To add..if you give in then you had better budget several thousand for when DH’s parents find out he treated your parents to first class seats to Europe. They will expect the same and be very upset if they don’t. Boomer competition is a huge thing.

Team DH here.

He earned the miles and they aren’t freebies as his MIL sees it. He probably doesn’t want to have sit next to two rude boomer in laws on a trans Atlantic flight. The grandparents didn’t think seat upgrades were important until they found out you had them. Now they are demanding that they are given to them which is crazy rude. Especially as OP and her husband are already paying for all the rooms in Europe for several days.

OP you have to explain to your mother that miles and points are not free. This seems to be a common misconception among boomers. One of my siblings in law once used miles once to pay for a cousins plane trip. Nosy boomer aunt then inquired how often he traveled and for the next family event actually included in the email that if anyone needed help with flights that Ted has a TON of miles. Ted was super upset when every boomer on the list expected a free ticket a La Ted’s miles. It became a whole thing with the other boomers then trying to extract miles from their adult kids. It’s like she put up a beacon.

Tell your mother and father that YOU and your husband want to sit with your teens. There aren’t many years before college and they move on with their own lives. Offer the compromise that your DH brought up. If your parents refuse because they have to contribute and just believe they are entitled to a freebie because they’re special jerks then tell them to stay home. They are likely to ruin your vacation. They will either get what they want and gloat rubbing your nose in it or not get what they want whining and pouting the entire time.

The prevailing belief on this board is that the person who does the inviting has to then accommodate whatever the invitee wants. There was a thread last week or the week before about a woman who scored Half Dome tickets at Yosemite after years of trying and her husband invited his parents, who don't hike, and then they decided they wanted to fly into an airport that would require 8 hours of driving for the OP to pick them up.

These are not reasonable accommodations for someone joining another person's vacation. These grandparents, and the Yosemite ones, didn't start as part of these trips. If I told my mom about the vacation we are going on this summer and she said, "That sounds great, I'd love to tag along!", everyone would still assume that she was paying for her own vacation. It wouldn't be assumed that my kids should give up THEIR vacation - whether that's flying first class to Greece or hiking Half Dome - because my mom is there. If she couldn't afford the vacation without taking something away from the kids, she straight up wouldn't go.

As for the "resources should roll down hill" posters - that's exactly what's happening here. The OP and her husband paid for seats for their kids. The resources are transferring from parent to child. Y'all seem to think resources should transfer from grandchild to grandparent. That is... weird to me.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I honestly don’t get a lot of the responses on here that the OP should give first class tickets to her oarents.

OP and her husband are “paying” for the 1st class tickets and if they made the decision that it was for the kids, it’s their decision. Parents blackmailing them is a non-starter. The expectation is what’s bothersome.

100% this. OP didn’t buy 4 first class and 2 coach.GP bought their own coach seats and were fine flying coach when it was their $. Now that they see they can weasel their way into FC for free they can’t possibly fly coach anymore. GP are entitled aholes

This is how boomers operate.

Anonymous wrote:I honestly don’t get a lot of the responses on here that the OP should give first class tickets to her oarents.

OP and her husband are “paying” for the 1st class tickets and if they made the decision that it was for the kids, it’s their decision. Parents blackmailing them is a non-starter. The expectation is what’s bothersome.

100% this. OP didn’t buy 4 first class and 2 coach.GP bought their own coach seats and were fine flying coach when it was their $. Now that they see they can weasel their way into FC for free they can’t possibly fly coach anymore. GP are entitled aholes

Anonymous wrote:I honestly don’t get a lot of the responses on here that the OP should give first class tickets to her oarents.

OP and her husband are “paying” for the 1st class tickets and if they made the decision that it was for the kids, it’s their decision. Parents blackmailing them is a non-starter. The expectation is what’s bothersome.

Lots of entitled boomers got triggered by this thread.

Respect for elders is nice but sometimes elders are asshats to their ILs. If earned those miles and was excited to sit in business class with my family and see how excited my kids were about it, I would be pissed if my husband’s parents pulled this stunt.

They aren’t particularly nice to me and I’d be annoyed my kids missed out and that I missed out on their excitement.

I honestly don’t get a lot of the responses on here that the OP should give first class tickets to her oarents.

OP and her husband are “paying” for the 1st class tickets and if they made the decision that it was for the kids, it’s their decision. Parents blackmailing them is a non-starter. The expectation is what’s bothersome.

When my mom is visiting I put her in my normal front passenger seat and I sit in the back w/ kids/dogs etc.. I don't view this as any different. The parents are responsible for raising their kids and should focus on the lesson that they want to teach their kids - if its that a 14 year old trumps the comfort of an 80 year old in the same family, that's what you are teaching them. Their dad makes $$ or in this case gets miles as a benefit from his job so that makes the 9th grader due more deference than the elderly relative. Those are not values I'd want to pass on to my children, but if you think its more important to teach the GPs a lesson go for it.

OP really thinks that it would be okay if the two parents and the kids were in first class and the grandparents were in the back? Wow! And that folks is how we end up with horrible children.

Weird but fascinating thread. The only people “entitled” to the business class seats are the ones who paid for them - ie OP’s husband and maybe OP herself. The kids didn’t earn the seats anymore than the grandparents did. This is a good lesson in kids respecting their elders (who yes, seem to be behaving badly).

Anonymous wrote:This is such a weird discussion. It sounds like the part people have an issue with is that OP “invited” her parents to come and offered to pay for a lot of her parents’ trip (cruise, hotels) but not her parents’ airfare, which she left up to her parents to cover for themselves. Her parents either misunderstood or felt slighted by the fact that OP and spouse and kids have business class airfare and didn’t offer to pay for parents to sit in business class too.

I’m guessing parents either thought everyone would sit in coach together or else thought OP’s family would offer to give them the first class tix when they realized parents would be in coach.

OP made some mistakes. 1) inviting parents in the first place, knowing parents are not nice people, 2) not communicating clearly about what the “invitation” covered. OP should’ve explicitly said “we’d love you to join us! We will pay for cruise and hotels. you need to pay for airfare yourself. Just so you know, We have business class tix for our family which we were able to get through DH’s miles/points.” Then OP’s parents could’ve accepted that or not.

I'm sorry I haven't read all 33 pages so I may have missed it but I thought OP just took care of before and after hotels since they could use points, etc. Grandparents paid for cruise and airfare. Not that it really matters - grandparents being weird/rude threatening to back out/bribe kids but kids/OP should have volunteered in the first place. Would feel like a yucky start to the trip if grandparents were in back on the same plane.

Hopefully the carrier kicked the whole lousy family back into coach.

Curious to see what OP did?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Regardless of the GPs sense of entitlement in no world would I give my kids the sense that they should not prioritize their GPs. The seats belong to the DH who is allowing the kids to sit in them at his discretion - if a higher ranking family member comes along the kids would cede to the GPs. That is the way kids learn not to be a brat. I would view the priority here as not teaching the kids to be self centered over pushing back on teh GPs for bad behavior. Really eye opening how many feel otherwise in this thread.

Thank you, well put.

This makes zero sense. The kids will see the grandparents being brats, and being self-centered, and getting what they want. It will teach the exact opposite of what you are hoping.

+1. You are teaching kids not to be self-centered and bratty by giving away their seats to people who’ve had at least 70 years to learn not to be self-centered and bratty and are acting entirely entitled, self-centered and bratty? That’s the cognitive dissonance. If the grandparents were going about this in any other more respectful manner, it would not be a 33 page thread.

The grandparents are being at worst manipulative and at best annoying. However the parents have the responsibility of setting the tone, making the decision, and leading by example to their kids. This is the reason why there are 33 pages - the OP and husband has to make a choice. Regardless of how annoying the grandparents are, they are close enough family that they were included to come on the trip. Sadly it sounds like the husband (and maybe even the OP) doesn’t like the grandparents (the grandparents do sound incredibly tacky in asking for the seats) but what’s done is done and the grandparents were invited. So make the right decision and offer the seats to the grandparents. The kids, if they are kind and caring grandkids, will want their elderly grandparents to be comfortable on a long flight and get over their excitement at flying in premium class.