Ok, hi everyone, it’s me, I’m the sister. My sister wrote this post and then sent me some screenshots of people agreeing with her to prove her point, but obviously I found the whole forum and have laughed and laughed at all the messages she didn’t show me.
I asked her if I could create an account and add my own comment and she said that she was going to delete the whole post anyway… which wasn’t exactly a no, so here I am. New to Mumsnet, more of a Redditor myself, hope it’s less political here.
First of all, they absolutely knew that we were thinking of moving house, we’d mentioned it a few times. Maybe she just forgot. But it definitely didn’t come completely out of the blue. I didn’t say anything specific about us viewing houses because I didn’t want anyone’s input. Our mother is a big one for offering unsolicited advice, which is fine, but if you don’t take the advice that you never asked for, she gets offended. If she’d known that we were serious about moving and had started viewing houses, she would’ve sent me links to houses she thought were best and would’ve wanted to know when I was seeing them, what I thought, whether we were going to buy them etc., and if we didn’t like them, she’d have been offended.
I find this sort of behaviour over-involved and controlling; my mum and Middle Sister would say it’s done out of kindness because our mum wants to help and to be a bigger part of my life. I understand their point of view but don’t agree. They just straight up don’t understand my point of view.
I didn’t tell anyone that we were moving until we had the keys in our hands and had actually moved in, which only happened yesterday, because up until that point anything could happen and then I’d have go around explaining what went wrong to people, when it doesn’t matter, doesn’t impact their lives, and is irrelevant. As far as I’m concerned, they found out as soon as they needed to know.
Secondly, I didn’t tell anyone that I’d started running because a) who cares? And b) I thought they’d make fun of me. I was very unfit in the beginning and I knew that the mental image of me going for a jog would be so silly that they’d all laugh and tease me, especially my mother. I would’ve found that demoralising and embarrassing, so I never mentioned it, and it got to the point where now running is just an everyday part of my life that I don’t think of as being anything interesting or worth talking about. I didn’t tell them that I was training for the marathon because I knew that if I couldn’t finish, I’d never hear the end of it. “Remember that time that Olive ran the London Marathon? Oh wait, she didn’t! Ha ha!” And if I didn’t find this funny, I’d be accused of being too sensitive or not having a sense of humour. Then when I ran it, and I did finish, I couldn’t tell them that I’d done it because I knew they’d kick off about me being a secret runner and say that I was being deceitful to be mean or that I was weird to not have told them.
Third, not that it really matters, but I was five months pregnant when I told them, not six, and we waited until then because we wanted to have the anatomy scan and get our Downs/Edwards/Patau’s screening results back before we told anyone, so that we would know, as far as we could, that the baby was likely going to be ok. Partly this was because my daughter was the first grandchild and I knew that everyone would be very excited about her, and I didn’t want to get them excited and then have to deal with the grief and upset if something went wrong or we had to make a difficult decision. But also, if something did go wrong, I would never tell my mum or sisters because they have no discretion and my grief would become gossip. I know most people are comfortable sharing at 12 weeks but I’ve also known people share much later and even had friends who had entirely secret babies during lockdown, so I don’t think 22 weeks is too absurdly late.
I didn’t tell anyone when I went into labour because it wasn’t anyone’s business but mine and my husband’s. It’s not a spectator sport. Also, I was a bit busy giving birth and didn’t really have my parents or sisters at the forefront of my mind, to be honest.
Australia was literally ten years ago. I didn’t say anything at the time because I was only 19 and I went on my own and it was kind of crazy, and I knew that if they knew what I was doing, our mum would have a meltdown and I’d get constant messages and phone calls every day, checking that I hadn’t been bitten by a spider or swallowed by a snake, and it would ruin the trip. I’d already moved out and we could go weeks without speaking, so no one noticed that I’d gone, and it didn’t come up in conversation until years later. I didn’t say anything, nothing bad happened, nobody got hurt, and I had a great Big Girl adventure all on my own. But they still managed to be pissed about it.
I have never said that I had a traumatic childhood or that I am a survivor of child abuse. This sort of inflammatory language is exclusively used by Middle Sister to undermine what I’ve actually said, which is that some of the choices our mother made affected me deeply at the time, were not reconciled or dealt with, and still affect me to this day. The eating disorder is an example of this, as it came in large part due to our mother’s constant monitoring of and commenting on my body, which included regular forced weighing, and the way that she controlled what and how much I ate (wasn’t like that for either sister), and has remained something that I have to deal with to this day. When she found out that I was hiding food and skipping meals as a teenager, she punished me for it. Didn’t just not get me help — actually punished me.
Whenever I’ve tried to explain how I feel about some of the things that happened when we were kids, or the ways in which these things still impact me, our mother says things like, “Sorry I was such an appalling parent and that you hate me and hate all of us”, tells me I’m rewriting history, tells me how all of her friends and her own parents were worse, makes herself the victim. I have an email that she sent me months ago where she says, “I think you read too many sad stories as a child and had to jazz up your own normal childhood to make it seem more exciting and give yourself an interesting backstory. I’m so hurt that you’ve done this and feel very hard done by.” My husband read that email and told me to it was the most narcissistic thing he’d ever read and that I should cut her off.
My mum and Middle Sister are thick as thieves. Our dad and Little Sister are much more neutral but get roped in by the other two, so while my relationships with them could’ve been different, there’s a real Olive vs. The Rest of the World thing going on, which is odd since I’ve only ever brought up issues with two people.
There has always been a lot of tension, even if my sisters weren’t aware of it, so I keep my distance. This has been the status quo for years but has only really become an issue since my daughter was born because my parents and sisters feel entitled to more contact with her than I think is reasonable. It’s been worse since Middle Sister had her daughter because now I get compared. Our mum helps out a lot with my niece and has been doing full days of childcare and sleepovers and stuff, basically co-parenting, since she was about four months old, whereas I’ve never left my daughter (now 2.5 years old) with them and honestly won’t be doing so. I don’t have any feelings at all about my sister’s parenting or childcare set-up — couldn’t care less, whatever works for her, lovely that they’re all happy with the arrangement — but I don’t feel the need to copy.
Mum and Middle Sister have both said that they think it’s weird that I won’t leave my daughter with them. I don’t leave her with anyone, my husband and I work shifts around each other so she always has a parent at home. I don’t think that’s weird but according to them, it’s unfair on my daughter, who is apparently missing out on special bonding time with her nanny (to whom she is entirely ambivalent). My mother says that I’m withholding my daughter from her as punishment for her not being a perfect parent. For reference, we take our daughter round to visit every couple of months or so, maybe every 6-8 weeks, usually when it’s someone’s birthday or a holiday. I think that’s fairly normal?
Her depiction of Little Sister as more like her than me isn’t really accurate, but I won’t drag her into it.