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][quote=Anonymous]OP here again.  I think the lesson here for me is for when I have kids and how to navigate this sports (or other activity) world and keep true to my value or priority of family first.  How that works within the lives of kids/teens.  How to place the context for the family, despite possibly restrictive circumstances and clear benefits of the activities and the commitment to those.  Definitely hard.  But I keep coming back to - for me - a tournament or sporting event is not more important than a big family event like this (my wedding or if my mom got remarried or if my dad won the nobel prize).  I do recognize that as my personal value.  Not to be required of others.  I think I'm just really still surprised.  Maybe that's naive as hell. [/quote]
This has been an interesting thread OP.  I'm guessing you will not dwell on your niece's absence for very long, and that all will be just fine in the end.

One thing to keep in mind about the responses you got from those of us who were worried about your "nephew" missing his first "soccer" games as a freshman member of the varsity team: had you given us the actual details about the child/sport/age, you might have gotten very different responses.  To me and many others, that particular scenario would be very different from a middle schooler missing a cross-country meet or an elementary student missing part of a diving tournament.  One of my kids is a top player on a top soccer team, and neither we nor his coaches would hesitate to let him miss a tournament or league game for an aunt's wedding, unless perhaps it were a national championship game.  His coaches and teammates have known him for years and appreciate his contributions to the team.  That's very different from someone trying to break into a new team in HS with an unknown coach and teammates. [/quote]

OP here.  Sorry about that.  Only changes are gender and sport.  High school and 14 and freshman and pre-season tourney and all the rest is accurate.  I can't say about the consequences and the coach's perspective etc.  My sister and BIL have to make the call based on what they know or think they know.

Spoke to my mom about it this morning and she just feels bad for everyone but ultimately that it is what it is and stinks but wants us to try not to be upset about it.  And she assured me she'd be there!  :)  This is not going to torpedo us.  We've all disappointed eachother before.  You feel it, you get irked/hurt by it, you try to share that respectfully without doing any lasting relationship damage, you reaffirm love and that's what's important, and you move on.  This is how we are close I would say.  It takes effort and intentional language and behavior.  A work in progress, but good success so far.  And thankfully we have the context of 40+ years of generally good stuff.  Had this been one of a million wrongs I was keeping track of against my sister (some sisters are jerks, just not mine), I'm sure it would be different.[/quote]

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