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Relationships

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Original poster

My sister is younger than me and doesnt have any kids....

29 replies

charliecat · 13/06/2006 18:44

By the time she gets round to having them my two will be well into teenager hood I would think.
She lavishes them with gifts on special occasions, but looks at them with wonder but never plays with them and we only meet up once a year with the kids for fireworks on bonfire night...
Will she realise how little she knows her neices when she has her own? Will she think me odd if would like to know her kids better?

Hows your relationship with your neices/nephews?

OP posts:

Freckle · 13/06/2006 18:47

My older sister has a boy (24) and a girl (22). I used to babysit all the time when they were younger. I wouldn't say I'm really close to them now, but different generations and all that. My nephew still gives me a kiss when he sees me! My sister, it has to be said, has never babysat for me. I actually came back from living in France so that I wouldn't miss out on their childhoods.

My younger sister has a girl (13) and a boy (11) so, given that my boys are 12, 10 and 8, we tend to see a lot of each other.

mousiemousie · 13/06/2006 18:50

I think this is very common! Lots of our relatives who were really keen to become aunts/ great aunts / whatever rarely see our dd although they do send her nice prezzies on her birthday!

ggglimpopo · 13/06/2006 18:50

I never knew you lived in France Freckle

All my family are in Africa and my neices and nephews are very close so my children (and I suppose I), feel a little excluded....In my husband's family the aunts and uncles take assorted cousins with them on holiday and all the children seem more like siblings than cousins.

warthog · 13/06/2006 18:53

hi cc,

there's quite a big age gap between my siblings and myself so they all had kids long before me. i did pretty much as your sister does i.e. gifts but didn't play with them much. i just wasn't particularly interested in kids at the time. now i have my dd i wish i had got more involved, but i don't think i'd have appreciated it if it had been forced on me.

she sounds like she's just not a kiddie person (like me) but i'm sure she'll feel differently when she has her own and take more of an interest in them then. you could invite her over more often, but don't be hurt if she doesn't take up the slack.

JanH · 13/06/2006 19:01

My brother stopped having kids just as I started - his eldest is 32 and youngest 25, my eldest is 24 and youngest 13.

They live 2½ hours away and we don't see them very often, although we all get along fine and are mutually fond (IYSWIM!) They are much closer to my SIL's sister and her kids (her eldest is over 40! But her youngest is about 20) because the mothers are sisters - so since yours do have a good-if-distant relationship with your sister it will probably improve.

I bet she a) won't be bothered, if she does have her own, by how little she knows your kids now (because I was exactly like that with my DNs, bought excellent presents if I do say so myself and enjoyed seeing them briefly but also enjoyed saying goodbye!) but b) will then understand why you'll want to be closer to them than she is to yours.

IYSWIM again

Original poster

charliecat · 15/06/2006 17:03

Just had an email from her about going to alton towers in september, wanted to know if we wanted to travel up, stay the night, go to alton towers then stay the night again....I will have to remind her that I dont have a cage to keep the kids in for 3 days while I swan off
Gonna keep the email and resend it back to her in 10 years when shes got kids

OP posts:

warthog · 15/06/2006 19:04

take the kids!

spursmum · 15/06/2006 19:12

My brothers are like this. They are 18 and 21 and while they try to be around my ds as much as possible, I must realise that they have lives and my ds can be difficult due to his ASD.

TomThumb · 15/06/2006 19:15

LOL! Am waiting for some neices and nephews from my side of the family. No chance anytime soon though, i have three brothers and they are pretty laid back about that kind of thing...

I "inherited" 4 neices and 2 nephews when i got together with DP, but the youngest is currently just emerging in to her teens, the oldest is only 8 years younger than me and is getting married soon! So i missed their babyhood years and my two (their cousins obv) are so much younger than them (3 and 1) that they are more like aunts and uncles than cousins.

Greensleeves · 15/06/2006 19:17

My sister has never seen either of my children, nor has she any wish to. She came back from working in Japan (coincidentally, not deliberately) when I was in hospital having ds1 - I had been wheelchair-bound for 6 months, in hospital for 6 weeks, long story but basically very ill, an ds1 was in intensive care - she was told all this on the phone by my dad who was at the hospital, and she never sent a card or expressed congratulations or anything. When ds2 was born she was told but wasn't interested. I haven't seen her since our wedding nearly 6 years ago

VVVQV · 15/06/2006 19:28

Greeny, thats really sad

Is this all to do with all your other stuff?

VVVQV · 15/06/2006 19:29

Greensleeves · 15/06/2006 19:32

Yes, I think so. She and my mother share some choice characteristics - and there's a lot of stupid groundless jealousy in it too . She's 4 years older than I am though, so a slightly different dynamic from the OP.

VVVQV · 15/06/2006 19:34

Well, i suppose the only consolation is that what your children dont "know" they dont miss. The hardness of some people astonishes me sometimes - especially where children are involved.

trinityrhino · 15/06/2006 19:35

live 450 miles away from my sister who has a little boy.

I don't see him more than perhaps 3 times a year which I think is a shame.
my sis and I have a bit of a strained relationship though as she resents that I can get pg easily and she has polyps on her ovaries and needs help to conceive

Greensleeves · 15/06/2006 19:35

The funniest thing about it is that the last time I saw her was when we let her stay in our house for a month after our wedding - causing a major feud with my mother and ruining our honeymoon - and I still have loads of boxes of stuff I agreed to store for her which we have carted though three house moves She did once phone me to demand her stuff back, and I said she could come whenever she liked but I couldn't guarantee her not running into my mother. She said "you'd better make sure that doesn't happen" in a threatening tone, and I told her not to bully me. Haven't heard from her since

Anyway, sorry for hijacking

BettySpaghetti · 15/06/2006 19:36

I have a brother, and DP has a sister -both of them are settled in long-term relationships but don't have children. Not sure if either couple will to be honest as they seem to have hobbies and lifestyles that are important to them and not really child-friendly.

If we see them its always us that tends to make the effort and visit them. I guess we see them a couple of times a year.

I sometimes wish our two had cousins to play with but I guess we/they have enough friends around not to realise they haven't got cousins.

LucyJones · 15/06/2006 19:38

My family live 3 hours away from us. My parents visit and one of my sister's comes here once a year with her 2 kids. I only see my other brother and sister and their kids when we travel up to see my parents. It does my head in that we are the ones doing all the driving, taking leave to see them etc. Their excuse is that when we go up there we still stay with my parents and if they came here they would have to stay in a hotel. God knows what would happen if my parents moved, or when they pas on, cos then we'd have to saty in a hotel up there!!

LucyJones · 15/06/2006 19:40

It is also expecting that we should be the ones who travel because I was the one who moved away....

Tutter · 15/06/2006 19:40

families are so much more fragmented - and comprise funny old structures - these days. we have 1 ds - 12mo. dh has one brother - whose kids are 15 and 18. my brother has none and is totally disinterested. so no-one for ds to play with in our families!!

Tortington · 15/06/2006 19:43

dont like other peoples children - dont expect people without children to be interested in my stories i work in an office with many childless women who insist on telling me stories of their budgie or cat or lab puppy - but i rarely mention my kids as i know i will bore them as much as they bore the holy fecking shit out of me.

i feel very little for extended family relations

TheMammy · 15/06/2006 20:15

I have a family of 8 siblings, this makes 32 adults and 18 nieces and nephews when we all get together!! This is happening at my place this weekend!! I am so looking forward to it!! My eldest niece is 22 (I am 28) and my youngest niece is 8months, so quite a wide range of ages, they all get on really well and see each other as often as possible. We all are guardians/godparents for each others children and we try to treat them all like we would our own children. Dh has only 1 sister who has been TTC for about 8yrs and doesn't talk to us as we have DS and DD so even if she does conceive the chances of us seeing her kids are rather slim :(

littlerach · 15/06/2006 20:20

I have a nephew from DH's side who lives in the States so we've only seen him twice and he is 1.

My sister has no children, TBh, I don't know that she ever will. She would be the legal guardian of my 2 if anything ever happened. She is fantastic with them, especially DD1 who she is v close to. She loives about 1 1/2 hrs away so not that clsoe but she visits a lot, and we go thwre too.

Sometimes I wish that DDs had some cousins that were close to them.

Flum · 15/06/2006 20:24

My SIL is same age as me and has no kids. She would love some. She is kind of interested when we first see her but only for 10 minutes or so. She doesn't play with her or anything.

Before I had kids I mostly found other peoples kids quite boring. I liked my niece alot but only saw her once a year as she lived overseas though.

nicnack2 · 15/06/2006 20:29

inherited a niece on marriage aged 13 lives down south. My brother isnt likely to have any childrens so my dss do not have any cousins.(my direct cousins live in Canada/Oz and are both grandparents!!)

Maybe start adopt a cousin scheme for all of us whose children dont have cousins

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