Not having a smart phone...

As I said, I haven't had a landline since 2002. My internet is with Virgin. They are open to all sorts of negotiations.

You can buy different packages that don't have to include a landline phone. TV plus mobile, say. There are packages for everything now. I presume you get a decent mobile reception where you live? I can only use my phone if I cross my lane and stand in a layby, the farmer next door stands there most morning shouting at his employees because even there the reception is poor!

Back to the phones, I am amazed at how many different ones there are and how many some of you seem to have.
According to the minimum income standard, everyone needs access to the internet, but if they have a mobile, they do not need a landline any more.
Is it possible to get access to the internet without a landline, says she, always having had a landline?

wise words jane I just had a moment there!

There will always be times when only your real mum will do, maybe just not as often as we would like.

Agreed jane. I'm the same. My daughter is not into her family much and I keep questioning whether it is because she was an only child, but she has only had one herself so she mustn't have minded it much. Everything she does which I am uneasy with I blame myself. Sometimes I have felt that she doesn't like me much She seems quite close to her friend's mum.

I often wonder what mental scars I am going to leave my children with. Ex was an alcoholic and I can see a few things in my daughter that make me a little sad. She insists that I haven't left her any awful legacies, but you never know. As for my own parents, I could be here all day. Once you are a parent, trying to be a good one, you do start to dust off all those memories you thought you had got rid of for ever.

Jane - yes I think that was the case with the panto (looking back) the girl probably hadn't even asked her parents if I could go. I can look at it logically now but as a small child who was already going through the mill, it left a scar. The parents could have been kinder about it. I know most kids go through this stuff, I am just looking for reasons why I hate being left out I think.

In the case of the wedding, it's often down to lack of seating space and money, so people only invite those they feel they really have to. They may even have hoped that your ex would refuse his place. My Bil didn't invite his cousins to his, through lack of space, infuriating his aunt. He hadn't really thought they would enjoy it anyway and actually they wouldn't have done. It was a sit down and be entertained wedding, with classical music and singers. It's a minefield. As soon as my daughter met SiL she was told that she would have to have every single nephew and niece in her train, because two of his sisters weren't speaking to each other after one niece had been omitted. She was 14, no longer cute, there were 4 boys and 4 girls apart from her and they matched up in height perfectly. the sister knew how she wanted it to look and didn't want any 'spares'!

I expect places at the panto had been booked and paid for and the girl hadn't ever asked her parents at all if you could go. My sister did that once - she invited some of her friends to my birthday party. I was so angry, my cake suddenly had to go further and (Halloween) there weren't enough toffee apples and apples for bobbing and things like that - but my mother made me be polite and accept the situation. Not sure you could do that with a panto ticket, but I can see how you would have felt, just mortified. The little girls felt mortified too. I just felt like throttling my sister.

Thank you Nankate. Sometimes you wonder how you get through it don't you? Not the pantomime story obviously but all the rest of it.

What a sad story KatyK but all I can say is you sound a pretty together person now, so well done to you.

Oh Tegan that's awful! There was probably another reason, why wouldn't you be good enough? Like I said I think my dislike of being left out goes back to my childhood. We never had holidays, days out etc I used to listen to other kids talking about holidays etc. I had always wanted to go to a pantomime. When I was about 9 or so a girl I knew (who was allowed to play with me!) said her dad's workplace were going and I could come along and I would even get a free box of chocolates. I was SO excited. I met up with them and we got on the coach and there wasn't a seat on the coach for me. The girl's mother said 'she'll have to get off, she can't come' referring to me. I was sent to walk home alone When I think back they were truly awful people, rough as old boots but at the time I was devastated I think I am one of life's 'also rans'. Hey ho - self pity is not attractive

Katy; my ex went to a wedding that all of our friends had been invited to and I had been left out. I spent the day with my soon to be MIL sobbing my heart out and never to this day understood why it had happened. My current partner would have refused to go if I'd been left out but my ex drove off happily to spend the day with his friends. I'm not sure if that was the first time something like that had happened but it obviously shaped me in some way. I can still remember my FIL reading the invite out loud and saying straight away 'Tegan hasn't been invited' . I probably assumed I wasn't posh enough. I'd actually met the brides parents the previous week as well which made it worse and compounded my assumption.

Well I think that's a great attitude but I can never put it into practice. You are probably a lot happier for it. I rarely let my daughter know that I am upset by being left out but I seethe and sulk inwardly . Not a nice trait I know. Perhaps it stems from my childhood when a lot of kids in our street were told not to play with us because our dad was a violent drunk and we always had head lice - we were neglected. I think I have an inbuilt fear of being left out or ignored, imagining it is because I'm not good enough. There that was a good bit of self-analysis wasn't it?

Not especially nice, just very laid-back. Life's too short. I watched people lose contact with their children, and thought, life's too short to make a point. A little gentle guidance perhaps, try to get them to imagine to feel how you feel, but the problem is, they can't really. Their own children are still little and they can't imagine ever not being needed as much. Or not being in the 'first circle' of friends.

Maybe Tegan is being too nice and too available. Maybe a 'forgotten' birthday might have some effect. There, that's not 'nice', is it?

The fact is, I remember very clearly how I felt and was as a young woman, and was not at all surprised that I was forgotten. I too lived closer to my ex-MiL, she was very determined to arrange things on my behalf and it was before the days of easy contact and facebook. My mother hated phone conversations, so quite a few things didn't get mentioned that should have been. She did get invited to the christening, but I wouldn't have been upset if she hadn't come. I don't think she would have been upset not to be invited - she didn't come to all of her nieces' and nephews' christenings. And you know what - I prefer those times when I see my family on my own. I'd rather not see them hurtling past to try to see to all the other guests, wishing I could have spoken more to them.

jane - you must be a very nice person. If I wasn't asked to my grand child's christening I would be furious My DD leaves me out of a lot of things but hopefully nothing as important as that.

I think a disappointment like the one after your holiday can makes thing seem worse. Life is tough sometimes

An incident in my extended family made me decide, a few years ago, to stop "asking permission" (sounding others out so much) about what I wanted to do when I know it's nothing unreasonable but feel certain individuals might object, usually just because they tend to be a bit negative and to 'disapprove' of things they didn't think of themselves. I think that's the kind of assertiveness that elegran is talking about.

You know what - just ask. I think you have to, otherwise it will eat away at you. My daughter has a large family of in-laws living nearby, we tend to get forgotten, I fully understand why and how, but I know she loves me. She forgot to invite us to my GS's christening until the day before, when her MiL asked where we would be staying, it was too late for us and to be honest, it would have been a real pain to fit it in at the time. It would have been nice, though, to have been asked. Three years later she almost did it again, she has never had us included in her social life so didn't think, that was all, and she is very busy with two jobs and studying law and two small children. I asked how her brain worked to forget us in that way, and she said that when she thought about it, her first thought was who would be the most annoyed if they weren't asked! I wasn't annoyed, just surprised, so she was right.

We do catch up when I do the school run etc.

Ouch. I wonder if you can set up a regular catch-up time to phone or be phoned. Once a week is sometimes a bit too much for some people (DBH would prefer to only speak to his mother once a month as he says she 'witters', but is fine with her on facebook. She of course prefers a good long chat, which is really her telling him a blow-by-blow account of every day since she last spoke to him), I know, but at least it gets them into the habit. DD is now beautifully trained up, DS is a work in progress but has PM's me twice this week so I think I am making progress.

Don't hold back, tell them how you feel. If they still don't bother after that, then they are very selfish. I think as children we don't see our parents as being capable of being a bit insecure and lonely at times, parents always seem so confident and capable and self-sufficient.

I did turn up the other day when I got back from holiday but there was no one in which is why I resolved to phone first. Because I rushed over as soon as I got back it left me feeling disappointed from then onwards. I usually find that there's a time and place to slip something into a conversation at an appropriate time but sometimes that doesn't happen for a while. It's just that, over the past few years I've been cut off from my ex's family [the only family I had]; all of his friends [who were our friends but had started off as his friends and remained that] and now the people I worked with [because I was so angry with the surgery closing down]. This week was a sort of 'straw that broke the camels back' situation.

Crossed posts! You answered mine before you read it. You really must speak up, in a jokey way of you can manage it, and let them know that you like to be certain of what is going on and not turn up on spec. They may think that you are perfectly OK with the way they do things!

Do they know that you feel like that, Tegan or do you have the stiff upper lip about it?

One of my bosses when I worked told me I should have gone on an assertiveness course; I sometimes think that I keep quiet about things that, if they were said in the 'right' way at the time would stop things building up inside me. As it is I let things fester away [albeit using Gransnet as a way of letting off some of the steam on a regular basis ].

That can hurt, yes. Out of sight, out of mind. It's just thoughtlessness. Don't take it personally, though. I get to see family members that I know my daughter would love to, but she is too busy and too far away and gets a little wistful when I mention it - but I never ever bring up the fact that she forgot to tell me about one of my GC's christenings...