Extended Family

Coping with negative attitudes from extended family is stressful, and often, deeply hurtful. We aren't going to be able to offer you a solution, but we can give you some ideas on handling it within yourself.

You cannot change someone else. And with deeply held prejudices, you'll not be likely to persuade or convince them to replace an unfair opinion with another either. So solutions for dealing with extended family often have to do more with setting limits, and working out your own emotional well-being than they have to do with actually changing the whole situation.

There are no pat answers. There is no perfect thing to say when someone says or does something acutely painful. When you love a child, and someone belittles their existence and importance just because they happen to have been born to a family that already had "enough" children in the estimation of the person making the judgment, there is rarely anything that can be said in return to open the eyes of the other person to the huge faux pas that THEY have made.

The hardest thing in the world is for me to bite my tongue, and to continue to attempt to foster positive relationships with extended family after they have said or done something hurtful. And biting my tongue is not nearly enough, I must also work on not feeling resentful, and not feeding the negative feelings.