to not want my dd to have her own email address

[BoringSuburbanLady]

My dd is 8 and my sister and her husband and 2 children has gone to live in Australia for 2 years.

I have heard through my parents that my neice would like my dd to have her own email so they can keep in touch.

We (as a family) have not heard from them since they went (3 months ago) and have only heard through my parents.

My children have spoken to their cousins via Skype at my parents and they keep asking my parents to get us to set up an email for dd.

I feel they should ask me directly if they have any 'requests' about my dd and not send these 'requests' via my parents.

My sister has my email address so the children could communicate through that.

I dont see the need for dd to have her own email address whilst she could use mine. She would not need an email for anything else apart from emails from her cousin.

dd has not expressed any interest in emailing her cousin.

My sister has my mobile no etc and there has been no falling out (we are not very close but usually perfectly civil) so she could easily have contacted me.

I am not sure if IABU or I am just annoyed at my sister.

I should add that we live 250 miles from them in the UK so usually only see them every 2 - 3 months and my dd does not keep in touch with her cousin in between visits

I can't see why not tbh as you would have access to it as well. It's a nice easy little first independence for her. Obviously if your dd isn't bothered then it won't be worth it but it does sound like you've made your mind up based on your feelings about your sister and you don't really want them to keep in contact.

Is it the manipulation through your parents that is annoying ? I think that would annoy me a little. Is it that she implies that they cannot contact their darling niece when they want to and you are somehow preventing it ? I agree that there is some sisterly manipulation going on there and if she skypes there is really no point. My littlest has an email address to contact family overseas but she is too busy playing to evern check it so it is pointless.

However, I think the email thing is a bit irrelevant and that the issue sounds more like sisterly stuff. She is your child so if you don't want her to have an email account at 8 so what

YANBU but maybe you do need to think about why it winds you up so much.

yes , it is the fact they they have told my parents to tell me to set one up for her.

If I was abroad I would text / email my sister directly asking if she would mind doing it / it would be nice for the girls etc

I am not sure if I should confront her over this as I dont wasnt it to fester !

Its a difficult one I had a similar situation with my DB who lives overseas. My mother kept saying he really "wants you to call him more often so that he can talk to your dds". In the end I flipped out and called him and told him to call us more often if he wanted to talk to them. He had no clue what i was on about It was my mother trying to stop us from loosing contact. He had not said anything to them at all. If you can drop it in casually you may find out it wasn't such a big deal after all.

Is it really a big deal? What I mean is, that by asking should you confront her now or let it fester, it sounds like you are gunning for her which is a bit of an overreaction to this. I'm assuming there are bigger issues here because this on its own doesn't sound worth getting your knickers in a knot for

yes, thank you I guess thats what I wanted to know.

IABU and my 'ishoos' with my sister are clouding my judgemnet !

I will set up an email for dd asap