agonyaunt | (no subject)

DEAR HARRIETTE: My wealthy sister is questioning my parenting style, leaving me frustrated. Just a year older than me, she married into money. While we had enough growing up, we wouldn't have considered ourselves rich.

During my sister's birthday, my daughter and husband met my extremely spoiled niece and nephew. I hate to judge children, but there's no other way to describe these kids. Yesterday we all went shopping. My sister kept offering to buy my daughter things, but I repeatedly refused. She made annoying remarks, insisting it didn't matter because she could afford it and it's necessary to give children everything they want. However, my priority is teaching my daughter financial responsibility, moderation and patience.

This situation has caused tension between my sister and me. I tried talking to her about it, but it seems my points are not getting across. I'm not sure what the next approach should be. -- Parenting Style

DEAR PARENTING STYLE: You can continue to teach your daughter what you value without disparaging your sister. It is obvious to you and your daughter that your sister and her family live differently than you do. I think you can allow your sister to give your daughter an extravagant gift without fear of your daughter becoming like your niece. Allowing your sister to do what she values for your daughter gives her a bit of comfort because it says you are letting her shower your daughter with her love. Right now, your sister feels like you are rejecting her.

Sit with your sister and make an agreement. She can give your daughter one special gift. For yourself, you have to accept your sister for who she is and stop judging her or her family as you continue to teach your daughter how you expect her to conduct herself in life.

Link

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I have said this before and I will say it again: when you discuss your choices with other people you only send the message that your choices are up for discussion. And if they're not, they're not. So don't do it.

LW's sister is not interested in having an in-depth conversation on their divergent parenting philosophies. She just wants to buy lots of things for her niece. LW's problem is not that Sister doesn't understand her beliefs or that she doesn't agree with them, LW's problem is that Sister is arguing about this in a disrespectful way. So there's two responses.

The first which springs to mind is "Wtf are you talking about? Buy them everything you want? Well, that's the dumbest thing I ever heard."

That's unlikely to help, so LW should probably go with "I don't want to argue about this anymore. If you won't drop the subject then I guess we'll have to leave. It's been great seeing you, I'll call you next week. Love ya!"

I wish we knew how old the daughter is. If she's too young to understand money, such that extravagant gifts will be setting her and LW up for months of "yes, I know your cousins can buy that/do that but we can't," then the discussion about gifts needed to happen before the shopping trip--not where the daughter was there to hear her mother refusing the gifts.

And if she's old enough to understand that her aunt's family is richer than hers and can afford different things, then I don't see how accepting the aunt's gifts will spoil her or undermine LW's attempts to teach financial literacy and prudence.

As it is--whatever the girl's age, it seems like all the LW is teaching her is that her mother has a grudge against her aunt and is willing to take it out on her.

First: CHILDREN ARE NOT FRUIT; THEY DO NOT SPOIL.

Second: Even if these children have been overindulged or not given sufficient boundaries (which we cannot make any guesses about, because LW has provided zero actual evidence beyond name-calling) it's not their fault. Please do not judge the CHILDREN for the parents' theoretical failings. (It's like those mean-spirited memes about how you can stymie [the younger generation being mocked] by leaving them a note in cursive, a rotary phone, and a stick shift; if the younger generation doesn't know those things, it's because older people have never bothered to teach them.)

Third: Based on the very limited description of the situation, it sounds like your sister rarely gets to see or spend time with her niece. Let the woman indulge her a little bit; you can focus on teaching her "moderation and patience" tomorrow. Everything in moderation, including moderation. You're certainly capable of communicating an age-appropriate level of "we sure had fun shopping with Aunt Moneybags! it's nice to splurge occasionally, but of course in our family we think it's important not to do that all the time." Even toddlers can understand the idea of different families having different rules.

I feel like there's a certain level of jealousy about sister's access to wealth that LW is masking behind fiscal responsibility as some kind of moral superiority.

It looks like the questioning of parenting style goes both ways.