My husband has three sisters, and I will be the first to tell you I lucked out in the in laws department. They are very close and call or text each other a few times a day, his mom included. I love them dearly, but learned a long time ago, if I didn’t want them all to know something then tell none of them. My husband is close to them, but doesn’t need the constant interaction.
Today, we were all at my mother-in-law’s and she says to my daughter, who is 15, guess what I got for Christmas? You are included. The sisters decided since mom loves marching bands to get tickets for mom and the nieces (22, 16,15) to go see a show at a local theater/playhouse. Grandmom told my daughter, we’re going to go to dinner ahead of time and you should probably sleep over that night.
Here’s the dilemma, my daughter is a good kid and doesn’t want to hurt grandmom’s feelings but she doesn’t want to go. This isn’t the first time the sisters have done something like this, just assumed it was ok without asking me or my husband or my daughter is this something you want to be involved in? I can guarantee, the other cousins knew in advance. It’s thoughtful of them to include her, but a heads up please. Why wasn’t she given the opportunity to say no thanks. There also seems to be an unspoken agreement between the sisters that because my daughter and the one cousin are so close in age they should be good friends, too. My daughter likes her cousin, they hang out when the family is together, but my daughter isn’t friends with her and as she says, we are very different.
Anyway, we don’t want to be rude or hurt anyone’s feelings especially grandmom’s but what would you do? Honestly, we get the kindness of inclusion but we are all a bit pissed that we never get a heads up.
The way to encourage lead time, is to immediately, upon first hearing of it, beg off on the excuse of a previous commitment. Oft repeating the phrase, “If only you’d mentioned it earlier!”
That’s what I would have done, but it sounds like that opportunity may have already passed!
The OP is not invited, and though I’m sorry for your loss, not everyone has grandparents they want hang out w/ for good (or otherwise) reasons.
OP, I’d say, ‘I’m sorry but we can’t make it. Had we only known… Maybe next time if you let us know in advance?’ If they keep getting what they want doing what they like they will keep doing it the exact same way. Nip it in the bud if you don’t want your daughter to be saddled w/ this until she gets mad and alienates someone.
If the youngster were any older than 15, I’d agree with this totally. Even for a 15 year old, I largely agree. Marching band performance? Pretty darn harmless. Putting up with a couple hours of boredom to make the family happy? Okay…
But 15 is a bit young to have to fake enjoying an experience. Probably too young to fake it convincingly.
You and I – easy answer. Sure! Go, and find the fun in it one way or another. But a young teen? That’s harder to say.
Time for the close-knit folks to learn the reality: that other families don’t work that way and such families consider it somewhere between overbearing and smothering when others do the “family comes first, last, and always” thing.
In this case the answer is “Sorry; can’t do it without a lot more notice than we got.” Repeat as necessary until they’re warning you far enough in advance to be able to say “No, not interested” *before *the tickets are bought and the minds made up.
I would suck it up this time, but next time I would follow elbows advice and claim that she had a prior commitment. But you have to be careful with this. I have two girls, 14 and 11, and if they had their way they would NEVER do anything with our extended family. Not because they don’t like them, just because they would rather be with their friends, or playing minecraft, or watching youtube videos. Family is important and it is necessary to suck it up and put on a smile and go to family events occasionally no matter how boring they are.
In the short term you can either lie to grandma and get your daughter out of it or tell your daughter it is just a task that needs doing; attend for grandma’s sake and do the job of being good company. Maybe pay her to go if necessary.
In the longer term perhaps you could reflect on the fact that your daughter didn’t come up with my second alternative because she has parents that choose to see a situation like this not as some random cheerful family interaction but as a cause for personal angst. You pointed out the positive aspects of the invitation yourself but are choosing to fixate on how hard done by you are in the circumstances. You don’t have to.
I agree it would have been nice for your daughter to have been asked if she’d like to come.
But for me to know how to advise, I need more information.
Does your daughter get along with her grandmother? Does she enjoy her company? Does she spend a lot of time with her grandmother? Does her grandmother regularly guilt-trip her into doing things she’d rather not do?
Because if she gets along with her grandmother yet doesn’t spend a lot of time with her, then this may be a good opportunity for them to bond over an experience. If the grandmother has never asked her to do anything before, well, I can think of worse favors.
Is she totally against the marching band thing for concrete, well-articulated reasosn? Or is it just something that doesn’t excite her much, as is often the case with a teenager?
Because if it’s the latter, then perhaps this is a chance for her to change her mind about something and be pleasantly surprised.
I guess I don’t see this as a matter worth disrupting family dynamics over, assuming we aren’t talking about family members from hell. Yes, your sister-in-laws overstepped and were thoughtless for assuming that everyone loves marching bands. But I’m guessing they were thinking that the marching band is kinda secondary to spending time with the grandmother and cousins.
This is a situation where you can stand on your feelings and be technically “right”, while ruffling feathers with your husband’s (and daughter’s) peeps. Or you can help your daughter realize that it is okay to put up with an awkward situation when doing so benefits someone who didn’t have anything to do with the gaff. Assuming the grandmother is a normal grandmother, I’m sure she has done stuff on behalf of her grandchildren that she didn’t want to do. If you think your daughter is mature enough to put aside her feelings and be a good sport, then I’d let her make the decision about what to do.
Sounds like a special treat that they will all soon be aging out of, so the solution is don’t have any more kids and it will be over in a few years.
I’m joking but it’s probably true.
I could tell some stories about regularly having to put aside entire holiday meals for the next day because of someones last minute “surprises” but I don’t want to waste too much time writing about jerk-asses. Although, I’m still left to wonder if they were so impossibly rude to think that was appropriate behavior, or that I made no plans myself for a major holiday or if they simply have zero respect for me. I guess they could have thought it was a good way to screw me over but I don’t see any reason to credit them with the ability to make a plan.
I would think about how I lost the last grandparent I had a relationship with before I turned 19, and advise my child to spend the night with grandma to make her happy. As long as there were no existing plans for that night and is no real friction between the kid and the grandparent, there should be no real hardship to spend one night doing what the elder likes. When grandma is gone, I’m pretty certain she’d prefer to look back and think about how she sucked it up to make her happy rather than feel guilty she skipped it just because she didn’t want to sacrifice a night.
I think this is key. What did you or your husband say to the sisters on these previous occasions? Did you just go along with it, or did you tell them that they really should have talked to you first?
If this is something that happens once a year (plans without prior notice) and she more or less gets along with her grandmom and cousins, she should suck it up and go. If it is something that happens once a week, then you may want to let them know that she needs more advance notice for this type of activity.
No, it’s probably not how she wants to spend that time, but it’s a few hours out of her life with family.
Yes, I agree and is the kick in the ass I wonder if I needed here, except the blessed event isn’t until March, I think I forgot to mention that. That makes it more challenging to pull the " we need more notice card."
I have told her in the past, showing up is half the game. She’s not going to get paid to do it and you don’t know my daughter or me at all so it’s not as though we are turning the situation or teaching her to view it as some form of angst.
Because this is gonna sound crazy, but you just don’t see it coming. Always takes me by surprise and it’s never done to be nasty. That’s partly what makes it difficult. I’m sure they have good intentions.
Lots of great advice dopers, thanks. I am picking up on some would’ve, could’ve, should’ves. My parents are both deceased and I don’t know, I think if you love and do your part, you can’t get all caught up in that. You need to do what you can do. It may be more or less than someone else. She’s 15, she’s been through 2 grandparents dying and I’m thinking she needs to make this decision. I don’t know because the aunts are very persuasive .
I find “persuasive” is usually a euphemism for “Won’t take ‘no’ for an answer.” That’s not being persuasive; that’s being a pushy overbearing jerk.
Given that you’ve now told us this is three months in the future, the answer can still be “no.” But that needs to be communicated now, not a day before the event.
Tell them in plain English that it’s nice to be invited to stuff but impolite to be ordered to stuff. We don’t participate in people being impolite. The obvious challenge is they don’t see their overbearing controlling behavior as impolite. At which point you need to remind them that impolite is in the eye of the beholder and as far as you and your daughter think, they’re being impolite and you’re not going to further encourage the behavior.
If you folks have been spineless doormats for the last 15 years this will seem like quite a change to them. Perhaps you can run off a long litany of all the times they pressured you into stuff you didn’t want to do and ultimately had a lousy time doing.
And if in retrospect you can’t actually come up with such a list, then perhaps your/your daughter’s reaction to this is overblown drama queenism or just bored teenager-ism at work rather than a principled objection.
You’re the only people close enough to the situation to tell the difference. We sure can’t.
Because this is gonna sound crazy, but you just don’t see it coming. Always takes me by surprise and it’s never done to be nasty. That’s partly what makes it difficult. I’m sure they have good intentions.
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