What is this? What would you call it?

[KD5FUL]

Confucius said that the beginning of wisdom is to call things by the correct name.

Learning the vocabulary around personality disorders has been enormously helpful to me in my healing journey.

I'm struggling with finding the correct name for a recent behavior my IgnoringNarcFather has displayed.

I went NC with IgnoringNarcFather in Dec.  I didn't even tell him that I went NC, I just stopped contacting him. He hasn't reached out since then, not for anything. 

Yesterday, on Father's Day, he sent me a text message.  It was short and sweet....something like, 'Happy Father's Day to your Husband.'

I am not sure what to call this behavior.  He knows that I am a mother and ignored me on Mother's Day but texted me a message for my husband (who he has met once). It seems like he wants me to know that he is capable of sending people appropriate holiday greetings, just not me. 

What would you call this behavior?  How would you deal with it?

I ended up just ignoring the text. 

[Andeza]

Welp, I would call it rude, and also baiting. I don't know what the proper terminology is, but that's enough for me to classify it, process it, and then do what you have done. Ignore it.

On a second turn around my brain, I wonder if it doesn't fall within the bounds of infantilization? Treating you as less than a functioning adult in order to... fill in the blank with whatever his usual motive is.

[justducky]

Seems like a hoover to me. He's trying to get your attention so you engage with him.

It might be a passive-aggressive way for him to say, "Ahem. It's Father's Day. I am wishing your husband a happy Father's Day. You should wish me a happy Father's Day."

[Starboard Song]

Make-Weight Kindness
I think PD folks are aware of their faults at some level. My MIL would slight my wife in significant ways. But then they'd bend over backwards in kindness to me or others. And on occasion, a viscious and detailed outburst would be followed by a generic, vague act of kindness.

It's like she understood she was failing in her obligation to be decently kind. And so she would do little things to make up the expected weight of kindness. Of course, it had to be stuff she could stomach, so it was directed to me, or our son, or to our family generally. Not to my wife.

[Cat of the Canals]

It's passive-aggressive behavior for sure. I also agree that it sounds like baiting/hoovering. By ignoring you on Mother's Day but acknowledging your husband on Father's Day, he is perhaps hoping you will call/write/text to give him a piece of your mind. Or it could be that he simply hopes that little barb will stick in your skin and cause you a bit of pain, and whether or not your explicitly react is not much matter to him. He got his little bit of meanness in, so he's happy now.

[Empie2204]

Yes, it IS passive aggressive, and it' s the entitled "I'll teach you a lesson."
They think they deserve best wishes for their special days, without them sending wishes to others.