Reply to Help me untangle feelings about SIL

Forum Index » Family Relationships

Reply to "Help me untangle feelings about SIL"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]So I am single and childless but I have worked for over a decade with young children.  My brother and his GF had a surprise pregnancy and got married and had my nephew, now a toddler.  I genuinely adore my SIL.  She is so smart, kind and is a wonderful wife and mother.  That said, I often feel like she doesn’t much care for me.  Even though my brother is constantly asking me for parenting advice, when I offer even a small tip or idea to SIL she always either tells me why I am wrong or more often tells me that she already knows.

Example: They were going on a trip so I ordered some mini figurines of characters from nephews’ favorite show.  I mentioned to her that a fun activity is to wrap little toys like these in several layers of aluminum foil so it takes him a long time to unwrap and he can rewrap and playing with the wrapper becomes it’s own activity.  She said. “Yeah, we do that all the time.”  I said “Oh I should have known you would know all the best toddler activities.”  She said “That’s like the first thing that comes up when you google sensory activities.”

The other stress point is that I am a gift person.  I love to shop for presents for others and spend a lot of time and energy trying to find nice things.  Not only has SIL been kind of blasé about gifts in the past (e.g., I spent a lot of time choosing charms for a sterling silver charm bracelet symbolizing different milestones in her first year as a mom and she never even mentioned it until I asked if she had opened it yet).  She recently sent a long email to all family members saying basically that they are not interested in getting random presents for my nephew and included a link to an online wish list of approved gift ideas.  I get why they might not want a bunch of miscellaneous toys and presents for him, but a) everything on the list is very expensive (like they asked for organic cotton training pants that were $20 a pair) and b) I just can’t help feeling that it was basically a way of saying “your presents aren’t good enough.”

So: tell me how much of this is that I am being oversensitive of crazy and how much is real. And tell me what to do about it.  Is there any point in discussing things with her?  Do I just bite my lip?[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics