What do you do when one set of grandparents completely favour certain grandkids over the others? Always visiting them, looking after them, taking them places. Birthday gifts worth little with hardly any thought going into them to gifts worth a lot more etc I have never stopped them from being apart of my kids' lives. It kills me but i don't say anything to avoid drama.
5 Replies
In my experience with this it's usually the grand kids that have it harder that get the most attention and gifts bestowed upon them, not because they're favourites but because their GP are trying to make up for the short comings of their parents.
We have had this with our son and his cousins, cousins are spoiled heaps more but we have our shit together, we have a great relationship, we both work, our son is well loved, cared for and has everything he needs. His cousins, not so much unfortunately, so GP definitely give them more.
I'm sure this isn't always the case and some GP's can just be assholes but you have to look at the whole picture to know which it is.
I think it comes from the relationship with the kids parents. If theyre in each others pcokets then the kids will be favoured too. Of course some grandparents can see this and balance it out no matter who is in their daily lives more, others dont want to.
You could try to explain to your kids that it is what it is, Im sure theyll figure it out themselves eventually. It sucks when family arent what you hope for your kid but you can definitely help them find that special connection with other people.
We have this with my in laws. 6 grandchildrenin total, 2 grandchildren favoured, their family gets a lot of help from my in laws.
I've only ever said anything once, when one Christmas they asked me to assist getting gifts for 2 other grandchildren for them. Spend $50 max. Then they told me about the 2 new leap pads and assortment of games and new iPad to share that the 2 favoured grandchildren would be receiving. I confronted them on the disparity, to which their answer was that they need more help. I explained that whilst I appreciated that, if they need those things, then buy them. but don't lump them into Christmas for the four other children, some of whom are early teens and therefore understand values and can see that you've spent substantially more on those 2 grandchildren. These kids already feel like they live in the shadow of those 2 grandchildren, who monopolize their time - one grandchild lives interstate and asked to visit on school holidays and was told they'd be too busy with the other 2 children to have her.
The message was somewhat received, they got the iPad a few months after Christmas. And christmases have been a little more even since.
My kids ask to see them, we try contacting them, takes three weeks to return a call if at all.
For the sake of having a relationship with their grandparents, we keep at it. And you should keep at it too. There will soon come a time when they'll understand there's clear favouritism and/or a lack of interest in them and be let down....But hopefully you've got a great other side of the family and an extended network of family and friends, who do/will have a special relationship with your little ones and that they won't feel any void in their life because of those particular grandparents. I'm grateful that we do.
My mother in law does this but she favours my son over my daughter 🙄 She's literally always rude to my daughter too but my son can son I wrong. I try to limit her access to them but my partner insists we still go there
My nan has 10 grand kids she always favoured my cousin and I, it was obvious my mum hated it as she could never even remember my brothers name.
As we got older we had a crown and at Xmas the grand kids who received the most attention all year had to wear the crown Xmas day.
We all now have our own kids, we live far away, our kids have become the new favorite.
It's a running joke.
But apparently not so funny when we were little.
As for our parents.
My mum is fantastic, hubby's dad is ok (Has his moments), hubby's mum wouldn't know who our kids were if she ran into them.
We do not live near our families for good reason!