Ask Amy: She is demanding that I change the ‘unfair’ Christmas schedule

[lemonsharks]

My two oldest girls stopped speaking to each other shortly after my husband died eight years ago. There was no big falling-out — just a slow simmering of resentments.

My youngest daughter and I spent years imploring them to work things out, to no avail. It’s an upsetting situation, but, ultimately, we realized that this is not something that we can fix.

After the older girls stopped speaking, my oldest daughter declined to come to any family event that her sister was attending. Consequently, she has not shared a Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner with all of us in years.

I have continued hosting these events as usual, stressing that everyone is invited. Nonetheless, my oldest has opted to visit me on Christmas morning rather than share a meal with her sister, and she spends Thanksgiving with me only on the rare year when my middle daughter is not in town.

Here is my problem: Two weeks ago, my oldest daughter told me that she doesn’t think it’s fair that her sister gets Christmas dinner, and she only sees me in the morning. She is insisting that I swap them this year.

This puts me in a terrible position. I don’t know how I’m supposed to tell my middle daughter and my grandchildren that they are disinvited for the latter part of Christmas and need to be out of the house by noon.

My youngest daughter tells me that this is an unreasonable request, that this is not my problem, and I should continue to stress that I will host as I have always done with everyone included.

Still, I feel like whatever I do, I’m the bad guy.

How should I handle this?

Frustrated
___

Dear Frustrated: You should not give in to your oldest daughter’s demand. If you do give in, then next year she might decide that she wants to “have you all to herself” on Christmas Day.

You don’t say specifically, but your middle daughter does not seem to be placing these specific demands upon you. If her older sister showed up for a holiday meal, I assume that she and the kids would find a way to handle it.

You are not the “bad guy.” You are the mom, and you should do the mom thing: “I don’t play favorites. I’m hosting Christmas dinner, as usual, and — as usual — I would love for you to come!”

You might add that a great Christmas gift for you would be for these two sisters to reconcile, at least to the point where they can be peacefully and respectfully in each other’s presence during holiday meals.

Comments

[minoanmiss]

You might add that a great Christmas gift for you would be for these two sisters to reconcile, at least to the point where they can be peacefully and respectfully in each other’s presence during holiday meals.

I was with Amy till this part, because we don't know why the sisters are estranged. I have known and heard of too many families where someone did something unconscionable and everyone else stuck by that person, not their victim(s). Even if the estrangement doesn't involve something on the level of, say, one sister facilitating her husband's molestation of her sister's children, I don't think emotional blackmail works that well to reconcile people.

[lemonsharks]

*screams in 'by choosing to change nothing you have taken the side of your middle daughter'*


*Screams in 'missing missing reasons'

[legionseagle]

My first thought too. Why are these people estranged and why does the mother assume it's the oldest daughter's job to fix it?

[cereta]

There is a reason why, as heartbroken as I am that I will no longer get to see my mother with an easy weekend drive (and may in fact never see her in person again after a quick visit in a couple of weeks), I'm not so heartbroken that I won't have to negotiate holiday visits around the fact that I never intend to speak to two of my siblings unless it directly involves our mother's care again.

The only thing I will say is that if one or more members of a family are determined not to be in the same room with each other, then it's their job to figure that our. Before it was decided that my mother was moving to SC, our plan was to visit, say, halfway between Thanksgiving and Christmas. It would be nice if the daughters came to that solution, but the LW may have to institute it, alternating years.

[librarygeek]

Well, I'm the eldest of 3, and I am so glad that no matter how much we fought as kids, as our mom came down with stomach cancer and died within 2 years, that we 3 sibs just closed ranks in dealing with our father.

They wouldn't let me drive from Pennsylvania to NC just 3 months after my own open heart surgery, to check on our dad after a bad fall, and new wife wasn't telling us much about his condition. We road tripped it all three in brother's minivan, and basically treated it as fun for us, divert new wife as much as possible.

That was 2017, and we're mostly surprised as an uncontrolled insulin dependent diabetic, he's still alive.

[conuly]

The one thing I know LW's right about - at least, if she means it and isn't just saying it - is that fixing this relationship is NOT HER JOB.

But she needs to sit down, consider what she knows about the two of them, and come up with some better solution that actually acknowledges that there is a problem.

[ysobel]

Fixing the intrasister relationship isn't LW's job, but fixing her own relationships with her daughters is.

For one thing, it may not be a balanced estrangement. Maybe Middle Daughter did/said something that Oldest Daughter can't forgive, yet MD thinks she did nothing wrong and is only mad at OD for accusing her. Maybe MD is fine with being in the same room as OD (possibly with Tangible Icing Out or Passive-Aggressive Snatk) but OD isn't.

For another, maintaining status quo favors MD at this point. OD doesn't have the option of peaceful Christmas with mom. She can either do Christmas with everyone including MD, which is stressful at best and possibly miserable, or Christmas alone.

It is a little disingenuous of LW to say "but everyone is ~invited~" ... you can invite me to a room full of spiders but I'm not going, and if I point out I want to hang out in a spider-free place, pointing out that I'm welcome to come t spiderhouse doesn't help.

LW is kind of in an inverse divorce, and she's passively chosen one parent over the other. Why *can't* she occasionally celebrate on-the-day with OD and not MD?

There are too many missing reasons here.

[lemonsharks]

⬆️ ALL OF THIS

[shirou]

I generally think that if two people cannot see one another, it is on them to figure that out without dragging in everyone around them.

This request is particularly unreasonable because LW's daughters haven't fully involved LW in the situation. Why can they not tolerate one another for even an hour? Why does "you two work it out among yourselves" result in the middle daughter coming to dinner? We don't know the answer to these questions, and it sounds like LW does not either. On what basis could LW even make a decision?

It's unfair to ask LW to start intervening without fully informing LW of what's going on.

[cereta]

The only thing I am going to say is that I have seen both personally and with friends that parents can be told the reasons with varying degrees of subtlety and have either just not listened or severely reduced the degree to which either party should be "letting" that behavior "get to them."