Ok-this time it is a bday party. My dd is turning 13 and we are having one hellacious party for her. Not buying her any gifts, not taking her anywhere, but allowing her to have 50 of her closest friends to her home for a few hours. This was dh approved before the invites were sent out. Now as the time is approaching he said to me, "I wish I could do something like that for ss. I've never donet that for him". I did remind him of the time when ss was 9 that we rented out the entire skate rink and he invited every one of his classmates (about 40 kids). (By the way this whole shindig for ss was planned by me). But dh's response was, yeah, but how many kids actually showed up-probably about 12 was my answer. Dh was like "exactly". And bd will probably have close to all 50 show. I was like, "how can that be helped?" . It frustrates me as sometimes I think dh is just jealous of the other kids on ss's behalf. My dd, 13, is miss popularity (not braggin here as I am not even sure this is a good thing)but she is a cheerleader, has lots of friends, could have just about any "boyfriend" she wanted, and is bright to boot. We also had this issue the other year with my bs's bday and ss's bday. They are only a month apart. For ss's bday-he took ss, bs, himself, his nephew, and his cousin to play paintball. It cost well over 100.00 for them all to play, then ss had a cake, we bought him a present, and the family came over and we all had a cookout. Well,bs didn't want that for his bday-he wanted some friends over, a camp out, etc. he ended up having about 5 boys over to stay the night-they had nerf gun wars (which my dh picked out his present with no input from me) and we had cake, burgers, and family. He felt that bs had a bigger party. Well more people came (as in his friends) but we actually spent less on bs.
So is it my children's fault that ss doesn't have alot of friends? Dh even made an appalling statement about giving bm some money for ss to have a party down there. This about flipped my lid. SS had a bday party last year at bm's-20 invited guests, but only 2 showed up. Another year, he had a skate party at bm's. One year he had a chuck e cheese party at bm's. These were his parties at bm's plus he has parties here as well. We can't invite a lot of people as ss has no friends here since he moved out-but we always do something for him nice. Ugh, I try not to say much because honestly I just think dh feels bad that ss does not participate in some of the same sorts of things that the rest of the kids do-so I just try and let his thoughts and feelings pass, but it frustrates the heck out of me!