Reply to Sister says 14yo nephew not coming to my wedding because of his sports tournament. Thoughts?

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Reply to "Sister says 14yo nephew not coming to my wedding because of his sports tournament. Thoughts?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]How much game time is the freshman on varsity going to get?  Is he a prodigy?  Yes-it's OP's first wedding and she is his aunt.  That means a wedding with family and 50 to 60 people.

The spin for the coach is not so much the wedding but it is a major family gathering including elderly that might not be around much longer.  ie great grandparents, great aunts, grandparents.  My wedding was the last event for all to be together.[/quote]

I'm a PP above who got married at 40 and was disappointed that her young cousins did not attend.  That is totally the point of my disappointment -- I had hoped it would be a milestone family occasion for the WHOLE family, not for my own entertainment.  I know that realistically I would not have spent much 1-1 time with those individual cousins, but I had aunts and uncles, great aunts and uncles, and other extended family members who traveled long distances to attend.  They would have loved to have been able to spend time with their grand nieces and nephews.  This is what family is about, multi-generations, doing things together, making memories together.

When I was growing up, we all went through phases when family events were boring.  I remember how completely insufferable my older brother was when we took a trip to the country of my father's birth when he was 14.  He drove us all nuts with complaining because there were no good TV stations.  But now he's nearly 50 and looks back on the trip with fondness, and we all tell stories about what an insufferable jerk he was at that time.  We have great memories of it together.

I don't subscribe to excusing teenagers from participating in the family because they care about other things more than seeing great-granny or dancing to music they don't enjoy.  Teenagers are part of the family and part of life.  I remember one of my cousins letting her middle school and high school aged daughter have Christmas and Thanksgiving family dinners at her boyfriend's house rather than with our family every year, because she enjoyed him more.  Now of course they're broken up and she's in her 20's and feels like she missed out on so many great occasions that everyone else talks about.  Teenagers can't be expected to have the right priorities all the time; they're teenagers.  They don't have the wisdom yet to know that sometimes the opportunity to sit next to your great-great uncle who was in the Battle of the Bulge and listen to his stories is actually more important than a soccer game or a date with your girlfriend.  [/quote]

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