My mum treats my brother and I differently since he had kids

[tropicalroses]

Just a passing thought after a comment I made on another post. My mum treats me and my brother differently since he had kids. She has always helped us out a little- nothing major, bits here and there. Since he had kids she bends over backwards to help him out, and often now can't do the occasional favour for me. She still expects me to step up and help her out from time to time, and not him. I know it sounds very transactional, but am I right to feel put out? I am feeling very much like spinster sister at the bottom of the pile.

My BF hates it and it has soured his relationship with my parents as he sees how being second choice is grinding me down.

How often do you need to step up and help her?

What is she like when she is with you? Is she kind loving towards you?

If she isn't, I would treat her like she treats you and refuse to step up when she needs help and support.

I'm your boyfriend in this situation.

My DH parents have basically forgotten he exists since his sister had kids. It infuriates me as they all used to be really close, Sunday lunch every week, holidays all together and now they just call when they want something from him.

Everyone's lives revolves around these kids and their mother. I don't think they realise the effect that his own parents having no interest has on him.

I help my daughter out with her kids, pay for little treats and lunches etc etc.

I thought it was normal, a little way of spreading the cost out in the family.

I have no problem with my mum helping him out or paying for things. What I am starting to have an issue with is the way the help is flowing. She is constantly helping him, never asking him for anything in return; but laying all her troubles at my door and when I occasionally ask for a favour now it becomes a really rigmarole on how its going to work, how it might affect DB, how little time she has and she makes it really apparent "how much she does for us both".

Just for reference she's helping him out twice a week or more and I might need a favour once every couple of months. So I am asking for less than 10% of what he his.

Is she helping him out, or is she using it as a way to see her grandchildren?

What sort of help are you requiring from her?

Has he ever helped or is this the dynamic that you are the helper?

What's the geographical distance

What kind of help are you needing?

So she's exhausting herself for DB and his kids but won't come round to yours to wait in for the boiler man whilst you're at work kind of thing but still expects you to sort out her problems because she doesn't want to bother DB with them?

Then you need to make yourself less available to help when she asks or tell her how you feel.

I think it’s a hard one because when one has children it can be that that person/family needs more help, there’s more people in the pool of needing assistance, it’s not just her children anymore it’s also her grandchildren.

I also think there’s an element of which of you is more able to help her. I have a child now, my sister doesn’t, and if my mum needed help with something- depending on what is- I think she would probably ask my sister before she asked me purely because she’d think it was easier for my sister to provide that help than me. I’d always help her if I could but if for example she needed someone to go with her to collect furniture and put it together, that wouldn’t be easy to do with a young child in tow. If she needed a lift somewhere after work that would have been no problem pre-kids, but now with factoring in nursery pick up, dinner/bedtime that also becomes harder. I’d absolutely still do it if she asked me to but she probably wouldn’t want to put me out.

I do think relationships aren’t always totally equal though, everybody has different levels of need at different times and everybody has a different capacity to provide that help at different times.

Like pp said, it's hard because kids change everything and it all becomes about them. Sorry OP

This.

Before Christmas my boiler broke and I had to go to Manchester for a client christmas meeting. A once a year thing, that I had to attend. The boiler repair company gave me a Thursday repair date which if I didn't accept meant I wouldn't have heating until the next Monday. She works from home, so I needed her to come to mine and let him in.

That's why I say it might be something that crops up every few months or so if that. Nearly always related to a work thing.

And was she unable to help with that because of your brother? For what reason?

Relationships might not always be equal, but this feels like the pendulum has swung one way, and is never going back.

As my parents get older they will only need more, they will continue to think it is just easier to ask me, but be to busy with helping my brother to ever reciprocate. I can't see it changing, and I hate becoming the default to always ask because its just "easier"

She couldn't help then because she had already committed to helping out my brother twice that week and needed to do her own things, grocery shopping, cleaning etc.

What kind of help are you and your brother wanting?

My parents were an awful lot more willing to babysit or help with their adored grandchildren than they were to come and help a capable adult with normal adult life stuff. They wouldn’t even have seen grandchildren related things as doing a favour. Which given baby snuggles are much more enjoyable than running an errand or whatever seemed entirely reasonable.

I also think that these things wax and wane over time - at one point, as the only sibling with babies, I was probably the one getting a disproportionate amount of my parents’ time and attention. Those babies are now at school, I don’t need much from them at the moment and they are instead running around after my siblings’ babies and relationship breakdowns and health crises. You might well find in a few years time the tables have turned.

So you expected her to then tell your brother she couldn’t make the commitment she had made to him?

People are wrecked and trying to cope when they have kids, they’ve less sleep, less quiet and so good headspace (non stop crying, asking for stuff etc) less time for themselves, less money, everything starts falling apart. Your mum remembers and is trying to help. I know this doesn’t help you but I can see why your mum is doing what she’s doing, she’s been there and possibly didn’t have people to help her

How old are his children though? How long has this been happening for?

I don’t think you can really measure things like this in pockets of time, it is one of those things as I say where there are periods of time where someone needs more, or is available to help less.

Before I had my daughter I couldn’t tell you a single time in the last 5 years I’ve needed my mum to help me with something, my sister & I both helped her with anything she needed whenever we could. Since having my daughter she helps us with childcare sometimes, she helped me a lot postpartum & in the newborn days especially while I recovered and adjusted, and she would never have asked me for anything during that time, I had nothing left to give and she knew that. So my sister could have said the same as you, it’s unfair, she gets all of this etc, but actually we are both well aware that in a few years when my sister has children the pendulum will swing the other way and she will be the one who needs that help and will get it, and I’ll be more than happy then to be the one who picks up the slack.

But don’t you agree that that’s fair enough? She had prior commitments and had things that she needed to do herself? I don’t understand what the issue is with that?

Of course she wants to help out with grandchildren. This all sounds a bit jealous and entitled.

The issue is I have needed one occasion in the last four months, she was free that day and decided to go to Tesco instead and left me without heating or hot water for 4 days longer than I needed to be.

Since then she has helped my brother out 2 or 3 times a week, so conservatively 20 occasions. I am getting calls about going round to look at their internet and check their TV set up and need to take a half day off work next week to take dad to the optician.

The issue is it feels a little one sided.

I don't think it is entitled to think if I am the one running around constantly to do favours when I ask for a little help back it isn't met with "I do so much for you and your brother already". In the same way she treated us as a pair when we were kids she does the same now.

So stop helping her? If it feels one side and you think you are being taken advantage off, stop putting in the effort for her. Think of excuses if you don't want the direct confrontation.

Personally, in healthy family dynamics you should be able to discuss these things openly, but I suspect there is more going on than your brother being the golden child with the golden grandchildren, or am I wrong?

It’s a difficult one, my mum would help with childcare so I could do adult jobs but I wouldn’t ask her to do those adult jobs for me necessarily. It’s a bit different. I do sympathise to an extent and she could definitely have let the boiler people in for you but if you’ve not got kids I would think between the two of you, you could have sorted the boiler.
why couldn’t your boyfriend have let the boiler person in? Isn’t it his responsibility more than your mums?
do his parents help you out also because if they don’t it’s a bit one sided if he’s getting annoyed
i do sympathise with your feelings though xx

Just don't help out. You need to get her to put it on brother its not fair this way at all