To think choosing to spend Mother’s Day without your kids is weird

[InkyB]

DH’s ex has emailed us to let us know she’s planned her holidays next year and to ask us to accommodate. We usually have DSC every other weekend and half the school holidays plus Wednesday nights, and we have a draft plan for next year already, but are usually flexible both ways. She books her holidays very early because she’s far more organised than us!

One of the holidays she’s booked is a four night trip over Mother’s Day, so we’d have them Weds-Sun evening. It wasn’t supposed to be our weekend at all.

For context the children involved will be (future ages) DSS11, DSD10, our DD3 and she has a DS4.

AIBU to feel a bit put out by this?

Firstly DSC both have clubs on Sunday morning so it’d mean being out with one of them all morning, cooking a rushed lunch then DH driving them back in the late afternoon and getting back after DD’s bedtime.
Secondly, DSC are often mopey about their mum doing stuff with her youngest and not them, so it’d be a weekend of reassuring them and pretending Mother’s Day doesn’t exist.
Finally, I’d like a Mother’s Day where DH’s focus is on me and our child, not running around after his ex?

It’s weird she would spend time with one of her kids and not the other two- and that must be hurtful to them (I’d say they’re hurt not “mopey” about that)

Why doesn’t your husband book a wee overnight away with his 3 kids even if it’s just a premier inn for that weekend and let you have a long lie and peaceful Mother’s Day morning. Then a nice meal with them all that day. You’ve plenty time to get it booked.

I would feel sorry for his children not annoyed or irritated. And on an average month they only see their dad 8 days out of 30 so he can surely step up when he’s asked?

LOL. Why would she be doing their father a favour to “let” him have them on Mother’s Day? He’s not their mother! 🤣 Poor kids, their mother going on holiday without them is bad enough but to deliberately book ot over Mother’s Day is the kind of thing that children will likely remember forever. She sounds incredibly selfish and will be leaving your husband to pick up the pieces when they are upset about it. I’m quite shocked anybody thinks her treating her older children like this is acceptable.

Mother’s Day is overhyped commercialised nonsense so I do think YABU.

Not unreasonable at all. I always get DH to take the kids out on mother's day. Give me some me time! It's a day to spoil mothers. We have breakfast together and then off they go! I spend every other day with them and don't feel guilty for having some downtime.

Surely the whole point of Mother’s Day is that it’s one day when it’s all about what the mother wants?!

You might feel that way but to many children it is important as a day when they do special things to show their love for their mother. Not all kids might feel like this but many do. If their mother deliberately arranges not to even see them that day and go away with just her new husband and new sibling leaving them behind, and they then have to watch their step-siblings celebrating Mother’s Day with their own mother compounding their feeling of being unwanted and rejected, this could do huge damage to them and is the kind of thing that they will never forget. And the OP is being set up to have to deal with the potential for her step-children to be really upset by this and have to spend her own Mother’s Day picking up the pieces/ have her own children upset by having step-DC there whose are feeling rejected because their own mother didn’t want to be with them.

It’s a really nasty thing for these kids’ mother to do to her children. The exact opposite of what you should do to ensure that existing children don’t feel pushed out when you decide to create a new “little family”. It’s utterly selfish. She could do this trip the weekend before or afterwards when her older DC would normally be with their father anyway. Why should multiple other people change the normal contact arrangements and risk upsetting multiple DC and wrecking the OP’s Mother’s Day plans just to accommodate the selfishness of this woman and her new husband?

If Mother’s Day isn’t a big deal, allegedly, then presumably the step DC’s mother can do her “new family” trip from which she and her husband wish to exclude 2/3 of her children the weekend before or afterwards when her older two children won’t be there anyway.

The selfishness of some parents is off the charts.

Only certain mothers though, apparently!