Woman Says Her Parents Took One Sister on a “Family Vacation” — Then Asked Her To Dog-Sit While They Flew Out on Her Birthday
A woman says she felt blindsided after learning her parents planned what they called a “family vacation” with one of her sisters, her brother-in-law and their children — but did not invite her or her middle sister.
The situation was shared in a Reddit post titled, “AIO? Parents took my sister, her husband, and their children on a ‘family vacation’ but didn’t invite me or my middle sister (and flew out on my bday).” The original post has since been deleted by the person who posted it, but the comment thread is still visible and gives a pretty clear picture of why commenters were so divided. The thread is here.
According to commenters discussing the post, the woman was in school and studying for the bar, which already made her life stressful. One commenter reminded her that bar prep is basically a full-time job and told her she did not have the mental space to deal with family drama during that stretch. They even suggested she make herself unavailable from May 1 through the end of July so nobody could keep pulling her into obligations while she was trying to prepare.
The vacation itself hurt, but the dog-sitting part seemed to make it worse. Several commenters picked up on the detail that the woman was apparently expected to be available to watch the family dog while everyone else left. One person asked why she was dog-sitting at all when she was in school and lived an hour and a half away, especially if the middle sister lived closer. Another commenter said the parents seemed to think she was available to fly home and dog-sit, but somehow not important enough to invite on the vacation.
That was the part people kept circling back to: it was one thing for adult parents to take a trip with one adult child and her family. It was another thing to call it a family vacation, leave out two daughters, fly out on one daughter’s birthday, and still expect that daughter to help with pet care.
Some commenters thought the whole thing looked pretty obvious. One person said the parents did not invite her because they needed her to watch the dog, while another said pet care is expensive and the poster was being treated like the free option. Someone else put it even more sharply: “Why would they invite the dog sitter on a family vacation?”
The birthday detail split the comments. Some people thought flying out on her birthday made the exclusion sting more, especially if it was a milestone birthday. One commenter said the mother should have spoken with her before booking the trip if she had good intentions, and another said asking her to dog-sit on her actual birthday for a trip she was not even told about was “beyond pale.”
Others were less sympathetic about the birthday part. A few commenters said she was an adult and her parents did not have to plan their travel around her birthday. Some felt she was making too much of that detail, especially if the parents said the trip was not the father’s actual retirement trip or some once-in-a-lifetime family event.
But even some of the more critical commenters still seemed to understand why the combination hurt. It was not only that her parents traveled without her. It was that she found out about the trip, realized one sister’s whole family was included, saw that another sister was also left out, and then had the added insult of being useful enough to watch the dog but not included enough to go.
A lot of people told her to pull back. One commenter said she was not going to “dog sit” her way into being the favorite child and should spend her energy on people who spend energy on her. Another told her to “drop the rope,” meaning stop trying to force closeness with people who keep showing her where she stands.
There were also commenters who said the family dynamic sounded familiar. One person said they had experienced something similar as the youngest child expected to pick up the pieces while older siblings did less. Another said their own family once planned a trip and flew out on their birthday, then asked them to pet-sit too.
The harsher comments argued that adult siblings are not automatically entitled to every vacation their parents take. That is fair on its own. Parents can travel with one child, especially when grandchildren are involved, and not every trip has to include every adult kid.
But the “family vacation” label is what made the whole thing messy. If it had been framed as a trip with one sister and her kids, it may have landed differently. Calling it a family vacation while half the daughters were left behind made the exclusion feel louder. Asking one of the excluded daughters to dog-sit made it feel even worse.
By the end of the thread, most people seemed to think the woman’s hurt made sense, even if they did not all agree on how much the birthday should matter. She could not force her parents to invite her. She could not make them treat the siblings equally. But she also did not have to keep making herself available as the dependable backup whenever the “family” trip needed someone left behind to handle the dog.
