Dear Amy: My husband’s 30-year-old daughter is very controlling. She decided last year that at her annual family Christmas party, there was going to be a “silly hat” theme. The eight or so adults (her parents, their spouses and grandparents), all over 50, and her two children under 4 are to provide, exchange and wear silly hats.
Last year she announced this event without notice and pulled a bunch of hats out of a bag and insisted we wear them. None of us was happy about this, but we went along with it. Her children finally started crying in an effort to stop her from making them wear hats.
My husband divorced her mother after a 20-year marriage because of her multiple infidelities. Her current husband is the man she was cheating with when my husband divorced her. Four or five times a year, his daughter insists on having her parents and their spouses together in her small house “for the sake of the grandchildren.” These family functions are difficult enough, but we remain civil for the two hours we must be in the same room.
We’re invited again to her house for the annual party, with the silly hat theme. How would you deal with this? — No More Hats
Dear No more: If you are invited to a theme party and choose to attend, then the polite thing to do is to participate. Some families manage to squeeze all of their exes into a small space fairly happily, and I applaud your choice to remain civil even when you’re not feeling civil.
Your husband should be the primary point person in dealing with his daughter. If he (along with you) simply can’t bear this sort of thing — even for two hours — then he should tell his daughter that you can’t make it and suggest an alternative idea for getting together that won’t involve his daughter hosting you separately.
I agree with you that the hat business sounds beyond silly, but there are times when a person simply needs to be a good sport — and if you are forced to be a good sport for a brief time in a Viking helmet, then so be it.
Dear Amy: We have been living across from our neighbors for four years. We invited them to our son’s first birthday party, and they brought a gift. When their daughter had a birthday soon after, we bought her a gift even though we were not invited to a party.
Flash forward four years, and we are still exchanging gifts with these neighbors, even though we have not invited them to any birthday parties and they have not invited us.
We are friendly, and she occasionally watches my two kids for an hour or so when I’m in a pinch, but because of age differences, our children do not play together.
How do I tactfully tell them that we are no longer interested in exchanging gifts with them? I would gladly buy them gifts if we were invited to parties, but to just exchange gifts with people we are only neighborly with, I just don’t think it’s necessary. What do I do? -— SL in Oregon
Dear SL: You could use the holiday season as a fulcrum, enabling you to switch gift gears.
When you take your plate of homemade cookies over to your neighbors’ house as a holiday offering, you could also say, “I love how thoughtful you have been to the kids and me over the years, but we want you to know that it’s really not necessary for you to give them birthday presents anymore — they already receive too much. We feel so lucky to have you as neighbors — that’s a great gift.”
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