Reply to I told my parents that we aren't coming over for Thanksgiving

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I really posted it because:

1) setting a reasonable, compassionate boundary is difficult, but it can still be done. Someone reading this might be thinking of doing that and need a little solidarity. Those are the sorts of people who tend to lurk, not post, much of the time. I see you.

2) that was not easy for me, either! There is something comforting about being treated like a perpetual child, but I'm over 40, so time to grow up and make my own food. My parents have a strict rule that no one else cooks in their kitchen, so I decided to do my own thing.[/quote]

OP, I totally get it. We have been through this with both my parents and DH's parents and it can be hard. Once we were married and had kids, we wanted to start creating some of our own traditions around holidays. We've always invited our families to join us for those traditions, but they are generally unwilling to travel (DH and I traveled for holidays into our mid-30s before finally deciding we wanted to spend some of these holidays at home).

One thing both sets of parents really struggled with was that we wanted to provide family holiday experiences for our kids, much as our parents provided those experiences for us as kids. 90% of my memories of holidays growing up occurred in our home. I never once spent Christmas morning at a relatives house, for instance. My grandmother and some aunts and uncles were sometimes present at our celebrations, and we sometimes would travel to a nearby family member's home the day after or the day before a holiday for extra family time. But mostly my parents hosted our immediate family, maybe a few extended family members who were in town, and then a few friends. And that's what DH and I want to do as well, but our parents have both been angry at the idea that we would host any of this.

Of course they also got mad about us having to split holidays between them when we got married.

Basically they are just resistant to change of any kind and also they're all a little bit self-centered and can't really understand any of this from anyone's perspective but their own.[/quote]

OP here, yes, this resonates with me. I didn't relish my mother's reaction. I was not exactly surprised by it, but I had hoped she would react differently, maybe appreciate that she wouldn't have so much work to do. She often complains about all of the work she has to do, so I thought I was relieving some of that. She was literally complaining about that for a long time right before I told her. The work she was complaining about wasn't holiday related, but it will affect the holiday. That's enough.[/quote]

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