Christmas, and how to make siblings take greater responsibility.

So, Christmas rolls around and, yet again, my girlfriend and I are taking the brunt of parental responsibility. This really can’t happen again, and I’m interested in how you would approach this.

Background:
My girlfriend’s family are dispersed:

  1. Her parents live in Wales. Her father has prostrate cancer and her mother is severely disabled following an early stroke at the age of 40. They are both now 70, and travel is at best a major hassle, and at worst really impossible.
  2. My girlfriend and I (aged 40) live in London, about 250 miles from her parents, and we both work right up to Christmas and afterwards, unlike her two siblings who both have more than a week off every year. We are childless (gay couple).
  3. Brother (45) lives in Scotland with his teenage children and miserable Scottish wife who rules her husband with a rod of iron and has zero interest in the in-laws or visiting Wales at all if possible.
  4. Sister (43) is a wealthy high powered exec with a robot Swiss husband and two young children who lives in Germany and runs her life like Bree Van de Kamp.

For the last 4-5 Christmases both brother and sister have conspired to NOT visit their parents over Christmas - not just Christmas Day, but not at all. Brother stays in Scotland as his wife ‘doesn’t want their children to miss out on the joy of spending Christmas in their own home’, whilst sister generally whisks her family off for a skiing trip in some swanky Austrian resort. Every year we get to November, hoping one of the others will make the trip to Wales and every year we end up making a two day dash in between work schedules when it becomes obvious no one else is going and her parents are facing Christmas alone.

We are both fed up with this. It’s a common complaint of childless and single people - ‘no family of your own? Then YOU can look after the parents’. Err, excuse me, we do have lives, you know.

I do not want this to happen next year.

What would you do, beyond getting everyone, including the parents (to enforce guilt), in one room and screaming at the siblings to sort it out. Tempting as it might be. Aside form everything else, it means, yet again, we won’t be visiting MY parents. Luckily, I at least have siblings who will do their share.

Grrrr. Maybe this is just a rant.

My version of this rant with both our families in town - “no family of our own” doesn’t mean that we are free to spend three days in a row with family 24/7 at Christmas - my husband desperately needs the down time so he can stop being an overtired bitch. And we actually do have our own family - it just doesn’t include any children. Christmas morning is for us to spend time together and open presents and such; we’re not getting up at the asscrack of dawn and racing over to someone else’s house.

Crazy as this may sound, have you considered having a non-screaming, non-guilting, adult conversation with them?

I just want to check one thing: you and your girlfriend can’t each take on their own family for the holidays? It sounds like you are getting screwed out of your family - which isn’t fair to you or your family. Obviously, your girlfriend needs to work something out with her siblings, which would be helped by mom or dad calling the siblings directly and sounding sad. My mom sends me on so many guilt trips I’ve earned frequent flyer miles. Use the guilt trip to your advantage.

Seriously, my husband and I split up over the holidays to attend our own family get-togethers. Then we spend time together. It makes us more appreciative of each other to have to spend a day with our crazy families without spousal support!

There were a few Christmases my dad’s mom came with us to visit my mom’s parents for Christmas. Not sure if that’s a possibility for your family, in one direction or another.

But, aside from talking to your siblings privately, I don’t think there’s a way you can enforce them to visit your parents. My guess is that even if you weren’t around they would still be making the same choices.

Next year, you should make the decision early (like by September) that you’re going to do something else on Christmas. Call your folks and let them know, and maybe try to schedule another time to visit if that seems like a posibility. Then, send an e-mail to your siblings letting them know you won’t be making the Christmas trip to your parents’, and suggest that one of them might be able to. Stick to your guns, and don’t be guilted by either your parents or your siblings into changing your mind (and, in fact, if your siblings do try to guilt you, then they would be complete jerks).

You cannot under any circumstances let your siblings (or your parents, but mostly your siblings) pass judgment on your reasoning. They are likely to say, “oh, but you live so close! Oh, but we can’t so you have to!” Ignore this. What it really means is, “we don’t want to, and as long as you keep visiting mom and dad over the holidays, I don’t have to feel guilty about it!”

You are entitled to your own time, and this situation will not change until you claim that time back.

What this means is that your parents might spend Christmas alone. That is ok. Regardless of your family situation, grown adults are entitled to spend some of their holidays at home.

SanVito, your siblings may have just ‘moved on’. Sometimes it happens, even though its unfortunate. I applaude you and your wife though for having Christmas in Wales and making it work.
Parents don’t last forever; you’ve got to love them while you’ve got them. The SanVitos North and SanVitos East don’t get that (and by the time they do it will be too late). But that’s on them.

9 days early, but Merry Christmas. :slight_smile:

Well, it seems you’ve left it kind of late, but, just leave a message on their answering machines, saying that unfortunately, this year, you will be unable to make the journey, and that it’s your hope that, between them, they can find a way to insure that these elderly and infirm parents do not spend Christmas entirely alone. Tell them, you just wanted to let them know, and you’re certain that they’ll do their best.

Then, let it go. You can only do what you can do. And you have done your share. They are relying on you coming through, if they abandon them. If you do so, remember that is your choice, no blaming them. No one ‘makes’ you do anything.

The fact is your aged and ailing parents are hundreds of miles, and several countries from their children. How did you/they imagine this would play out? Sooner or later something has to give, right? It may be sooner rather than later, for whatever action you’re intending to take, when the next step of decline occurs. The parents and siblings must all be aware, I should think, that these issues lie ahead.

I really do understand what you’re talking about. For the past 8 years, I was the care-giver for my grandmother with Alzheimer’s (She died 2 years ago), and then, overlapping the past 3 or 4 years, also the care-giver for my mother, who recently died of diabetes/kidney failure.

I know the in-laws would like me to visit them during the holidays. Hell, they only live about half an hour from us. But, I’m tired.
This is the first Christmas without my mom. I just want to be with my family, and do our usual Christmas Eve thing, which includes lots of snacking on good food, and watching movies.

Our in-laws have decided that they’re holding a Christmas Eve shindig, starting at around 5pm. That screws the evening for me being with my husband and daughter, because they’re expected to go to the shindig. I will not be going. I’m staying the hell at home, and I’ll by Gawd enjoy the alone time, I guess. Might as well. There’s not a damn thing I can do about it. It would start ‘trouble’ if I had a meltdown, and insisted that my husband and daughter stay home with me. So, I won’t. It’s not my husband’s fault that his parents and siblings don’t consult with us about these shindigs. They just let us know when to be there, and that’s it. If we don’t show up, there are hurt feelings, and whatnot. :rolleyes:

My husband is an OTR truck driver, and he’d really like some downtime, also. He needs to rest. He will be lucky to even be home by the time the shindig starts, but he’ll come home, shower, change clothes, and go to the shindig. I suppose I’ll see my husband and our daughter on Christmas morning, at some point, whenever they wake up and become remotely sociable. We really won’t have much time to do the snacking on good food, and movie watching, because my husband will have to leave again that night for another run.
Maybe next year it’ll work out differently.

All you can do is just go with the flow, and do what you can, no matter how much it pisses you off. Just do your best to stay festive, and don’t cause any ripples. I’ve found it’s best that way.

Have you considered seeing if her parents want to move closer to you? If you guys are their only family that makes any effort to be with them and they are both ill (cancer, stroke, etc.) it would probably be easiest on everyone to move them to an apartment down the street from you if they are okay with the idea. That would allow you to spend more time with them and cut down on the hassle of traveling to see them. You can’t change the siblings, you can only change yourselves.

I feel for you, I really do, but this is why I hate Christmas. If your rant was about siblings not helping with actual day-to-day care of a parent then I would be on board. Isn’t the holiday supposed to be fun or is it some sort atonement day where we all have to feel guilty because we are human? At what point in our lives can we begin to enjoy Christmas or does it always have to be a grinding assault of shopping and traveling and then being shamed because someone else shopped and drove more. Christ, here it comes again, just like last year.

Well, I don’t really HATE Christmas but it would be nice if I could celebrate it the way I like without being guilted all the time.

Whether or not someone can ‘guilt’ you into doing anything, is entirely up to you, and you alone.

If you’re an adult, then the approval/validation you’re seeking, (and the only approval/validation you’re ever seeking), or worth receiving, is, of course, your own.

Christmas doesn’t have to be anything you don’t want it to be. Decide what you want, stick to it, embrace your choice, and enjoy the season. Life is too short to exert so much energy trying to please everyone else, (which is impossible!), at the cost of your own peace.

Can I ask about the other side? Are your colleagues at work getting more time off because they have families? Because that’s unfair.

pbbth, I very much doubt that the parents would be able to afford to move to London. The housing price difference is extreme. Of course, moving to Scotland might well be affordable…

Every year.

Thankfully I’m now self-employed (deadlines!) and my partner is the store manager during her busiest period, so doesn’t really have the option of not working, but the situation you describe has certainly happened to me in the past.

I genuinely also think they would hate it, too. All their friends are in Wales and they are, for want of a better description, decidedly Welsh (bordering on anti-English). Moving to London would, for them, be like moving to the other side of the world( /enemy territory). At this stage in their lives I think it would be way too much upheaval.

As regards giving due warning to the other siblings, my girlfriend told them both months ago that she wouldn’t be able to make it to Wales this year due to work commitments. They both ignored her. She spoke to her brother last night and said ‘Both you and your sister are being unfair, as I’m the only one of us who has to work. I’m giving you 12 months warning right now, that next year either you or your sister are going home for Christmas, not me. That’s 12 months to break the news to your wife’. (She said it nicer than I’ve written it). She got silence on the other end of the phone.

It’s the sad fall-out of coming from a small welsh town with few job opportunities and then pushing your children to become educated and successful - they leave to go to university and don’t come back! Thankfully, my brother and sister had no ambitions beyond breeding, as far as I can tell, so my parents are surrounded by their children, adult grandchildren and great grandchildren on every possible occasion, even if I live 150 miles away.

Let me tell you a story:

I had a house I rented when I was young. It was very cheap and the ower wanted someone in it for about a year. Next door lived a nice older man about 70. We got along great except he used to shovel his own snow. He would be turning blue, he would gasp and choke and his wife would yell at him not to do it.

Now there were lots of kids in the neighborhood and this guy could afford to pay one to do this. I told him this and I told him how he’d be helping the young kids by giving them spending money, but he refused.

I couldn’t stand to see him shoveling so I did it for him. But then I got mad, I was like I work and come home and shovel my drive and have to do his. So then one time I got mad and didn’t do it. Well there he was outside turning blue, gasping for air…yadda, yadda, yadda…

Then it occured to me, I was mad but he wasn’t taking advantage of me, he wasn’t asking for anything but I was mad that I felt obligated, though I wasn’t

Then I thought to myself, yeah I was mad, he COULD pay some kid to do it, but in the end if that old guy had died shoveling snow, I would’ve felt 100 times worse than I felt being mad AND shoveling his snow.

Do you see my point?

In the end, you are being cheated but how are you gonna feel when it’s all over and these people are dead? No one is saying you’re not justified in your feelings, no one is saying you shouldn’t feel like this and no one would fault you for not helping these old people.

But sometimes life doesn’t give you good and bad choices, sometimes you only get BAD choices and you only get to pick from the one that makes you feel least bad.

Ask yourself this, how would your feelings change if your friend had no siblings? If there was no one but you and your girlfriend to help the parents?

Then act on that. Make sure if you’re mad at the siblings the parents don’t suffer on account of it. In the end all that matters is that you did the right thing. And the “right” thing is not anything but what YOU feel it is.

Ask yourself, “could you live with this?” And if you can do it, if not then don’t do it.

And remember this, you’ll make many decisions in your life, some will be right and some will be wrong, but you will never be happy with the ones made out of anger and spite.

How much are her parents really getting out of having unhappy visitors at Christmas? They might be just as happy if you all didn’t knock yourselves out to visit at the holiday time and instead came up sometime when it’s easier and more pleasant for you.

If they’re pushing for visitors to come up at Christmas, I think it’s perfectly acceptable to tell them that it’s just too stressful, and that you’ll visit some other time. Waiting for her siblings to act and then going up unwillingly strikes me as passive-aggressive and unhealthy for her.

The only thing she can control is her own decision-making. She needs to decide on her own level of availability for her parents, be at peace with it, and stick to it. She can’t control her siblings. It’s not her job or even her right to tell her siblings where they need to be at Christmas, just like they have no right to force her to do anything.

Remember, too, that we’re outsiders to these relationships. We don’t know what, if anything, the siblings do for their parents during the rest of the year. We don’t know what kind of relationship the siblings had with their parents growing up – maybe they got out of there because they felt that the parents had treated them badly. Maybe the grandparents aren’t good to their kids. Even you might not necessarily know their whole stories.

Whatever the causes, there’s obviously a ton of hostility in the family. For her own peace of mind, your girlfriend might benefit from some counseling, to help her develop ways of dealing with her siblings that will cause her less distress.

You can’t “make” her siblings do anything. Neither can your girlfriend, for that matter. The details are irrelevant to that fact.

Well, we don’t tramp through the house like grumpy teenagers! We’re there to give them a good, happy Christmas, and we will. And they don’t push for visitors, they’re too nice for that, we just don’t feel it’s kind to leave them high and dry when they struggle to even cook a Christmas dinner for themselves and all their friends have their families around at Christmas. It’s called being nice. Calling it ‘passive-aggressive’ is really trying to make us out to be the bad guys which i think is daft.

You’re right, none of y=us can control what other people do, but it doesn’t mean we have to be happy about it. Heck, the pit would dry up if we couldn’t complain about the actions of others.

I know a lot about their relationships and there really isn’t any great mystery to it. They are busy, and self-involved, live a long way away and have obstructive partners.

There’s no ‘ton of hostility’ or need for counselling. Sheesh. We’d just like some consideration over the Christmas period. She ain’t losing sleep over it, she’s just healthily pissed off.

I don’t see the decision here made out of anger and spite???