My 17yo daughter is upset I didn’t invite her on the annual family holiday

[OliveKoala]

Is it reasonable I did not invite my eldest 17 year old daughter on the family holiday. She has been on every previous family holiday with us however this year as she’s is finishing with Alevels she’s booked two holidays as rewards for her efforts, her first holiday has been completely self funded, where as her second holiday I offered to pay for the flights.

Due to her already having two holidays booked I thought it’d be unfair if she came on the family holiday aswell. Unless she paid for it, which I’m aware she can’t do as her job pays extremely poorly. A few months ago we had a discussion as a family about the idea of a family holiday and briefly arose the possibility of her not coming due to it overlapping with her holidays. However no further progress was made.

This morning I booked the holiday however before I booked it I did ask her when her holidays ended, so she would be back for when the family holiday happens. However this led her to believe we wanted her back so she could join us on the holiday? However this is not the case I just didn’t want our holidays to overlap for practical reasons. Now she seems visibly hurt and has argued with me calling me unreasonable?

This is so cruel....your poor daughter. She'll remember this forever.

Wow you are either quite spiteful or you just really dislike your daughter.

Our kids stopped coming on holiday with us when they were around 15 years old, but that was because they no longer wanted to. We always offered every year though!

Keep treating her like this and she will be around for 0/7 days of the week .

Blimey. We’ve paid for our teen, 4 adult DC and three partners to come on holiday with us this summer! I hate holidaying without them!

Anyone who still lived at home (that’s just the teen now) was always automatically brought on holiday!
Your poor DD.

Havent read the whole thread but have read your updates, you are being entirely unreasonable!
She is still a child living under your roof,
I have 4DC late teens/early 20s and I always invite and offer to pay for them.
I cannot understand why you are excluding her, other than perhaps jealousy??
What boundaries are you protecting!!
The right to exclude one of your DC!
I think you need to give your head a wobble and amend booking to include DD.
96% of mumsnetters think you are being unreasonable, that's pretty resounding, you asked for a opinion and got it, so question is are you going to accept you misjudged it and make amends by booking DD on the holiday day or carry on regardless?!

It's so weird not to have had a clear conversation with your child about this.

As a baseline I'd expect you to discuss with your child what your expectations were with a view to agreeing what would happen this summer.

You seem to have sprung it on her without that chat.

It seems like a deliberate attempt to punish her rather than a sincere expectation she didnt want to come with you.

Good grief. I invite all my children and they’re in their 20s.

But three foreign holidays in a year (possibly even summer) is above most people's normal expectations isn't it?

Most people wouldn't book two with no discussion of dates if they thought a third was happening?

And probably won’t be rushing back home after this snub.

I think it's unreasonable. You call it a family holiday and she's family. It seems really hurtful to exclude her.

Oh, come on!

You make it sound as if she's only allowed so much fun and after she's used up The Fun Budget you won't allow her any more!

This may well be the last ever family holiday she'll be with you, why are you SO determined that she's not coming?

Apologise, tell her it's down to communication, explain you thought she wouldn't want to come, but FFS sound pleased that she wants to go away with family when you have this conversation.

YABVU. We paid for our DD to come on holiday at 16, 17 and 18 and she only actually came when she was 17. So the complete opposite of you we paid anyway and gave her the choice of joining us. It was only when she got a full time job that we told her she was welcome to join us but she would need to self fund.

DS is 17 this June and his holiday with us this year has been fully funded by us and will be next year too. After that will depend on his work/uni situation.

You are definitely unreasonable and I can see why she’s upset. The only way to read this situation is that you don’t want her to go on holiday with you and from your posts I think sadly that’s the correct assumption for her to make.

Even more reason to want to see more of her on a family holiday!

Your communication on this matter has been spectacularly poor, is there a reason why you didn’t just say to her that she wasn’t invited sooner. Getting her brother to talk to her boyfriend appears to be a very round about way of communicating.

Did she know when you were paying for her flights for the 2nd holiday that this would mean that she wouldn't be able to come on the family holiday? If not, then YABVVU and you should have communicated better with her.

@Hwi

"Nobody should be rewarding themselves

Otherwise it is idiotic and self-congratulatory. Why are people up in arms when dictators of this world reward/award themselves medals? Because it is immoral and wrong"

Totally agree... the daughter should not be spending her money on a holiday because it's immoral!!! and she's a wee dictator

How goddamn foolish @Hwi.

eta; you must be @OliveKoala's idiot twin

This cannot be real. Very, very sad if it is.
No one needs a holiday, even you, but you’ve just basically told her she’s no longer a valued member of the family. Unbelievable.

I do find it a bit bizarre that the initial conversation didn't extend to whether or not she'd be on the holiday. I can understand that you might have thought she was going with boyfriend/friends instead, whatever she's doing, and therefore not interested, but I would have thought you'd known that already. I can also see that you'd only be prepared to fund one holiday, so I suppose that depends on how much you spent on her flights. If it was hundreds perhaps fair enough, if it was a cheap Ryan air flight, less so.
As a parent, I'd expect to invite any child still living in the house, and I'd expect to pay for any still studying. I don't have a lot of money so funding multiple trips wouldn't be possible for me, but again it's the lack of communication before you booked that's the issue.

Why???

Wow.

This is so clearly a wind up. It has to be!

The OP won't be back.

It's not really a family holiday if you exclude your DD. Most kids get rewarded for working hard at A levels. You seem to be punishing your DD. 🤷