What Adult Has To Be Told Not To Do This?
My nine-year-old niece is an amputee. About four years ago, she was involved in a car accident which caused her right arm to be amputated below the elbow and her right leg to be amputated above the knee. My sister is a single mom and works a very demanding job, so [Niece] often stays with us, whether it’s for a few hours or a night or weeks at a time. She gets along very well with my kids, boy-girl twins just a year older than her.
Last year, [Sister] had to travel around Thanksgiving for work. [Niece] is here often enough that my in-laws consider her their “honorary granddaughter”, so it was only natural that they invited her to Thanksgiving at their house. Thanksgiving consisted of my family, [Niece], my in-laws, my husband’s sister, her kids, my husband’s brother, and my husband’s two aunts — his father’s younger sisters.
My husband’s sister and parents had met [Niece] before; his brother and aunts hadn’t. His aunts can be a bit nosy, and they comment about everything, getting into everyone’s business. I’d never been a fan, but my husband’s family mostly tolerated it. I could easily imagine them making weird statements about [Niece] about how she eats a lot of food, how skinny she is (moving a prosthetic leg with a knee joint is a lot of work, and she needs a lot of energy to keep it up), or the different ways she’s adapted to eat with one arm.
I’ve already yelled at them about saying stuff about my kids — that they’re too pale and should go outside more, or that they’re too young to have glasses and should go outside more. (Both are statements that also apply to [Niece].) [Niece] is pretty shy and sensitive, and understandably, she dislikes when other people stare at her or make rude remarks.
My husband and I decided to head off his aunts by letting them know first that [Niece] was an amputee and to refrain from their usual comments. I think we could have been gentler with our warning. Both aunts got very offended.
One of them refused to attend Thanksgiving. The other one showed up. She was there when we arrived, and from that moment, she started making a big deal about how offended she was that we would even suggest that she’d make rude comments — all while making exactly the sort of comments we were afraid she’d make. She wouldn’t stop complaining. She insulted my husband and me to our faces for offending her.
While my mother-in-law was in the kitchen by herself, my husband’s fifteen-year-old niece took the other kids outside, and my father-in-law laid down the law. He told [Aunt] she had one chance to prove she could handle Thanksgiving. The next words out of her mouth were an “apology” where she referred to my niece as “the cripple”. (Luckily, the kids were well outside at this point.) My father-in-law kicked her out before any food had even been served.
[Niece] felt super bad that she had “ruined” everyone’s Thanksgiving. Literally no one felt that way, and others kept trying to convince her that she was actually completely in the right, but [Niece] wouldn’t listen and spent about ten minutes gently crying in my son’s chest. It seemed to be very overwhelming for her, so after a quick and quiet meal, we left early.
A few days later, when [Sister] came back, [Niece] still blamed herself, despite my and [Sister]’s best efforts.
Only two weeks after Thanksgiving, my father-in-law sent [Niece] an invitation for Thanksgiving the next year, promising that “Ol’ Grand-Auntie Meanieface” wouldn’t be in attendance. After that, she felt much better.
We just had Thanksgiving yesterday, with [Sister] and [Niece] both invited, and [Niece] had a lovely time. My father-in-law revealed that he finally stopped talking to [Aunt] and barely talks to the aunt who didn’t attend, saying what had happened with [Niece] was the final straw.
