To wish my mum would stop going on about my niece?

[twinkledag]

Every time I say something about my son, 'oh niece does that too'. Example, my 3.3 year old DS spelt his name out at nursery and the nursery worker told us and said she was surprised he could spell it.

Obviously I'm proud about that, tell my mum 'oh niece does that too'. Niece is 22 months. She can spell her name if you tell her the letters one by one and she repeats it.

FFS. Can't I just say one thing about DS and have her be proud of him?

Back story - niece is daughter of DB who is the golden child.

ARGH!!

Those who also experience this, what is your solution? Is cutting contact too drastic? It really gets me down and I feel so sad for my son.

That's abit strange. It's usually the daughters child the mother is more closer to. Her son didn't give birth to his ds another woman did but her daughter gave birth to her dd.
If you understand what I mean.

Agree with DKrogers. Any time i see my mum, or ring her, all i hear about is sis2s dcs. Never anything about mine, or my other sisters. Sis1 reports the same. For some reason Sis 2s kids are the favoured grandchildren and i have to say i do find it a little irritating,even if i go up with some/all of mine to see her, and she is chatting to them, it will be 90% about sis2s kids 😳🤔

Sunrisesand- my MIL always praises and talks about 2 girls who are not her grandchildren and never praises my son. I feel sad that she does this. It is yet another way of finding fault. Luckily my son hasn’t noticed yet, but my husband has

Those who also experience this, what is your solution? Is cutting contact too drastic? It really gets me down and I feel so sad for my son.
Oh I'm sorry, it's hard isn't it.
What I have recently done is simply adjust (well, dramatically lower) my expectations to alleviate some of the disappointment.
I no longer ask aforementioned parent to join us on outings because I know they'll decline with a hollow excuse and spend that time instead with favoured child/ grandchild.
IME this is related to ours being a "blended" family, and my stepparent disliking me.

MiL does exactly the same.

Whatever my kids have done, DH’s sister’s (the golden child) children have done it bigger and better - it’s like my cat is blacker than your cat.

DD1 is really arty and recently won a competition which means her work will be displayed in a gallery. DH mentioned it to his Mum and all we got back was a reminder that nephew got an A in his art GCSE. No ‘wow, well done’ no ‘congratulations’.

DD2 won a rosette in a horse event, I posted a photo of her with it on Facebook - MiL replied with an update on how neice was doing in school

It pisses me off.

My mum couldn’t be more different

Sorry to hear that Dr.

I want to take a step back and no longer take my son to my MILs. But my DH is unhappy with this solution.

My own family was terrible for it growing up and I am keen my son never feels the way I did.

My parents do this - for over a decade.

Worst was one of mine birthday with IL - they made more of a fuss about unbirthday of DN -even my IL were upset by it.

Oddly my parents got very upset when both sets of my DGP did this to us, my parents, children.

I tried saying something but they got very defensive - apparently they couldn't say anything. Worse still we used to live near them and they'd take DN on days out just up teh road but fail to visit us for months and months. Trips over we made we got chick out when DN arrived.

My MIL does this a bit, although I think it's a) to make conversation and b) because she thinks we are far more interested in her other GC than we are. So I try not to take it too personally....although I absolutely accept that it's bloody irritating.

Given it's your own mum, could you try to tell her - gently - how it makes you feel?

This with bells on!!!! My own DM is like this. She has zero time for any of my 3 DCs but a simple mention of DN and she goes all gooey. My youngest DC is currently being assessed for ASD and I had an appointment which was only for me to attend. I asked DMif she would watch other 2 DCs for an hour at the most after school in case I wasn't home in time. Got a 'nope can't do it'. Fair enough if she was busy but she was in the house playing candy crush on her phone the whole time so no other plans. My DB asked her on Friday could she babysit DN so him and his DW could go to a Halloween party. No problem son I'll keep her overnight so you don't have to get up too early with a hangover. Why??? 😡 😡

My DS and DN are three months apart, DS is 11 mo and DN 8mo. Already I'm fed up of it.

DN sleeps through the night, good for him.
DN got a tooth first, good for him.
DN doesn't have any shop bought food, good for him!

To be fair, itsmostly my DB and DSIL- he's their first while DS is our second. I think they're coaching him!

How she behaves doesn’t feel like love to me.

My Mum does this. I mention my DDs and she immediately tells me about my sister's DDs.

WHY!???

I'm an only child but my (now late) Grandmother used to do this with my cousins and it drove me MAD! I think it can also be a little unfair on the 'golden child/children' too as I've grown up thinking my cousins are both stuck up wankers and they're probably perfectly nice people. I suppose. I've no idea why she did it, I know she loved me and we were quite close, perhaps she thought I would be equally keen to rhapsodise about their superior being-ness. She was WRONG.

My nan used to do this to my mum and me, her friend's daughter and grand daughter were always nicer/more sociable/more intelligent at anything. It wasn't pleasant but we got used to it. It took until said grand daughter dropped out of uni to work instead and failed her driving test the first time for my nan to acknowledge that actually she was wrong to act as she had. Sorry it's happening to you, best way is to make it into a game, stop it hurting you.

I wonder if there is a generational thing going on here as well? These days, everyone can be in touch with anyone they want to be. Certainly, I find I know more about people's lives than I'd necessarily wish to! But in my mum's day, it was different - no Internet, phone was expensive etc. So people would "share news". My mum is constantly telling me things about people I vaguely know but have very little interest in. My aunt does the same. I'm pretty sure they both talk about me/my DC to other people, so I don't think it's lack of interest.

FIL does this with his step-grandaughter 🙄
It’s annoying. They’ve visited my child 3 times in his nearly 2 year life, DP is always expected to take DS there and when they return DP mentions FIL is hurt that DS wouldn’t go near him. THAT MIGHT BE BECAUSE YOU SPEND THE WHOLE TIME HES THERE WAFFLING ON ABOUT ANOTHER CHILD AND YOU NEVER SEE HIM! (Sorry it angers me).

Sounds like there is a backstory of your Mum favouring your brother and now she's doing it again with your niece. You are right to be annoyed. Roll your eyes and say of course nobody could complete with x but we weren't talking about her we were talking about my DS. Cut down on contact with her if she continues to be annoying. I wonder if she does it on purpose.

compete

With mine it was proximity. She saw DN's a few times a week, and looked after them when they were young (pre school). We live hundreds of miles away, so she only ever saw mine occasionally, when they came to visit us (their house being too small for all of us to go down and stay). We would hear in great detail about what DN's were doing - I would counter (usually) with, 'yes, XXX is doing that too/enjoys that too/has got that too', only to be ignored. But it was because she could talk about DN's with authority because she spent so much time with them. My kids were in front of her, there was no point in saying 'XXX does this', she could see them doing it. But she was all for comparisons!

My parents do this, this thread is an eye-opener for me because I thought I was being precious. Nice to know others feel the same.

I get it in one direction from both of my parents regarding my DS1 & 2. Dnephew is between the two in age so any story about either DS1 or 2 can be one-upped by a story about dnephew.

On the other hand though, I have an older DD too (16) and I just know that my mother did this to my older (half-) sister about DD. I would find that Dsis would suddenly be really off with me for long periods after a visit from my mother- I bet anything my mother was over there telling dsis how great DD is.

Have same here. My parents both divorced and re-coupled.
Two off the top of my head: In pride of place on my mum's dressing table is a picture of her and husband with my niece aged 15 mths... pic was taken in my house during my Dd's 1st birthday.
I started DD's swimming and gymnastics lessons at age 4. My sister hears about it "oh I must get booked in". A year later my dad: "Oh yeah does gymnastics and swimming like does."
None of it surprising. Most of family now NC or extremely limited.

Oh my god @twinkledag, are you me??? Identical situation except my niece and son are only 6 weeks apart in age.

What drives me mad, is that despite what SiL's kids do, they can do no wrong and everything is always someone else's fault. If my kids fuck up, she's down on them like a ton of bricks.

I know, from speaking to SiL, that she's absolutely pulling her hair out about niece and nephew's behaviour at the moment (police involvement with one of them), but according to MiL, it's always someone else's fault

Nephew sent my DD1 abusive messages, DD blocked him. When MiL found out - my DD must have done something to deserve it and by blocking nephew DD upset him

My kids (the same age as SiL's) are no angels, but they're good kids, and they still can't do right

MiL's ability to rewrite the course of events is pretty amazing really

Fortunately we don't live nearby now and only see her a couple of times a year but it winds me right up