problem with my SILs (I do now though, the fucking bitches). I collected her from their house on Sunday and spent the entire drive rehearsing what would I say, then bottled it, purely out of respect for my husband. They even asked after my sons, and I said, ‘they would have loved to have come to the pumpkin picking thing’ but it was completely ignored.

Would I AIBU to just wash my hands of them all, and cut contact? I never feel welcome and only see them at my PILs house and honestly, they aren’t my biggest fans either. It’s exhausting but I keep the peace for my husband and for kids? So they have a big loving family (I don’t have cousins, or aunts or uncles or anything like that). But I’ve had enough of this and feel it will just hurt all my kids in the long run, even though my daughter adores her cousins so much.

So…AIBU to just never see them again??

At the end of the day, this is something your DH needs to raise with his family.

I've missed you live an hour away and the others live right near each other.

@ladyrushford all of this makes total sense. Your teenage boy was not appropriate to have a sleepover with a 9yo girl. Your 4yo was too young, as was the other 4yo who wasn't there either.

The next day, two brothers who live near each other take their kids out. One of yours only goes because she's still there from the night before.

Stop trying to make this about you and your teenage boy and pre-schooler who live an hour away!

You say they’re not fans of yours, and you’ve been left out of baby showers, parties etc. I’m not really sure why you would honestly think you’d then be invited pumpkin picking? It seems like you don’t really get on.

I have one SIL I love and we are more like friends. I have another I tolerate; she is just not my kind of person, I’m sure I’m not hers. We make polite chit chat at family functions but I don’t plan anything with her and their family alone. We have DNeices over instead to stay, as our DC love them. DH sees his DB for sports, a drink etc.

This is fine, in my book.

This. What was the dickish behaviour op?? If you had ds at 30, were you and dh together since school to be mentioning how young you were?

Hmmmm. I am one of five siblings. Two of us have kids. We also have dozens of cousins we are very close to most of whom who have children. It is very common for some of the family to get together and do ‘family things’ without inviting everyone. For example my sister had a birthday dinner and my parents and 2 of my siblings were invited, 2 of us were not. My brother had a small Halloween party and invited some of my cousins and their kids, and not others nor were me or my kids or any of my siblings invited. I had a lunch at mine recently with 2 of my siblings and a cousin. My parents had a bbq for me and one cousin and our kids, with no one else invited. It wouldn’t occur to us to be annoyed as there are reasons to want a certain dynamic sometimes - and everyone together is a lot. Maybe don’t take it personally. If they were excluding you on purpose I doubt they’d have sent photos or asked your DD.

Also, if I was to invite all siblings and family everytime we did something, on either side, in all honesty, there would just be too many people. You can’t really book massive tables in restaurants and booking any kind of event gets too complicated with timings, dates and who can make it

Full family gatherings are restricted to birthdays and Christmas really .

I’ll be honest - there are 3 female adult women in our family and I’m one of them. It’s a complex relationship but let’s just say we are all sisters (blended family so technically incorrect but easiest way to broadly describe it).

2 of us get on really well. 2 kids each of similar ages and kids have a best friend type relationship with their cousin of the same age. Holidays, weekends, boozy nights, birthday celebrations - we are very close. Our husbands are also really close.

The other, we just find difficult. We are aware of it, we have little (nothing) in common. We try to make an effort to include her to the point it’s not hurtful and doesn’t leave her child out from having a cousin relationship, but her child is also hugely younger than ours and she’s at a different place in her parenting journey (young child vs our late teenagers). We probably have a standard cordial/pleasant family relationship with her vs being almost like best friends with each other.

I am aware she finds it hard and difficult to understand but our husbands really don’t like her. She’s difficult, but also unaware she is difficult. It’s also just a bit ‘chalk and cheese’ but nothing that’s tangible enough to really explain.

I can honestly say nothing is ever intended to hurt her or her daughter but the relationship we have with each other isn’t something you can fake or force just because we happen to be related to her too. We do try our best to include her. Her point of view may well be completely different to mine - we try our best to be inclusive but I am very aware that she feels left out/pushed out and doesn’t really understand why.

You can have a family relationship that isn’t a friendship and a genuine friendship with people you also just happen to be related to, without any ill feeling being intended.

On paper we regularly leave our other niece out - but it’s because she’s not the same age as our kids so 90% (or more) of what we/they do is completely inappropriate for her. It’s not about her at all, and I suspect this isn’t about your boys. They just don’t have a sociable relationship with you, so by default your boys won’t be included in things they do socially with each other. Your daughter was included because her cousin also considers her a friend and wanted to invite her over. She was not invited in her capacity as cousin but because she was there as a cousin/friend. So they didn’t see it as 5 out of 7 were invited, it was 2 families that socialise together plus the other child who had been staying over - who happened to be your daughter, but could just as easily have been another friend of their 9 year old.

This is not the hill you want to die on.

It may be worth your husband chatting to his brothers if feeling excluded has upset him though - more from the perspective of trying to build more of a relationship with them if that’s what he wants. But that may involve him seeing them independently of you, because he can’t force them to force their wives to want to socialise with you. If he presents you as a package deal and they’re not keen on the whole package, they’re going to naturally distance themselves from you all.

Yeah looks a bit rubbish. But likely non sleep over family called and said we are off pumping picking and sleepover family said oh we’ll come too and cousin is with us and didn’t think of the implications.

Sounds likely they might do last minute activities sometimes but your dd doesn’t happen to be there normally so there isn’t a divide between your kids on those occasions.

Chalk it up to chance.

Is DH pro active in inviting sibs families to do stuff? Maybe he could set something up with one of the families sometime over near them. He could get one brother on side to be considerate of your kids inclusion.

I think you need to talk to them

Let your daughter have fun, it’s probably rough having a complex needs older sibling. It’s hard to do normal things with all of them I assume. I know as I have 2 high needs adult children.

You need to let your DD be her own person. Having a sibling with additional needs will impact on her, as will having a much younger sibling. That's not a criticism, its natural that day to day thing will need to happen with all your children taken into account, but she is in the middle. All of them should get the chance to do things without the others, even if it's with family. And don't get her caught up in your lack of friendship with your in laws, keep that separate.

They have invited her round then come up with an activity to do with her as part of it. The other cousins are nearby and close in age. It's a time filler, low effort, gets everyone out the house type activity. Might last 30 minutes, might stretch to couple of hours. Not something they would think you would travel 2 hours for. Unless they drove past your house to get to the pumpkins and still didn't invite you then yes, you are being unreasonable.

Well firstly, pumpkin picking always looks like miserable nonsense to me. They're not even 'picked' they're just taken off the ground where the farmer has put them in rows most of the time.

That said - it's hard to be a middle child and it's hard to be the sibling of a disabled child and it's hard to be the sibling of a precious youngest child so I think your DD very likely needs space away from her siblings to just have fun with her cousins and I hope you'll let it happen again. It's ok if she felt a bit special that day.

If you don’t like them I’m confused why it has peed in your cornflakes so much.

it sounds like they have no time for you, there may or may not be a justified back story, but I assume from their perspective at least there is a reason for it

I agree that the original post seems all about the sleepover and then became more about pumpkin picking. Sounds like they just didn’t want to spend the day with you. I’d not destroy DDs closeness with them over it though.

I’d be hurt too. It’s completely understandable to feel that way — especially when it’s something called a family day out. Kids shouldn’t be excluded like that; it sends such a strong message and it’s bound to sting. You’re not overreacting for feeling upset about it

There’s nothing you can do though is there? You can’t make people enjoy your company. They don’t owe you anything. Would be a shame to cut your Dd off from them. Sometimes in larger families some personalities just get on better.

Your children do not come as a pack. They invited the chord most likely to get something out of the experience - your daughter. Your oldest child prefers his own company and your other son is too young to enjoy this sort of thing without a lot of supervision. They would entirely change the dynamic. There will be plenty of time for whole family gatherings.

I wouldn't assume your family was deliberately excluded - it's more likely that the pumpkin picking was a spontaneous thing - maybe one family said oh we're going pumpkin picking today and the other family said oh that sounds great, we'll come too! You live an hour away so they probably see each other more than you do. It may be that the 2 SILs have just hit it off and get along better. I think you're being a bit oversensitive assuming that your 2 sons were deliberately excluded.

Thank you everyone for the constructive comments it’s made me think about things.

I don’t want to do anything to ruin my DD’s friendship with her cousins. They are the only girls out of 8 (the other kids are boys) and they get on like a house on fire so I couldn’t bear to do anything to that. And my nieces and nephews are super cute!! I love them all and I love being an aunt as well.

So I am not going to do or say anything at all. I’ve asked my DH to not say anything about it either. As someone said, my DD struggles with having an older brother with such complex needs, then the 4 year old (who we love of course, but can be a massive pain in the arse as well! Sorry baby!!) so the fact that she has this cousin/friend is really important to her. I’d do anything for my girl - even inviting my SiLs out lol, when I know they’ll just say no, very nicely.

As another said, this is not the hill I intend to die on. But I might stop trying to invite the SiLs out for days out and accept they aren’t interested. I’ll try again for another sleepover though as my DD would love that.

Thanks again

Thank you everyone for the constructive comments it’s made me think about things.

I don’t want to do anything to ruin my DD’s friendship with her cousins. They are the only girls out of 8 (the other kids are boys) and they get on like a house on fire so I couldn’t bear to do anything to that. And my nieces and nephews are super cute!! I love them all and I love being an aunt as well.

So I am not going to do or say anything at all. I’ve asked my DH to not say anything about it either. As someone said, my DD struggles with having an older brother with such complex needs, then the 4 year old (who we love of course, but can be a massive pain in the arse as well! Sorry baby!!) so the fact that she has this cousin/friend is really important to her. I’d do anything for my girl - even inviting my SiLs out lol, when I know they’ll just say no, very nicely.

As another said, this is not the hill I intend to die on. But I might stop trying to invite the SiLs out for days out and accept they aren’t interested. I’ll try again for another sleepover though as my DD would love that.

Thanks again

I can’t see the issue. I’m one of 4 and we mix and match as and when.

it wasn’t a whole family event.

This is what probably happened.

DH and I both come from large families, some siblings and inlaws we tolerate, some we don’t, it’s life, not everyone gets on. My brother married someone who we can’t forgive for her behaviour early on in their relationship, especially towards our parents. We barely tolerate her but are pleasant through gritted teeth when we have to. Their children were invited for sleep overs as we got older and had families but she was never invited to hen nights etc before that, we didn’t want to spend time with such a nasty person to be honest. We put up with her for the sake of the children now.

Some of our families live closer than others so naturally we do things together, others live further away so visits need planned around jobs and children. We all dread meeting the obnoxious SIL once a year when we have to outside weddings/funerals etc. Personally, the SIL in question will never be forgiven, no matter how many times she apologises, what’s done is done, some things are unforgivable. People can downplay their actions in the past but the damage will already be done.

But in your opening post you said the sleepover didn’t sit well with you. So you were already irked by this… Your oldest son is a boy and 13 of course he wasn’t invited and your youngest son is also a boy and 4 so of course he wasn’t invited either.

My oldest son was quite upset he wasn’t invited but I tried not make a big thing of it and said it was likely he was a lot older than the others. But it didn’t sit well with me.

The ILs don’t seem to like you but clearly wanted the girl cousins to spend time together which is nice. Also the Pumkin Picking seems like it was down the day after the sleepover and they all live near each other. So on this occasion I don’t think this was an intentional snub more of a case of family’s that get in well went on a day out and your DD happened to benefit as she was there, and you guys live over an hour away.

You seem nice but there must be more to this as why would they actively dislike you so much.

I honestly think it’s as simple as you being an hours drive away. It could be they woke up after the sleepover, it’s a nice day, they’re all local and decided to go. I do agree you’re perhaps putting too much on this perceived slight based on your lack of relationship with your SILs which to be honest, if you’re not friendly that would be another reason they might not reach out.
It sounds like family dynamics are new for you too given you don’t have your own siblings / cousins? As others have said, some will get along, some will be the absolute best of friends, and some won’t like each other at all. Put your feelings aside and allow your daughter to have a relationship with the cousin she is so close to.