Grandparent favouritism

[Wife2b]

I’ll start off by saying it’s going to sound childish but for some reason it’s rubbed me the wrong way.

Grandparents have two grandchildren, an older boy and a younger girl. Older boy is clearly the favourite, grandad talks about him proudly whenever he visits and every year puts a Facebook post out on his birthday of a picture of him and saying happy birthday. Lo and behold this morning there is a post by Grandad of our nephew with his grandparents, wishing him a happy birthday and saying how lucky they are to have him.

My girl has just had a first birthday, not a peep out of father-in-law on social media. Now I know social media is not the be all and end all, but in a tech driven world - it’s not unreasonable to think Facebook will still be around in 15 years. I imagine grandkids may be curious and go through the profiles or grandparents as they get older. I can’t help but think that it will make my girl sad one day to see her grandad gave a shit about her older cousin but isn’t really fussed about her.

He sees other grandchild every day as they live in close proximity. We are further away so tend to visit twice a month. Grandmother adores our girl, it’s lovely to see, clearly she loves both grandkids dearly. Grandad can be sweet with her for 5 mins but doesn’t seem overly fussed, isn’t fussed about giving her a hug and when she was younger, he could easily visit with grandmother and leave not having held the baby. However he was all over nephew as a young baby so it’s definitely not a confidence thing.

AIBU to think that this will be noticed by my daughter as she gets older and make her feel sad? Is it something I should nip in the bud now? I feel so sad for my girl, she and her cousin should be treated equally IMO.

This is more a you issue. You’re jelous.

kids don’t notice or care. If they do it’s once they are old enough to realize they b are loved but have a different relationship.

kiddo will be fine.

We have this in my dh's family. The kids are old enough now to make a game/joke of it. Sad really

He clearly favours boys. Hopefully it will change a bit as she grows up. Glad grandma isn’t the same so hopefully she will get a lot of love from her. Very unfair and unfortunately it happens a lot. My ex MIL literally said in front of all 7 grandchildren as grandad lay dying to my DS ‘you were always his favourite’! The 3 son’s of ex MIL make a joke about it, and to be fair they didn’t even see that much of them. But I think it was because at that time they weren’t allowed to see their other grandchildren. Makes me laugh as I was the hated DIL before they met me (didn’t meet their religion / race requirements) but I became the only DIL she never fell out with. I don’t think ex MIL had favourites though, it was always the granddads who were the most affectionate with the kids (sadly both passed now 5yrs ago within 6 months of each other). The grandmothers don’t show much emotion.

YANBU to feel a bit upset by this, but it's the kind of thing you have to accept unfortunately. You can't force him to treat her exactly the same as her cousin, and a grandparent having a favourite grandchild is a lot less damaging for a child than a parent having a favourite among siblings. Honestly, the chance of her looking through her grandad's Facebook page in years to come isn't very likely!