To be hurt by granddaughter’s comments

[4seasons]

Looking after GD at the moment as her parents... my son and DIL are tied up by work commitments during the school holidays. She’s a great girl and I enjoy her company.

Today she has laughingly told me some of the things our DS has said to her about when he was a child. Complaints about the sort of food I cooked for him etc. For background my DH and I worked FT .... professional jobs which didn’t pay well when we were young so money was tight. In spite of this I always cooked fresh vegetables etc from scratch and my DC were fed and dressed well . I bought all my clothes in sales and paid for private education for my son ( daughter went to a good all girls state school ). We also budgeted so that he could follow his hobby and have the equipment he needed.
I feel very hurt that he has complained to his daughter about his childhood like this. As a result of his education and his hard work he now has a good job and earns well . I am thinking back about the things we couldn’t afford or do for ourselves because our spare cash was going on our children.

AIBU to feel upset by his comments?

Don't take it to heart, no parent is perfect. Also, unless you heard someone saying something listening to hearsay only leads to misery imho.

I noticed the remark about private school for the son and a state girls’ school for the daughter but am old enough to remember how good an all girls’ school would have been then. It might have been a grammar school or a Catholic school but probably would have been the equivalent of the boys’s private school and the girl would have worked hard as she wouldn’t have had much choice then when discipline was strict and standards high.

My DH and I joke that we worked our socks off to pay for our two to attend prep school so they could enjoy the same advantages we had at free state primaries in the sixties.

Whenever my lot complain about my cooking I often talk about days of overcooked stew n bacon n cabbage. (can't stand to eat either today) but it was made from fresh produce cheap & healthy n alot of effort put into it. Honestly if my mum got offended (she wouldnt) I'd say get over herself. She knows I appreciate everything they did as parents for us. Doesn't mean I loved every part of it at the time!

You are probably overreacting OP. My Parents were always telling us about when they were Children at the end of the war. We would curl our noses up at the thought of rations and Spam. It was done with affection and made us laugh.

which didn’t pay well & paid for private education

Doesn't add up.

He probably said it as a joke. I highly doubt he meant anything offensive.
How old is dgd? Sounds like the kind of thing I would have said to my grandma without realising: "mum said you used to make her sit at the table till she finished all of the soup she made. She said it was horrible"

What @Meltedicicle said on page 2

My adult son has been heard to complain to his kids , about the "rough neighborhood" where he was forced to grow up by his thoughtless parents. It was actually a fairly normal, though working-class, suburb which was what we could afford at the time.

I would never dream of taking offense - he says that to his kids to emphasise that they are very fortunate now . If I hear him talking like that I just roll my eyes and say " Oh you poor thing, it must have been awful ! " and move on. You should do the same - I'm sure your DS was just talking like my son does, all in jest.

My husband's older brother was discussing his childhood with us one day and making similar comments and said that he thought they were poor and couldn't afford much. He spent his entire life sapping off my in laws, couldn't pay the gas bill so they paid then couldn't pay back so they waived payment then the whole scenario over and over again, believe me he had many thousands from them. My husband on the other hand was the youngest and because they were buoying this brother up together with another older brother, mine got no help whatsoever. Guess who made it in life and then found they were all jealous of his hard earned lifestyle, yes, you've got it, the youngest. My in laws were not poor just careful and going without in order to help others. I would be annoyed in your shoes. By the way my in laws left their estate to the elder two because they felt mine didn't need it, nice world hey.