Hi Brooke,

I need help reworking my thought process on not being included/getting invited when my husband’s siblings do activities with their kids.

The facts are I have a daughter with significant special needs and the last two years she has had a lot of health concerns and hospitalizations. I also have an almost 4-year-old son. My husband’s sisters and sister in law are always going on hikes, going to the amusement park, just getting together for lunch, etc. They then post about it on social media, I see, and feel sad. Before my daughter was more sickly I was usually the instigator of outings and was usually if not always included.

What I’m making it mean: they don’t like me or my kids and don’t care about us enough to find ways to include us. Thoughts I’m having: I wish they would be more considerate, I’m worried about my son feeling sad and left out as he gets older and becomes aware.

I’ve had a conversation about this with my mother in law who then talked to them encouraging them to include us. I’ve also talked to them about it directly and said, ‘look I don’t want you to never do things because we can’t go too, but if you could invite us… many times I could get someone to watch my daughter so I can take my son or we could still not go but at least not feel so excluded.’ They seemed receptive to this conversation and empathetic. Then really what happened for awhile was they stopped posting on social media but then I’d find out about it anyway. And now they’re back to sharing freely and have one time called to invite us. It’s been about a year since the conversation.

I’ve worked on my thoughts with this quite a bit. I have a tendency to feel excluded and find evidence of it very easily, working on changing the past has been so amazing for me. But this sibling thing happened this week and has me in a bit of a stupor. I know they are busy moms trying to keep their kids entertained for the summer. I know it’s not their job to entertain me or my kids. But none of those thoughts are helping find different feelings. Please send me your insights! Thank you!! ✨