We haven’t gotten my son out for a family vacation since he was fourteen - and he made that one miserable. Part of it is school scheduling, part of it is that spending time with your parents is just about the worst. This year we are going to Disney with his sister and offered to let him bring a friend, pay for the friend, and they didn’t even have to spend time with us. He still wants to hang out at home.
And forget visiting with Grandparents. My in-laws were over yesterday and we saw him for half an hour. Which I can’t blame him for - I remember being that age sitting around listening to grown ups talk about boring things and answering stupid grown up questions like “how is school.”
(Now, he’ll spend time with my parents, possibly because they made a huge effort when he was little to spend time with him and take interest in his activities. If temperament or proximity make that difficult, don’t be surprised when a teen doesn’t play that game).
Here is the issue we’ve run into with our seventeen year old. We have to meet him halfway on things, because in a year he will be able to move out and choose how much time he spends here. Now, I think I’ll have him home for another year or two while he gets through a year of trade school and starts his career, but if we make life too difficult for him here, his brain is still immature enough to be stupid - move out without enough money and get into trouble. Plus we want him to feel like he has agency.
I just think it’s ironic that my parents MADE me go with them on this goddamned mission trip to, ha, South Dakota of all places, as our “last trip” before I went to college when I was 17. I HAAAAAAAATED it. Hated hated hated hated hated hated hated hated it. Broke down in sobbing tears in a restaurant when they wouldn’t let me out of going. Resented the shit out of it. HAAAAAATED.
Looking back there are some great memories of that trip, but even now I still kinda resent that they dragged me. Especially because I’d already come out as agnostic.
Well, in my case my son is, like me and my wife, an atheist; his mother and his maternal grandparents are theists–specifically, Catholics, although my ex is sort of a New Agey goddess-y woo-woo corruption of same. (To be fair, my current in-laws are devoutly religious Lutherans of the sort who go to Kirk Cameron movies, but they just avoid talking about religion when we are around; and my mother, whom we will also be visiting, is atheist or at least agnostic.)
Here’s what you’re missing. I didn’t articulate the “motive” you are looking for, because there was never any doubt in my mind that we were taking him on the trip we planned. I did not and do not question that. As I also said, I didn’t even expect anyone else to question it. So it would not have occurred to me to need to articulate a “motive” for keeping our plans. But I absolutely endorse what **Gary **said:
So what if it causes some temporary resentment? Sometimes kids don’t like what parents do. That’s life. At some point, the OP’s mom will be gone and the kid will regret the decision to not have gone to see her. It doesn’t sound like he sees her very much as it is.
When I was in high school my parents made me go on a trip to London and Paris with them and leave my first serious boyfriend behind for almost two whole weeks. The nerve of them!! I was terrible at first but then I wised up and realized what a great time I was having. I didn’t have the choice not to go but if I did and hadn’t gone I’ve no doubt I’d regret it now.
Hopefully, the grandparents can re-schedule and it will all work out, but seeing the OP’s mom is pretty important.
Why so serious? Because most of the nimrods in here are giving him shitty parenting advice.
He’s a 16-year-old child. He doesn’t get to make family vacation decisions whether he likes it or not. Until he’s paying the mortgage, he does what he’s told. He doesn’t get to pick just because his mother was an inconsiderate bitch and double booked him without consultation with the father on a week she bloody well knew was off the table! You don’t get to benefit from someone else’s intentional manipulation.
Coming down on the father for venting about a cruel trick his ex pulled on him and their son is just fucking ridiculous, but lecturing him to let his child pick between the two of them is not only irresponsible, it’s rude, presumptuous and wrong.
Somehow all you shelf-righteous pricks decided to give the manipulative bitch of a mother a pass, just so you could show off how evolved you think you are. Had the mother started a post about how pissed she is her ex is insisting on taking their son on a trip he’d planned three month ago, even though she planned one she thinks would be more exciting that same week three months later, the same holier-than-thou advice-givers would be telling her to suck it up and reschedule because she fucked up the dates.
How in the fuck do you know it would cause resentment?
Just because the kids was excited about getting to go to New York with his maternal grandparents, doesn’t mean he isn’t equally or more excited about getting to go to Fargo and Canada to see his favorite movie locale and his paternal grandparent.
You don’t know this kid; his father does. And his father planned a trip based on his son’s current interests.
Whether they appeal to you or not is utterly irrelevant.
Thanks, Shayna. I will admit though that our trip is not as good as NYC. However, it was first in line, and it’s not getting Bigfooted. (Word has come back that his grandparents are going without him, as they say they can’t change their schedule.)
I can also say that although my ex is very capable of being petty and vindictive, it is also possible she genuinely got mixed up, as she tends to be very scatterbrained. But to tell him without double checking strikes me as what lawyers call reckless disregard, so it is nearly as bad in this best case.
First off, you sound like you have some real anger issues. Life in your home must be a real hoot.
But anyway, yeah, you pay the mortgage therefore you own your child. This sort of self entitlement for bringing up a kid is just dandy. Makes for quite the pleasant environment for a child to grow up in I’ll bet.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with SlackerInc insisting that his son go on vacation with him. I don’t really think this is the sort of issue for which there is one clearly correct answer- that is, reasonable people can disagree about whether to give the kid a choice or not
But giving him the choice would absolutely not be giving the kid the message that "it's ok to blow off commitments you've made to other people". Because the kid (so far as I can tell) didn't make any commitments to other people. He didn't have any choice in the matter- this is the only week **SlackerInc's** wife has off and in truth, I don't think **SlackerInc** would be inclined to let him go with the grandparents even if the kid himself had committed to that trip six months ago before he or his mother knew about the family vacation. **Which is fine** - but let's not pretend any of this is about a lesson in keeping "commitments you've made". It's about **SlackerInc's** desire to vacation with all his kids - making it a lesson about "keeping commitments" makes it seem as though **SlackerInc** is wrong to want that and he's not.
SlackerInc, I think you really need to do 3 things:
Confront your ex about the fact that you told her many times which week it was. You really, really need to call her out on this. Preferably with other family members who can attest to the fact that you had told her many times.
Fully explain to your teenaged son the situation and how your ex had deliberately rigged and manipulated the vacation timing.
Give your teenaged son the free choice of vacationing in New York City, or the original family vacation.
The OP has stated that the teenaged son will be going to Fargo, no matter what he wants. No problem there.
Alas, the OP will probably agree with the other two items. The poor kid & everybody else in the neighborhood (as well as all of us) will continue hearing about what an “inconsiderate asshat” his mother is…
