Family Weekend

Over the weekend, we met my brother and sister’s families in Tyler to spend time with our dad. It’s a 2 hour drive for us, so not very far. We left Sunday after church and came back Tuesday.

Family is a funny thing. You don’t choose them, and even though you grew up together, you don’t always have anything in common. When we were teenagers, my sister and I were totally different and did nothing together. My brother actually joined theatre with me, but that was really the only shared activity we had. We had our usual sibling spats, but nothing too terrible. I mean, we still talk to each other as adults, so there was no feud or anything.

Becoming parents actually brought us closer together. Between the three of us, we had 8 kids in 8 years. My sister has 3 boys, my brother has 3 girls, and I got one of each! We used to get together multiple times a year. We wanted our kids to be close. My sister and I even took trips together every summer until the pandemic hit and we didn’t see each other for over a year.

My son has been begging to see his cousins for months. If you ask him where he wants to go for the summer, his only requests are to see family. He had been counting down the days to seeing “the boys” as we’ve always called them (he’s not as excited to see “the girls”).

Unfortunately, this trip did not go as well as he was hoping. He ended the weekend saying he “never” wants to see them again. The boys spent a lot of time insulting him and each other and thinking it was funny. He did not think it was funny. I told him he had to make sure they knew it bothered him, but I think he was afraid that would just make the teasing worse (and it may have). Sadly, this is learned behavior. It’s how their father (my sister’s ex) interacts with them and therefore they think it’s how you relate to one another. While I know it’s mostly coming from their dad, I’m disappointed that my sister doesn’t do more to try to stop it. When I told her what was upsetting my son she said “Oh, they do that to each other too. They get it from their dad and uncles.” It’s frustrating that she just dismissed it as if there was nothing she could do. At one point I told one of the boys “I’m hearing your father in what you’re saying and I didn’t invite him, so I don’t want to hear his opinions.” And right before we left I told two of them “You may think that being mean is funny, but it’s not. You need to rethink how you talk to other people if you want them to like you.”

At one point my son asked me what a “redneck” is. Apparently this is a word he learned from a cousin. The cousin seems to aspire to BE a redneck. I told my son that it is not a compliment and read him the definition, pointing out that most consider “rednecks” to be uneducated and racist. It concerns me because my son falls into a category that most “rednecks” seem to fear (LGBTQ). And there is no way I’m going to let anyone, even family, make him ashamed of who he is.

So now I’m feeling stuck. I hate confrontation, but I know I can’t take my kid to see his cousins if they are going to treat him this way. I don’t know how to approach the subject with my sister because she got very defensive when I told her why my son was upset. I talked with my therapist yesterday about all of this and while she didn’t say I needed to talk to my sister, that’s what I got from the questions she was asking me (“What would happen if you talked to her about how her boys were treating your son?” etc.). It’s SO hard, though!