Younger children turning on me.

[SlothsRUs]

I feel my whole world fell apart at the weekend my middle daughter turned on me followed by youngest and totally supported by husband.

They accused me of sabotaging their relationship with husband’s family, something I absolutely refute.

I do admit that I stopped ‘facilitating’ the relationship because the behaviour of the in-laws had a negative impact on my eldest daughter from a previous relationship.

All this came about when middle daughter started spending time with DH’s niece who teaches at adjoining uni to the one Middle daughter started at last year. She told MD that I stopped them having a relationship.

In-laws were always nice to my eldest one but there was different treatment to the other grandchildren so it was difficult to go round there. There was an occasion when we declined wedding invitations for younger kids from DH’s cousin when they could have been flower girls as it seemed unfair to eldest. We didn’t go on Christmas Day as eldest one wouldn’t have been so generously treated.

SiL always asked to have younger ones but not eldest in spite of having kids same age as eldest.

It was easier to leave all three with my mother but husband suggested we split them and I always refused. He was lovely to my eldest though.

When BiL car back to England his eldest handed camera to my eldest to take photos of the ‘real’ cousins.

Eldest is now single parent and has had unsuccessful attempts to form relationships with her father.

My husband could always have ensured they saw that side but he tended to go alone after work.

Youngest daughter said my eldest was an embarrassment. Don’t know how to move forward. Middle one gone back to uni after reading week.

You’re not really responding to things that I’ve said 🤷🏻

I am, but don’t worry, I don’t need you to further expand on it. You clearly think the only person who matters here is the eldest daugher, and the feelings of her other children aren’t worthy of consideration. Op should definitely double down on this too, that’ll work out great for her.

Again, not close to anything I’ve said 🤷🏻

Sure thing hun 🥰

I think the people who treated siblings differently are the ones in the wrong. How anyone could do that is beyond me. You shouldn't have to explain to a child why they are treated differently than other siblings. I doubt I would have done anything differently. I'm sure you did the best in the circumstances at the time. All you can do now is try and explain it to them. Hopefully as adults they might eventually understand

Not going to some relative’s wedding as a 3 or 5 year old, which I very much doubt you’d have any awareness of, let alone care about

I was a bridesmaid at just turned 5yo and I can remember it very well and the excitement I felt at being asked and being there at the wedding. I remember talking to my new auntie on the top table and feeling terribly grown up. A wasp flew into my drink, so she asked for me to have another one, and I danced with my uncle, and the best man told me some funny stories about my uncle. It was very exciting.

A 5yo would definitely have cared about being a flower girl. She'll have heard friends talking about it, and read books with it in. I totally can see even a teen looking back and feeling they missed out.
It's the best age to be it really. All the fun, and none of the responsibilities.

I think it's quite different when you have a small child that lives in the family home with their mother, stepfather and siblings, and doesn't have a paternal family of their own.

We are not talking here about a little girl who was going off to see her dad and paternal grandparents every other weekend.

She was missing a whole half of her family and she was 3 years old when op met her dh.

It is understandable that the husbands family would feel a strong bond with their biological grandchildren, but imo openly treating them so differently to the point of lavishing the younger girls with gifts in front of the older sibling, is cruel.

But it just shows how many people feel like that. It's rather sad. The old blood is thicker than water.

Interesting that little Arthur Labinjo Hughes step mother treated Arthur in such a way. Going outside to buy her own 'blood' children ice creams and other treats while Arthur watched on.

Yet here are people condoning that type of behaviour as normal.

Anyone with a shred of maternal instinct wouldn't allow their own 3 children to be treated differently.

Of course, it would have been lovely to go and a shame to miss out in hindsight. Having that experience I’m sure would have been a great memory for them, and it would have been fun and enriching.

But lots of people are not flower girls –not having that experience does not mean they ‘suffered’ as children.

Sorry, just to clarify too, I meant they’d be unlikely to have had any awareness of not going – I’m sure if they had gone they would have noticed!

@starlightcan but the whole hoo-ha about the wedding is that eldest WASNT asked to be a flowergirl but was invited and that was enough for op to refuse interaction with the family, but now it's not important at all being a flower girl and the other girls shouldn't even think about it?

It doesn't sound like there was any hoo har.

The sil didn't invite the eldest at all until prompted. The younger two were invited to be flower girls after two other children couldn't make it.

Op declined for the whole family.

There's no Hoo hat and the younger children certainly did not suffer, because they didn't attend a wedding when they were 3 and 5.

For the people saying that the younger children didn't suffer or lose out from only rarely seeing their grandparents (and other family like aunts, uncles), cousins:

Here is a thread with OP's mum moving away where OP is sad about her DD not being able to have a close relationship with the grandmother, due to seeing her less in the future due to the distance...

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4941171-to-be-upset-mum-selling-her-house-and-moving-200-miles-away

The OPs mum is grandmother to all the girls. Not just the eldest

@brokenhearted2

I was replying to this bit from the OP:
"
In those days work would have a dinner dance in Park Lane, would people genuinely have sent the younger two to a house where they would have been spoiled and sent the eldest one to be on her own at my mother’s? I couldn’t.
"

And what I'd meant was that surely the eldest daughter would be spoilt as well, by her grandmother?

It’s up to the daughters to decide whether it was/is a big deal for them. That you don’t personally think it’s a big deal is irrelevant, to them it’s something that matters, and is likely just one example of them being prevented from doing something with their paternal family.

Op did respond to that and said that her mother was not the spoiling type.

They didn’t abuse the eldest daughter. They were kind to her and included her if gift giving. They just didn’t consider her their grandchild. It isn’t their fault that her paternal family has little to do with her, and it’s not their responsibility to compensate for that.

Yes it is up to them, but to say that they suffered, diminished real suffering.

Unfortunately, whether people like it or not, parents sometimes have to make decisions with what they have at the time. Op felt that she was protecting her eldest daughter who genuinely had suffered.

Are you seriously equating abuse and murder of a child to ops eldest getting smaller presents and at 11 not being asked to be a flower girl?

So being treated kindly but not as a grandchild by people who aren’t her grandparents is ‘suffering’, but being denied the opportunity to form closer relationships with your actual family isn’t? That’s convenient.

They’re fully entitled to believe they suffered as a result of their mother’s actions. She ‘protected’ her eldest daughter at the expense of her younger children, and now she’s dealing with the consequences of that. While she was entitled to make the decisions she did, she isn’t entitled to have them agree with her or think kindly of her because of it.

In your position op, I think I would have done the same.

that said, I also think that you need to accept that your dds are angry with you. Hear them out.

not sure about your DH though, he’s extricated himself rather nicely hasn’t he?

I have 2 DC. I treat them much the same, according to their needs because they are both my DC. DH has 1 DC and 1 step DC. He doesn't treat them the same and I wouldn't expect him to. While he might have opinions and be supportive and be a lovely step-dad, my oldest is my responsibility and my say goes.

Since I don't even expect DH to treat them the same I certainly don't expect his family to. I expect them to be kind and considerate as I would anyone who I allowed to be in contact with my DC.

My oldest knows she has a family and step family and understands these are different relationships but still people who care. The same way she knows she has aunts / uncles / family friends / her own friends who all have different relationships with her. They are all still important. Oldest DC doesn't have much relationship with her father or his family but she knows she is just as loved and special as her younger sibling even if her "family" is smaller.

I absolutely understand OPs desire to protect her oldest and to try and avoid her feeling "left out" of the new family OP created but in trying to protect the oldest it has impacted on the younger DCs opportunities for a relationship with their family. It's understandable they resent that.

While the past can't be undone it is probably helpful to acknowledge that to the younger DC, and that while it was done with thoughts of kindness, wanting to make things ok, it didn't consider fully the impact on them and actually wasn't fair to them.

I think half the discussion on this page is being generated not because there’s a genuine disagreement but because some people just don’t know what the word suffering means.

It means actively experiencing pain or distress.

The younger girls might have missed out on the opportunity to attend a wedding and be flower girls when they were tots, but it is very unlikely that at 3 and 5 they experienced ’suffering’ as a result of this.

They are distressed about it. If they consider themselves to have suffered because of OP’s actions, or consider their family relationships to have suffered, that’s their call to make. It’s not up to anyone else to decide on their behalf.