Hi there. Please can you help me get my thoughts in order. I'm really annoyed and I can't work out if it's justified or not.
My stepmum has 2 children with her exH, both adults and they have families of their own. They do childcare during the week to various extents for both of them. We haven't had any offers of help, we have young children too and a huge nursery bill. It annoys me but there is a whole backstory that I don't want to put on the internet, I've told my dad I'm not happy with it but it won't change for a while yet.
We've recently found out that my dad has been on holiday with one of the families again, that's twice this year. I don't want this to come across like I'm upset because we haven't had a holiday with him - it's not that, this isn't an it's not fair whinge. It's the continuous de-prioritising of my children. They barely see their grandparents more than once a month for a few hours. It hurts my heart to think that because my kids are still small, they don't have any idea their grandparents are so utterly useless with them and will happily spend time with their other grandchildren. I've spoken to him about it before and he says he'll get better at seeing them but nothing happens. When my FIL was dying, we asked them to have the children so we could visit him in the hospital and despite them saying for weeks that if we needed them they would drop everything, whenever we asked they couldn't for a multitude of reasons most of which related to their other grandchildren. My dad did seem sorry but still couldn't help, he never stands up to my stepmum. I was very angry at the time and didn't hold back in telling him what I thought. For context when they had a similar situation with their DIL and one of her parents dying, they dropped everything including cancelling our Christmas celebrations with them as they were needed to look after their grandchildren.
AIBU to be so upset? Does anyone have any advice? My relationship with my dad is getting worse and most of the time I just feel stressed and anxious. If I didn't have the kids I don't think I would see him very much, my siblings don't.
Thanks x