Her Sister Offered To Take Her Oldest Child To Disney World As A Christmas Present, But She Thinks It Would Be Unfair To Her Two Other Kids
This woman has three children who have big age differences between them (about 6 to 7 years apart).
Her oldest child is 14-years-old. During the summer, the family goes on trips for the day or over the weekend.
Plus, they are members of zoos and museums in their area, so she does try to take her children to do a lot of fun activities.
Aside from this, she hasn’t been able to do a bigger trip further away, like to Disney World, due to the high cost.
Her younger sister and her sister’s partner are child-free. Several years ago, her sister’s in-laws moved to Florida, so her sister and her partner travel to visit them a lot.
While in Florida, her sister and her partner usually go to Disney.
“My sister asked me recently about taking my oldest kid to Disney as a Christmas present from her,” she said.
“I think it is a really cool and exciting opportunity, but I also feel it is unfair to the two other kids. I also said I would rather save up and take all of them together someday but that I would think about it.”
While growing up, she and her sister deal with similar age differences between themselves and their other sibling. She was the oldest, her sister was the middle child, and their third sibling was the youngest.
Photo 164329808 © Golyak – Dreamstime.com – illustrative purposes only, not the actual person
Unfortunately, she didn’t have a healthy relationship with her mother, and there was more tension after her mother took her two siblings to Disney without her.
As a child, her mother favored her siblings, and this still happens to this day, but she’s less emotionally affected by it now that she’s an adult.
Now that she’s a parent, she’s noticed that her family favors her oldest child.
She’s not sure if she’s reading too much into it because of what she went through when she was a child, but her partner also picked up on it, and they both aren’t thrilled about the favoritism.
Even though she’s brought it up to her mother and her sister, they haven’t changed their behavior.
She doesn’t want her other children to be excluded, but she doesn’t want her sister to feel like she has to take all three of her children to Disney.
Ideally, she would love to be able to make the trip with her children, but she pointed out that due to the current economic situation, she doesn’t foresee this trip happening anytime in the near future.
She’s aware of how pricey this trip would be, and it would also be incredibly tiring to travel with three children on a vacation like this.
To clarify, she added that she wouldn’t feel comfortable with her sister favoring any of her children.
None of her children are aware of her sister offering her oldest child this Disney trip, and she’s considering rejecting her sister’s offer.
“I guess it’s worth asking if she plans to take the other kids (one at a time) as they get older, but I think it is a bit rude to ask/unfair to expect a commitment on that because who knows what her life/finances will be in the future?” she explained.
She knows that she could still take a trip with her children to Disney, Universal, or both, even after her oldest child is over 18. Adults still love Disney, and her oldest could go off and do activities on their own while she was with the younger children.
In her view, it wouldn’t make sense to take a toddler to Disney, and she pointed out that her 14-year-old child wouldn’t be able to walk around unsupervised.
Her oldest child doesn’t have the maturity and doesn’t pay close enough attention to be trusted to be alone.
Her oldest child was the first grandchild on her side of the family, and her sister has older nephews on her partner’s side of the family.
She and her previous partner had her oldest child together, and they broke up after the birth.
For several years, she was a single mother, and she started dating her now-husband when her oldest child was 3 years old.
Her husband’s family welcomed her child into their lives with open arms, and her child was always invited to family get-togethers.
Over the years, her husband was a wonderful father figure to her child. He taught her child to ride a bike and fish, went to activities at their school, and spent quality bonding time with her child.
On a regular basis, her oldest child still talks on the phone with their biological father once a week and occasionally visits him, as well as their grandparents on their biological father’s side of the family.
She added that all three of her children are her biological children, and she and her husband don’t refer to any of their children as half-brothers or half-sisters to one another because they want to intentionally raise them to feel like siblings, just like any other family.
“In terms of favoritism of the oldest, my sister makes a lot more effort for anything to do with my oldest than the other kids, and my 7-year-old has noticed on occasion, although I don’t go out of my way to point it out,” she shared.
From her experience, she would rather not expect anything from her family, so she was surprised by her sister’s offer to bring her oldest child to Disney.
What would you do if you were in her shoes?
You can read the original post on Reddit here.
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