When siblings grow up and get married, there are bound to be lots of children running around at big family events.
In today’s story, one of the siblings raised all of her younger siblings and now doesn’t like being around children, including her nieces and nephews.
That makes it complicated when planning family gatherings.
Let’s see how the story unfolds…
AITA for excluding my older sister for having parentification trauma?
My (35F) younger siblings (34F, 31M, 31F, 30M) were practically raised by our oldest sister (40F).
Neither of our parents were there for us, so she had to act like a mother to us despite being a child herself. She never had time for studying, socialising, or hobbies, and both her grades and her mental health were greatly affected.
She started working at age 13 and dropped out of school at 16 to work full time to support us.
Due to her childhood, she can’t handle being around children at all.
They trigger her trauma, and she starts crying, panicking, and having anxiety attacks.
We’ve all tried to be supportive of her.
It’s hard to see her sister without her sister being around kids.
The thing is, between the five of us, we have 16 children aged between 7 months and 12 years.
We all live in the same town, and we try to spend time with our sister, but we have to look after our kids too.
Anytime we invite her to family gatherings, she refuses to come if our kids are around.
The only solution seemed to be not inviting the older sister to events.
The thing is, we can’t just leave our kids every time she wants to hang out and we can’t ban our own children from family events.
She would complain every time we refused to have a child free event and say we need to include her more.
Eventually, we stopped inviting her to events.
Now her sister is mad that she’s excluded.
My sister was furious with us for excluding her. She called us ungrateful for sacrificing her childhood to raise us.
She accused us of abandoning her just like our parents did, and said it wasn’t fair for her to be ostracised from such a close knit family after all that she’d down for us.
Of course I’m grateful for what she did, but I can’t ignore my own kids.
AITA?
It sounds like the older sister needs therapy. She can’t have it both ways. If she goes to the events she is going to be around children. She can either see all of her family (including children) or not see any of her family.
Let’s see how Reddit reacted…
This reader suggests a compromise.
Another reader thinks the siblings should make time for the sister.
Here’s another vote for spending time with the sister without children around.
Here’s a suggestion about how to handle babysitting…
This reader points out that it’s okay not to invite the sister to events with kids.
I say invite her to every family event and let her decide if she wants to go, but make sure a few are kid-free events.
If you thought that was an interesting story, check this one out about a man who created a points system for his inheritance, and a family friend ends up getting almost all of it.