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.

Ah yes, blended families.
You did what you thought was best.
Their father couldn’t be bothered and his family didn’t want to make the extra effort and yet the blame has fallen at your feet?
And to make matters worse the abuse/insults about your eldest daughter from her own sibling. What is their real issue with her?

Question the OP hasn’t mention is did her husband treat her eldest daughter the same as his biological daughters? That would be telling because if he didn’t then the apple doesn’t fall far. Whether or not these are step grandchildren or biological grandchildren, who would want a child to feel different from their siblings , to be excluded. I am so surprised by lots of people on this thread.

This is the problem with blended families. You can do whatever you want with your "unit", but you do not have the right to expect people outside of that unit to accept things your way. It would have been better to manage your eldest daughter's expectations with regard to her stepfamily. When it was clear that they were not going to see her as full family, you could have explained to her about there being different types of families. But instead, because they did not see and do things your way, your younger children had to miss out on a lot. That was not fair. Both you and your husband did those children wrong.

Whether or not these are step grandchildren or biological grandchildren, who would want a child to feel different from their siblings , to be excluded.

She wasn't excluded, she was just treated differently because it was a different relationship.

To be clear. I'm saying that the eldest child suffered because of being rejected by her father.

@Whoamiwhoevenami so the answer is no one gets to see their parental grandparents?

I completely understand why you weren't going to do the running around @SlothsRUs , when your eldest was treated differently. Your in laws could have made different decisions that made the relationship a lot better.

I think all you can do with your dds 2 and 3 is to apologise if you got that wrong, you did what felt right at the time. Point out that in laws could have behaved differently, had they wanted a closer relationship.

It is worrying that DD's 2 and 3 seem to have bought into the notion that DD1 is worth less as a person because she is a single mum and maybe because she doesn't have a relationship with her dad.

Other than that, keep being dependable mum, take it on the chin. They will come around eventually.

OP says this in her first post about her DH:

He was lovely to my eldest though.

So what has happened between the sisters for them to treat her a 'devil incarnate' @SlothsRUs purely because she's a single mother? Where have they got that belief from? I don't think you can blame inlaws as they've not seen them?
Truthfully, what was growing up like them all? Did you have much more give for eldests behaviour? What did you mean by 'unsuitable relationship l

When it was clear that they were not going to see her as full family, you could have explained to her about there being different types of families. But instead, because they did not see and do things your way, your younger children had to miss out on a lot. That was not fair. Both you and your husband did those children wrong.

I completely disagree with this. What was unfair was grown adults putting those three kids in that position. If OP had let the younger two be prioritised, how would they have felt about their sister being left out? It's horrible to feel favoured, and it's horrible to feel left out.

But that’s the difference between nuclear and blended families. You can’t force the latter into the mould of the former because that is preferable to you. They’re not the same.

Not all kids with have the same relatives in the common, and the relationships will be different. The youngest children wanted a relationship with their paternal family. Paternal family they don’t share with their eldest sister. That isn’t them being ‘favoured’. OP’s in laws didn’t even treat the eldest daughter unkindly, they just didn’t consider her a granddaughter because she wasn’t/isn’t.

If OP had let the younger two be prioritised, how would they have felt about their sister being left out? It's horrible to feel favoured, and it's horrible to feel left out.

It's not prioritising the younger two to allow them time with their grandparents, though.

They shouldn't have to miss out on family relationships just because they happen to have a half sister.

Prioritised? It is not "prioritising" to allow grandchildren to be treated like grandchildren by their grandparents. It is just the reality of mixed/blended families. Not everyone will have the same relatives.

It is sad and unfortunate that DD1 didn't have paternal grandparents in her life, but you can't just force or expect other people to take on that role. And it is very wrong to take that relationship away from the younger children to make things "equal".

I don't think this is your fault, and it's a difficult situation to be in. You were trying to protect your eldest daughter from being treated differently. There could have been a discussion about it, not to treat eldest differently. As adults they should have included and treated the eldest sibling the same but I can also understand why they didn't. I think your husband should have made more of an effort to facilitate this relationship and talked to them about including eldest daughter. It's a difficult situation all round but I don't think you should put it all on yourself.

The other side will have their own opinions and its easier to blame you and eldest daughter rather than think your dh could have made an effort too. It's easy for children to get brainwashed into thinking someone is to blame when not. I think other side are putting the blame on you and kids are believing it, unfortunately

I have a different view from most. My late DM’s close friend treated her SGD exactly the same as the biological DGC. Made no difference between them. That’s how I think it should be done, frankly. I would not subject a child to a Christmas Day gift giving session where she got one gift and the others got piles. No way would I do that.

Don’t be silly. Everyone does this. You give more to your own kids than your nieces/nephews. You give more to your nieces/nephews than your second cousins. Etc. Why would you give the same to someone else’s grandchildren as your own?

I thought you were going somewhere else with this post.

What a huge disappointment to the OP that her younger girls have no loyalty to their sister and don’t see them all as a unit. I say this fully aware that my situation is closer to your older daughter than your younger. I have been in the situation of discovering and forming relationships with relatives that were “kept from me” too. I don’t have siblings.

I profoundly disagree that OP prioritised the elder daughter. She has sought to protect the elder daughter - I dare say if the younger children were being treated badly, she would have done the same to protect them. These girls weren’t banned from seeing their paternal family: they saw them a few times a year. This isn’t uncommon if you live distance away. As someone earlier wrote, if the relationship mattered to the in-laws, it would have been relatively easy to have made this happen - treat the girls equally. OP’s DH could also have done something about this with his own family and chose not to.

I accidentally met a cousin I didnt know I had at 10. We became inseparable for quite a few years. When we first met, I was astonished I didn’t know about her - and my cousin said something brief about why we hadn’t been allowed to meet. I didn’t give my mother any of the grief these girls have given. Instead, I listened to what had happened in the family to cause my not knowing her. My loyalty and trust in my mother - even at 10 - meant I accepted and fully understood and respected the circumstances. It wasn’t the fault of the cousin or me and we moved forward with a new and happy friendship. In fact, when I next met up with the cousin I told her - quietly - what had passed (which involved her grandmother making vocal suppositions about my parenthood when my father ran off and abandoned his wife, my mother whilst she was pregnant.) To my cousin’s eternal credit, she laughed and said “yeah, that does sound actually like my gran. She can be a piece of work.” And we all moved on. She was 11.

When I was 36, and expecting my first child, I met a whole new extension of my family some of whom I am now very close to. I wasn’t furious at my father/ aunt etc for my not having met them. It bought closure to some erroneous thinking and made some things make sense. Instead of looking back and being angry, it brought me peace - and gratitude that we’d all met.

The daughters - and cousin - in this story sound immature, inexperienced and self-absorbed. People and life are complex. People do the best with what they had at the time and your in laws - and husband - had also ample opportunity to flex to build and maintain relationships with your 3 daughters but also chose that maintaining their position of how they wanted to handle things.
This is not a situation solely of OP’s making: her husband and the in-laws all contributed to it. But, in these situations, the person telling the uncomfortable truth about a group dynamic is usually the one hung out to dry.

I don’t know what I would do about this situation, OP, but I’d be pretty fed up with your girls and your husband and I’d be feeling quietly vindicated about the in-laws in the face of this niece’s stirring…
I would tell my girls that I love them. I did what I felt was right for our entire family unit at the time and that of course I wanted them to have a close family relationship. I would try very hard not to run the in-laws down, but would say there were things that did not sit right with me at the time. That I’m sorry they’re hurting and feel they missed out but that the cousin was a child at the time and is only repeating information that is second-hand. They are adults now and can build whatever relationships they choose.
Then I would give space. They will come back to you. Things may well be bumpy for a bit but this happens.
As for your husband, he’d be getting very VERY short shrift from me.
Look after yourself, OP.

This. ❤️

You were between a rock and a hard place really OP, either your elder child missed out or the younger children missed out. Perhaps tell the middle and younger one that eldest already didn't get to live with or even really see her father, so for her also to be treated as second class by your DH's family was too much for you to cope with - and you'd have done the same if it was one of them that was being left out. As adults they can make their own decisions and relationships but you did the best you could to have them all treated fairly as children.