In any family, it’s incredibly common for kids to feel like they are being treated differently from their siblings.

Unfair distribution of chores, younger siblings being allowed to do things older siblings were forbidden from, the list goes on and on!

And when one of your children is adopted, these feelings are even more common, with the popular conception usually being that the adopted child feels left out of the family in some way.

But very rarely do you see a dynamic where the parents’ biological child feels like their adopted children get more attention than they do!

But unfortuantely, that’s exactly what happened to this user, who said that in their effort to make her adopted siblings feel special, her parents had forgotten to show the same affection to her.

Would she be within her rights to protest family Christmas, knowing all too well that her siblings’ gifts will be much more thoughtful than her’s? Decide for yourself!

WIBTA if I (14) refused to attend family Christmas unless my parents did something for me and not for my adopted siblings?

We have Christmas May 12th (family tradition, it’s a whole thing.)

I’m planning to not attend unless my parents say they’ll pay attention to just me for something – a gift, a dinner, anything.

My parents really like things happening exactly how they imagined them. If I’m not there, they’ll be ticked off.

Normally this would be a problem, but OP said ticked off was exactly what they were going for!

That’s what I’m going for, I guess, because there’s nothing else I can reasonably use except whining to get them to listen to me.

I’m not going to threaten to not fix the shed or anything just because of this. Every single year, my siblings get very personal, loving gifts that took time and effort and affection.

I’ve pleaded for years for them to get me anything similar.

Not even anything on the scale they give my siblings, just like a $10 bracelet off Etsy with our last initial or something.

And this double standard didn’t just apply to gifts…

Every time I do something, our parents are very careful to praise my siblings along with me.

They’re very devoted to the idea of making sure Autumn (15) and Myrrh (12) never feel insecure in our family, which is sweet, but they’re not worried at all that I might be.

Every reward I get, they get too. It doesn’t work in reverse. My birthday is a celebration of all of us.

OP said she coudln’t even share a good grade she got on her sister’s birthday!

Their birthdays are just about them to the point I was (politely) told not to tell anyone I got a hundred on my Greek exam because the full focus should be on Autumn.

Neither of these are really bad options, it’s just a pretty sharp double standard and it sucks.

But OP also wanted to make sure her siblings’ Christmas wasn’t ruined because of her protest.

The other thing is, only one of my siblings is actually legally adopted. Myrrh is still in foster care.

It’s incredibly unlikely her parents will ever get her returned. Her only known parent is in jail until 2027, and she has explicitly said she doesn’t want to go back.

But there’s always a chance, and there’s definitely a chance she could get moved to another home. She shouldn’t suffer just because our parents are heavy-handed and I’m immature.

I think I could be the AH because I want to intentionally upset my parents and risk ruining Christmas.

Specifically one of a possibly-limited number of childhood family Christmases for Myrrh in a bid for attention.

I know OP said she didn’t want to ruin Christmas by being immature, but she sounds more mature than most adults I’ve come across.

Constantly getting passed over by your parents for your siblings, and your main concern is making sure not to hurt their feelings? What an amazing attitude!

Reddit said OP was well within her rights to miss christmas, and that her parents needed to see how they were treating their daughter.

Others thought that she wasn’t wrong, but should see if she could find another way to tell her parents without “ruining” a holiday.

But many were quick to respond that the problem wasn’t the way OP was feeling, it was the way she was being treated!

Finally, this user came up with a serious bombshell OP could drop on her parents to make them see the error in their ways.

Come on parents… do better!

If you liked that story, read this one about grandparents who set up a college fund for their grandkid because his parents won’t, but then his parents want to use the money to cover sibling’s medical expenses.