Graduation Dilemma

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This isn’t just a high school graduation — it’s your baby’s transition into adulthood and a major life milestone before leaving home. That matters. You don’t want her to feel like her feelings come second to your husband’s son. People often talk about stepchildren being treated unfairly, but biological children often feel overlooked when parents focus so heavily on proving they treat stepchildren equally. Your stepson is already an adult who has experienced multiple graduations, while your daughter is still a teenager going through her first milestone. It also comes across as though he’s competing for attention from his own teenage sister’s mother, very odd.

To be clear, his number one priority is that his sister is there. They are really close.

He is being a selfish baby.

Is he willing to leave his graduation early to fly and watch sister graduate from high school?

I doubt it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You’re just favoring DD over stepson. I would try and do both. Grad school is a big deal, much more important than finishing high school.

Agreed. High school graduation is not an accomplishment unless there are extremely extenuating circumstances. Tell your daughter she may need to sacrifice some of her graduation festivities. Warn her now so she has time to process this. It's part of being there for family. She'll get her turn in the spotlight when she finishes college.

No.

Absolutely not.

High school graduation is a big deal.

Graduate school less so.

If anything, he should skip his graduation to fly to his sister's graduation.

He is being a selfish man baby playing I'm the favorite games.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:He’s making it abundantly clear this is important to him. You have to find a way to recognize his graduation if you want to maintain that relationship.

Everyone goes out Friday/Saturday, skip the main graduation and come home noon Sunday?

Everyone goes Friday/saturday, mom and daughter come home early and dad plays roulette to make the late flight?

Only dad goes, but you plan a massive celebration for him after the fact, like a vacation or a party or whatever he’d like?

You cannot tell him to suck it up and hope he’ll get over it. Maybe it’s dumb to care so much about grad school commencement (I skipped mine entirely!) but for whatever reason, he does care.

What is he, like 12?

Stepson is being a brat

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP again. I've brought up a lot of these compromises. I think if I communicate later that we want to celebrate him in any way we can, but the only hard line is DD and I have to be on a flight that's at 6pm or earlier (ie not last of the day and gives time for me to drive home in absolutely worst case scenario).

Unless something is different next year, no there is no separate PhD ceremony. I confirmed that.

For the folks asking about logistics, we live in a major metro area, the ceremony is in a major metro area; and DSS will be coming in from a third major metro area. All three places have nonstop flights on the order of 2 hours between them.

His phd graduation is a 2 hour flight from where he lives? That doesn't make sense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: OP-doesn't your dd need to be home the day before graduation? My kids all had rehearsal the day before, and needed to be there.

This

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP - draw a hard line on you and your DD not traveling to stepsons graduation. It just doesn’t work logistically and makes no sense. Most graduations these days are live streamed — plan to have a “watch party”. Your DH should try to do both only if he can live with the possibility of missing his daughter’s HS graduation.

This is good practice for your daughter to draw boundaries and not twist herself into a pretzel for a man who doesn’t actually care about her. If he did, he was be talking about skipping his graduation to be at hers.

We have a winner

[Anonymous]

Just tell them now that you and DD are not going. You can make up a Saturday event she has to attend if you want. He's not going to check her high school schedule or you could always say it's for a club, not listed online. It absolutely doesn't pay to keep his hopes up and belabor the conversation.

Sounds like your husband is a last minute planner so he won't let DD know until the last minute if he's coming to hers, that's fine.

I think you're banking on the schedules changing so that you can "prove" to DH that it's impossible but that's never going to happen. He's a fly by the seat of your pants type, so if the schedule tightens by 45 minutes or even two hours there is never going to be that moment where he says "yeah, that's not doable" until, maybe, the weekend before. So you just tell everyone you and DD aren't coming, at all, and set that expectation, and let DH and DS go back and forth about whether daddy loves him enough to come, or whatever.

Meanwhile you can send DS an invite to DD's graduation and, again, whatever.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Will the boy have his mom there? Would be pretty sad to have no family at the graduation. Dad can go and catch a late flight home as a compromise.

He’s nearly 30. He’s not a boy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP again. I've brought up a lot of these compromises. I think if I communicate later that we want to celebrate him in any way we can, but the only hard line is DD and I have to be on a flight that's at 6pm or earlier (ie not last of the day and gives time for me to drive home in absolutely worst case scenario).

Unless something is different next year, no there is no separate PhD ceremony. I confirmed that.

For the folks asking about logistics, we live in a major metro area, the ceremony is in a major metro area; and DSS will be coming in from a third major metro area. All three places have nonstop flights on the order of 2 hours between them.

His phd graduation is a 2 hour flight from where he lives? That doesn't make sense.

OP. I know I said PhD, but it's actually a different sort of doctorate that has an internship as the final year. He got matched to an internship in a different city. Thats also why his thesis is complete

[Anonymous]

To me, it sounds like your stepson is having some insecurity or issue here and hopefully he will open up and talk about it. 27 is too old to be weirdly pressuring your family to come to your graduation and definitely too old to not understand the logistics and complications with the sister graduating.

Does he feel like he doesn’t belong in the family? Feel liken y'all favor the sister?

[Anonymous]

Yep, something is WAY off with the stepson.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP - draw a hard line on you and your DD not traveling to stepsons graduation. It just doesn’t work logistically and makes no sense. Most graduations these days are live streamed — plan to have a “watch party”. Your DH should try to do both only if he can live with the possibility of missing his daughter’s HS graduation.

This is good practice for your daughter to draw boundaries and not twist herself into a pretzel for a man who doesn’t actually care about her. If he did, he was be talking about skipping his graduation to be at hers.

We have a winner

I hope OP hangs onto this thread and maybe shows to the dad/the brat.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP again. I've brought up a lot of these compromises. I think if I communicate later that we want to celebrate him in any way we can, but the only hard line is DD and I have to be on a flight that's at 6pm or earlier (ie not last of the day and gives time for me to drive home in absolutely worst case scenario).

Unless something is different next year, no there is no separate PhD ceremony. I confirmed that.

For the folks asking about logistics, we live in a major metro area, the ceremony is in a major metro area; and DSS will be coming in from a third major metro area. All three places have nonstop flights on the order of 2 hours between them.

His phd graduation is a 2 hour flight from where he lives? That doesn't make sense.

OP. I know I said PhD, but it's actually a different sort of doctorate that has an internship as the final year. He got matched to an internship in a different city. Thats also why his thesis is complete

physical therapy?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP again. I've brought up a lot of these compromises. I think if I communicate later that we want to celebrate him in any way we can, but the only hard line is DD and I have to be on a flight that's at 6pm or earlier (ie not last of the day and gives time for me to drive home in absolutely worst case scenario).

Unless something is different next year, no there is no separate PhD ceremony. I confirmed that.

For the folks asking about logistics, we live in a major metro area, the ceremony is in a major metro area; and DSS will be coming in from a third major metro area. All three places have nonstop flights on the order of 2 hours between them.

His phd graduation is a 2 hour flight from where he lives? That doesn't make sense.

OP. I know I said PhD, but it's actually a different sort of doctorate that has an internship as the final year. He got matched to an internship in a different city. Thats also why his thesis is complete

did he have a white coat ceremony and if so, were you all able to attend?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP again. I've brought up a lot of these compromises. I think if I communicate later that we want to celebrate him in any way we can, but the only hard line is DD and I have to be on a flight that's at 6pm or earlier (ie not last of the day and gives time for me to drive home in absolutely worst case scenario).

Unless something is different next year, no there is no separate PhD ceremony. I confirmed that.

For the folks asking about logistics, we live in a major metro area, the ceremony is in a major metro area; and DSS will be coming in from a third major metro area. All three places have nonstop flights on the order of 2 hours between them.

His phd graduation is a 2 hour flight from where he lives? That doesn't make sense.

Could be an online degree from a place like ASU. I know people who have done those from home and flown in for graduation.