NEED TO KNOW
- A woman is no longer excited for a family vacation after finding out her son wants to bring his “older” partner and the partner’s nine-year-old child
- The woman says her son, 23, has been dating his girlfriend for about a year and claims she is “very controlling”
- The mom shared her story on a popular community forum to get advice about how she should handle the awkward situation
A mom says she is no longer excited for a family vacation after finding out that her son wants to bring his “older” partner and the partner’s child.
The woman detailed her experience on the “Am I Being Unreasonable?” forum on the U.K.-based community site Mumsnet.com, a place where women can go to seek input and advice from other women.
In her post, the woman shares that she and her husband have three children — two teens and a 23-year-old son — and that they are currently planning a vacation for next Easter in a cosmopolitan city.
She says that she was “really looking forward to” the trip — until she found out that her 23-year-old son wants to bring his partner of about a year along with her nine-year-old child.
The original poster (OP) goes on to explain that her son’s partner is “very controlling.” She also says that while the partner’s child is a “sweet kid,” they are also non-verbal and have a number of behavioral issues that are “generally very tiring.”
“We’ve only spent a day with [the child] before, and we were all shattered afterwards,” she says.
The OP says that while her son doesn’t seem to think that bringing his partner and the child on their family vacation is a “big ask,” the rest of the family is not especially thrilled with the prospect, noting that it will “change the whole holiday.”
“AIBU [am I being unreasonable]?” the OP asks at the end of her post.
Opinions were mixed over whether or not the OP’s feelings are valid. One person said they thought excluding a grown child’s significant other — especially when the couple will have been dating for nearly two years — is the wrong move.
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“It’d be pretty s—– to exclude a partner of nearly two years,” they said, adding, “[And] with a child with [special needs], babysitting options are very limited, so by excluding her child you would be excluding her.”
“I would tend to agree that if someone’s been with your [son] for two years (by that point) that a ‘family’ holiday includes them,” said someone else. “You’re talking almost a year from now. If you’d include a nine-year-old without additional needs after two years in your family then not including them [instead of] adapting to fit around them, is a bit of a d— move tbh [to be honest].”
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Other people, however, said they thought the OP’s feelings were completely valid, and noted that bringing a child on a vacation that is otherwise geared for teens and adults, is not ideal, whether the child has special needs or not.
“I think it’s reasonable to say that everyone’s expectations of this particular holiday are grown-up things, but you can look at going away all together in the future,” one person suggested, adding, “And then evaluate if you want to at that point if they are still together.”
Another person said, “You could be completely honest with your [son] and tell him that you think it will change the whole nature of the holiday, that the nine-year-old is going to be bored doing the things that everyone else wants to do and that you don’t really want to do anything that would appeal to a nine-year-old.”
They added, “Depending on his response, it might be a perfect opportunity to ask him whether he’s worried about how [his partner is] going to react to being told ‘no’ and if he wants to talk to you about it.”
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