Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. A phone that grows with your child.

Meet the Other Phone.
A phone that grows with your child.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

AIBU to think that my mum got her enough?

904 replies

LookingForwardto2016 · 26/12/2015 17:33

My mum came to visit today, and she brought the children's Christmas presents from her.

I have three children and my dp has one child plus the three we have together. For our three, my mum got them a toy, some pyjamas, some chocolates, some colouring things and £30 each. My mum got my dp's child "just" some colouring things and some chocolates.

Am I being unreasonable to think my mum got her enough? My dp agrees with me because my mum doesn't really know her but wanted to make sure she still had something to open. Plus my mum is aware that she has a whole other family on her mum's side that she will have got presents from. But she was looking around for "the rest" of hers and was really ungrateful about the ones she actually did get. DP had to explain to her that she can't always have everything the same when her siblings have different family to her especially when they don't know her very well.

I'm not saying that she doesn't like her, but she should be able to give her grandchildren a little bit more because they are her grandchildren surely. And my children should be able to benefit from their mum's side of the family in the same way their sister has with her mum's side of the family.

What do others think?

OP posts:
fusionconfusion · 27/12/2015 22:09

Why is it offensive to compare step and adoptive and foster kids? The mind boggles. Some people are weird. My SD is absolutely 100% my children's grandparent and does everything any grandparent ever does even though I was 19 when he met my mother. If he can forge as strong a bond as he has with my kids wtaf is wrong with all of you people who think step kids can't have strong deep bonds with stepfamily? It is just odd. You marry someone with a child you should be absolutely prepared to have an unconditionally loving relationship with them and work to create a bond. If you can't it is a failure of heart and imagination.

merrymouse · 27/12/2015 22:18

An adopted child is your child. A stepchild is the child of your spouse and somebody else. To pretend otherwise devalues the adoptive relationship and the relationship that a child has with their own parents.

That doesn't mean that a step parent can't be very close to their step children or even adopt their step children.

However step parent does not = parent, in law or otherwise.

NeedsAsockamnesty · 27/12/2015 22:25

you marry someone with a child you should be absolutely prepared to have an unconditionally loving relationship with them and work to create a bond. If you can't it is a failure of heart and imagination

YOU may very well do, you may even be lucky enough for that to extend onto that childs children when the child is a grown up.

Many people who haven't chosen to comence a relationship with someone with a child but just so happen to be the parent of someone who has may also feel that doing so is appropreate but many won't.

We are not talking about someone who has decided to share a life with someone who already had a child, we are talking about that persons mother.

Fwiw I think the op sounds like a perticularly good step mother, not many would be willing to vacate their house and take sole responsibility for all 3 of their together children several times a year inorder to make sure the step child gets valuble 1:1 time with her actual parent.

fusionconfusion · 27/12/2015 22:40

That's just tosh, Merrymouse. It doesn't devalue anything nor does suggest anything about the value of other relationships with living parents etc. they are not the same, but to suggest it is offensive/devaluing is just ridiculous. You don't devalue a diamond by calling it a ruby - it is still a diamond. These are all just meaningless words made into a series of strawmen. You can choose to be loving, kind and caring towards any child in your life. It is additive, it doesn't take away from love for any other child. Honestly, the lengths arguments can be taken to in order to justify being a bit indifferent or closed-hearted to a kid. There are no prescriptive rules. You can either b a decent sort of person or a bit self-seeking and self-centred. That choice is always available to any adult who comes into a child's life.

merrymouse · 27/12/2015 22:47

No it is not tosh. When you are adopted you get a new parent(s). When your parent marries somebody else you do not get a new mother or father, you get a step parent. Potentially a very loving step parent who will be very important to you, but not a new parent.

These are all just meaningless words made into a series of strawmen

No, they are words that have a specific meaning.

merrymouse · 27/12/2015 22:48

You can choose to be loving, kind and caring towards any child in your life.

Yes. That doesn't make you their mum or dad.

Heyho111 · 27/12/2015 22:52

I would treat them equally. I couldn't give one less than the others. That's just me. Your partner came as a package.

fusionconfusion · 27/12/2015 22:56

Nope, sorry. People having or stating differing opinions does not 'devalue' the status of any relationship in the real world and it is a huge stretch to call it offensive.

What you say about step parents does not apply to all. Step parents become parents in some cases, at least as much so as adoptive parents who come into children's lives later on. Sometimes they are even the same people eg step parents where a biological parent has died often do adopt.

In any case you are missing the wood for the trees. I could just as easily say you are devaluing stepfamilial bonding and that it is offensive but that would be tosh too. You have different opinions about the value of adoptive vs stepfamilial relationships, that's all. It doesn't make it 'true', it is subjective opinion.

merrymouse · 27/12/2015 23:04

No, I have agreed that some step parents have a parent relationship with their step children.

I have disagreed that all step parents should have a parent relationship with their step children and in particular that becoming a step parent is like adopting a child.

This last point is not a subjective opinion, it is fact.

NeedsAsockamnesty · 27/12/2015 23:12

You are not an actual parent of a child that has different parents unless you have actually adopted them.

The two things are so very different. It's the reason why adoptions are legally taken so seriously

RavioliOnToast · 27/12/2015 23:14

I don't think yabu, but I have a dd to a previous relationship, she is unaware that my dh isn't her dad and it gives me the fucking rage if I see my girls treated differently. I probably am BU, but my pil did treat my DD like their own before I was pregnant and now their whole attitude has changed. I'd rather then get both girls nothing then treat them differently.

RavioliOnToast · 27/12/2015 23:17

Than *

VinoTime · 27/12/2015 23:19

I haven't read the full thread, but I'll add my two pence worth:

I don't think the difference in gifts is the problem here per say. I think your mum buying a token gift for your DP's little one is lovely.

I think the problem here is that you have just made a 10 year old child feel awful - like she deserves less than your children with DP. If you knew she was only getting a small minding from your mum, then I would question why on earth you allowed the children to open the gifts there and then. You could have waited until DSD had headed home to her mums. I would sincerely hope you could understand the way this would make her feel, OP. It isn't about the volume or the cost, it's about the blatant unfairness in her eyes between what her siblings received and what she did. You can't put several children in a room, ask them to open presents and not expect them to do a compare and contrast.

Your DSD would likely have been utterly delighted with what she had received, had she not been made to feel like a total outcast when she realised her siblings had received so much more than she did Sad I know the relationship your mum has with her biological grandchildren and her DSGC will probably be very different, but I don't think any child needs that thrown in their face, especially at Christmas time. Every child needs to feel loved and wanted. And I'm sorry, but at 10 years old I feel she is still far too little for her wee mind to comprehend that she ins't as important as her siblings to some people.

You're not unreasonable to think your mum bought her enough. She did. But you were totally unreasonable for not controlling the situation better and making DSD feel pants.

RavioliOnToast · 27/12/2015 23:32

Spot on Vino

mathanxiety · 28/12/2015 05:29

I don't understand why children can't just be gently told that they are not equally important to all of the adults that they'll meet.

Wow.
I cannot for the life of me imagine a gentle way to tell that to a child, when the more 'important' children are her own half siblings, with whom she shares a father.

How could a father let that happen?

RabbitSaysWoof · 28/12/2015 07:32

Sockamnesty put it perfectly last night at 18:01. Very simply and age appropriately.

Mehitabel6 · 28/12/2015 07:42

Spot on Vino
And it is indeed'wow' mathanxiety. The poor child is already a visitor in her home and has to see her siblings having her father all the time and then she has her nose rubbed in it!
I had a child before I met my DH and we came as a package. We came as a package to everyone and I simply wouldn't have had another child had I thought some members of his family would treat it like the first child. I can't imagine then telling DC1 that actually DC2 was 'more important' - they are both my children and one is certainly not more important!
It is OP's DP who should have made this plain years ago. It isn't as if their eldest child was a teenager when they met, she must have been very young when she got her first sibling.

Mehitabel6 · 28/12/2015 07:50

I think it is al in the opening post- it doesn't start with 'we have 4 children' and then go into explain.
Clearly it is only DP who has 4 children and he doesn't see the problem of making his eldest an outsider.

charlestonchaplin · 28/12/2015 07:51

Mehitabel6, you put your child in that difficult position then try to make it everyone else's responsibility. If people weren't so led by their loins the children wouldn't 'suffer'. I guess it's the same sense of entitlement operating.

nooka · 28/12/2015 07:54

My dh's mum died just after we left university, and his father met and fell ion love with his new partner very shortly after. She is a nice person, but she is in no way shape or form dh's mother or our children's grandmother. That's not because of any failing on her part, it's just not how the relationship has panned out.

My cousin on the other hand was totally taken on as a daughter by my lovely aunt after her mum died and her father remarried. She then had several siblings who for me are 100% my cousins, but our grandparents always treated her differently. And we all understood that there was a special relationship there, with no resentment at all (by other cousins or her younger siblings).

Different families can work in different ways without being right or wrong.

RidersOnTheStorm · 28/12/2015 07:54

OP has said she should have thought ahead and not let her DCs open so many presents in front of DSD. I cannot understand people saying that DM should have bought the same value presents for all the DCs. Does DSD's grandmother who is unrelated to the other DCs buy them all presents of the same value? I doubt it.

Of course parents should treat all the DCs the same but it seems a step too far to demand the extended family, who rarely see the DSC, should do the same. No one gets to dictate to anyone else how to spend their money.

I buy for DN's 3 children from 2 different marriages. I see them a lot. I have only met her DSD once, at the wedding, and I don't buy for her. Neither do her (very well off)extended family buy for DN's DCs from her first marriage, who they have only met once or twice.

I have no grandchildren, currently. In my will I have left money to DN and, if she predeceases me, it goes to her three DCs. Should I also have included a DC who is a total stranger to me just because his father married my DN? No.

Original poster
LookingForwardto2016 · 28/12/2015 07:57

Mehitabel Just because I don't call dsd my first born it doesn't mean she's an outsider. There are 4 children in the family but only 3 of them are mine. Dsd isn't my child and isn't her stepdad's child- she's dp's and his ex's child. That doesn't make her any less part of the family though.

OP posts:
Mehitabel6 · 28/12/2015 08:02

Exactly- but that is not what you put in the OP.
I think the problem was that they opened the presents together and 3 siblings got much better presents than the 4 th.
I didn't put my child in 'a difficult position' - it was never a problem with any of the extended family.

Original poster
LookingForwardto2016 · 28/12/2015 08:16

Exactly- but that is not what you put in the OP.

Maybe you shouldn't jump to conclusions.

OP posts:
Mehitabel6 · 28/12/2015 08:30

I can only go by what is written.
You must have been a bit uncomfortable about it or you wouldn't have asked the question.
It is a personal thing. I would treat them equally if I knew they were opening presents together.

Swipe left for the next trending thread