Disappointed in visit from relatives (girls, house, abuse, college)
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FWIW I could see this happening in my family very easily. We have rules. We have bed times. We eat meals together. We travel. The teen cousins don't. They aren't bad kids, they were just raised differently.
Trust me I learned my lesson. I know 3 weeks was long, but they came 3000 miles. It's not feasible to stay a day or two and leave. It was what it was to fit around everyone's schedules. I don't think having expectations of someone being polite is asking too much.
As I told hubby, if those girls are any indication of the children we would have had biologically, I am more than happy to get the kid we adopted. Trust me, I have a new found appreciation for him.
I take what I said about hubby only meeting them once back. My son had only met them once. Anyway, we are the only ones in the family that put forth the time & money into visiting relatives. It is what it is.
I'm sorry that happened to you and your family. You were being thoughtful and generous and it obviously was not appreciated. I think the sleep issues, generally messiness, and self-centeredness are typical of the age group. But I have to add that in my interaction with young people today I find that as a group they:
Lack curiosity to a surprising degree,
Show no interest in anything they didn't discover on their own,
Demonstrate few conversational skills,
Don't seem to notice anything around them that doesn't touch them directly.
I blame the fact that they are so focused since babyhood on close-up screens (TV, computer monitor, cell phones) that they develop a very shallow connection with the world beyond six feet around them. Researchers have proven that people are developing in a completely different way today because humans don't hold their heads erect and don't focus their eyes into the distance as often as they used to. It's also been proven that the post-computer generation has a far shorter attention span than people who were raised without the ability to change the subject of their attention at will.
In addition to that, it seems these girls have been poorly parented if they don't even have the manners to eat properly. Their parents should apologize for their rudeness, but I guarantee you they won't. Many parents today seem to find it easier to resign themselves to bad behavior rather than confront it. I agree with the person who said their parents were probably glad to get rid of them for awhile. That said, three weeks was an awfully long visit. For all you know, they begged not to come in the first place.
Bets that at least one of the girls gets pregnant in HS. Or on drugs. Or both.
Funny you mention that. One day I was going thru the recordings on our DVR and what do I see recorded, but Teen Mom! I asked my son who recorded that. He pointed to the older girl. Hubby and I joke about what age she would be pregnant. I said by 20. He replied oh no, it will be earlier than that.
You had the best of intentions and tried really hard. You sound like good people.
Your nieces sound like spoiled immature brats with very little world experience. They might gain some perspective when they get home and viewed their trip through a different lens. Someday they may recognize how awful they were to you and your husband. Maybe not.
Please do your best to let it go. I really don't think any of this is a reflection on you!
Trust me I learned my lesson. I know 3 weeks was long, but they came 3000 miles. It's not feasible to stay a day or two and leave. It was what it was to fit around everyone's schedules. I don't think having expectations of someone being polite is asking too much.
As I told hubby, if those girls are any indication of the children we would have had biologically, I am more than happy to get the kid we adopted. Trust me, I have a new found appreciation for him.
You weren't dealing with people, you were dealing with teenage girls.
You had the best of intentions and tried really hard. You sound like good people.
Your nieces sound like spoiled immature brats with very little world experience. They might gain some perspective when they get home and viewed their trip through a different lens. Someday they may recognize how awful they were to you and your husband. Maybe not.
Please do your best to let it go. I really don't think any of this is a reflection on you!
I second what Stagemomma said, but I want to add that you have my sympathy, Heather.
I honestly don't think your expectations were too high, but I am guessing that you are "older" and that you just don't know what MANY teens and tweens -- I won't say most -- are like now. It seems to me that kids who have grown up with the Internet and with MTV and with female rock stars who parade "all they have" have just absorbed the idea that "manners" do NOT matter and they also have practically zero attention span.
I am a boomer, and my husband and I adopted our kids when they were four and six in 1998 when we were in our early 40's, and we were honestly not prepared for what we encountered when our kids entered adolescence. It was like what we considered to be the most basic courtesy seemed to be foreign to MANY of the kids who were the same age as our kids. I just thought that as we lived in a middle class "nice" community that most of the kids would not only say, but also know the concepts behind, "please" and "thank you", for example.
Anyway, I don't mean to go on and on and on, but I just want to say that I do both sympathize AND empathize with you, and I am very sorry for what you experienced! I also wish you better luck with your son than we had with our two kids.
as other's have said your expectations were way too high. they were strangers to you. you can't expect young kids to be so adaptable to the food, the rules, the activities of a new house. they are used to eating what they eat, not what you think they should. chalk this one up to live and learn. a few days would of been a much better idea. sorry it didn't go well
Give me a break. We had nieces and nephews, of various ages including young teens, stay at our house for a week or even a two week period before we had kids. They were always polite and nice to us. Of course, some of the food we served was different and some of the rules and activities were different, but they were always appreciative and begged to come to visit us again.
If your expectations were that the cousins would enjoy (or pretend to enjoy) some of the activities that you planned, be polite to everyone and follow the household rules (eat what is served, get up at a reasonable hour, make their beds/straighten their room) IMHO those expectations were not too high.
I do agree that three weeks was way too long for a first visit. Even if the airplane tickets were expensive it should have been a week (maximum). Also, I would have told the parents and the girls the house rules in advance.
Perhaps, if the two brothers had talked in advance you may have realized that the girls did not have bedtimes or chores at their home and were rarely polite to others and may be shocked if you had expected those things at your home. Frankly, if I found that out in advance I probably would have cancelled the proposed trip.
And, not even saying "Thank you" after you probably spend $1,000 or more to have them visit is completely inexcusable. Heck, my children always said "Thank you" to a parent who gave them a ride home (or did something like that that for them). For a vacation like that they would said a verbal Thank you multiple times a day plus sent a written Thank you after they returned home (probably even more than one written Thank you letters).
Last edited by germaine2626; 07-25-2015 at 07:56 PM..
Not having kids yourself may explain the expectations.....yes, 3000 miles is a long way to travel but a week would have been more than enough. If the girls wouldn't communicate enough to say yea or nay to an activity I wouldn't have shelled out for it. $400 for a MLB game? For girls that age? No way in hell! Seriously, you set this up to fail...maybe if you'd done it when they were 6 or 8 they'd have been in that happy pre-tween stage but they're too set in their ways and you are too...sorry.
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