I KNOW I'm being unreasonable but ...

[Maddie05]

I am just putting this out into the ether so I can hopefully get it off my chest. I am normally a reasonable person (if I do say so myself lol) but since the birth of my first child a few years ago I've noticed that my tolerance level for certain things has plummeted, particularly when it comes to my in-laws.

I am sure they do not mean anything by it and this rage that I feel comes entirely from sleep deprivation because me 10 years ago would think this is not even worth thinking about however it really really really annoys me how much they go on about how much my children look like their dad! A visit does not go past where they mention a) how much they look like him and b) how wonderful they are because they look like and act like him.

Now, don't get me wrong, he's great but neither one of my children look exactly like him. They just look like a mix of both of us. They've both got blonde hair like my mother in law and father in law but my mum has blonde hair for example whilst my husband and I are both dark. But from the day they were born, even in the hospital when they are all squidgy and weird looking, my in-laws have said that they are my husband's doubles.

I know this is not a big deal so why does it annoy me so much??? I think it must be sleep deprivation and in ten years time I will be back to my usual normal, roll off my back, self.

Has anyone else experienced this?? And if so when does it end! 🙈

My in laws do this, I am white and my partner is black. My children do look like him but they have blonde hair and blue/green eyes like me. My in laws always say how the blue eyes are light hair are a throwback… We just let it go now, pretty sure those features come from me, their mother 😂.

You’re not being unreasonable I had a different but similarly annoying (actually quite rude) situation with my MIL when she looked at my eyes and asked how our son has blue eyes when his father and I both have brown. My partner in fact has blue eyes and both MIL and FIL have brown, didn't go down very well when I asked her the same thing back 🤣

still!
my dc are in their 20s and 30s
my dm still insist their dark eyes come from my dad!

completely glosses over that their own DF has brown eyes.

For me it's not an in-laws thing, it's just fact that all my children look like their dad. Everyone says it, all the time, and it does irritate me and make me sad. Even my daughter looks like her dad. My middle one looked a bit more like me when he was younger now he is his dad's twin!
I know it's daft but I am honestly so jealous of mums who have kids who look like them. My daughter is my youngest and I really thought finally I might get my little mini-me but nope, she is her dad too. It feels very unfair!! I hate when people comment on it. Which they do, constantly. Even now my kids are teenagers. I literally posted a picture on a group WhatsApp yesterday of us on holiday and three of the replies were about how much one of my sons now looks like his dad 😩

Mil told me my eldest was the spitting image of sil when she was a baby.
i just burst out laughing as dp and his siblings are adopted and not birth related

Yes, totally understand. When my children were young I was routinely omitted from family photos - it would just be mil, dh, DC for a '3 generations picture'.

My DM does this rather than my in laws and it drives me insane. “Well we have red hair on our side of the family” she says when my daughter and her paternal cousin have exactly the same shade of strawberry blonde as their fathers cousins and two aunties on their side.

I know someone who used to do this with her gc when they were babies.
"He /she looks just like Joe." [her husband].
Joe had an a full white bushy beard and side burns....😁

All.of my kids look the spit of their Dad. So I had to accept this early on. I literally was erased from the gene pool.
Their are pictures of DH, DSS and DS1 at similar ages that barr clothes are impossible to tell apart. DH and DD aged two are the same person.

My parents still have an obsession with trying to make out that they look like I did. I think it must be the selfish gene thing.
Probably more strongly with PIL to their DILs as there is always the possibility that they aren't genetically related (and from my friends DNA tests there's quite a bit of this about).

I've heard it's a very common thing the world over for people to look at newborns and declare that they look like their fathers (when obviously all they usually look like at that stage is squashed gargoyles). It's thought that it's an unconscious attempt to reassure everyone that they do actually believe that the father is the father.

My MIL does this but it's all about SIL the golden child. So DS inherited his thick curly hair from 'Auntie Em'. Nothing at all to do with me having thick curly hair apparently. His musical talent, obviously from auntie Em seeing as she learnt violin at primary school and nothing to do with me being a musician.

I thinl it's a way of marking her territory.

They're just seeing their baby in them. To them, it wasn't so long ago that your DH was weird and squishy.

It's meant fondly, I'm sure. They're just reminiscing and seeing bits of their child in his children. It must be a bit discombobulating to look at them and see someone so much like your own child but also not.

People are hardwired to look for the familiar. When people stroke my dog sometimes they will say how much she looks like their late dog.

For me it’s the fact that I spent 9 months growing this baby, with all the vomitting , back ache , tiredness, feeling huge and of course giving birth involved, and along come the in-laws saying that they were the spitting image of their father. And all he had to do is turn up 🤣. Made me feel I had nothing to do with the whole process really !!

You'll understand when your kids are grown up and that lovely little child of yours is nothing but a memory. Seeing your own child in their children brings back all the memories. When I think back to memories of my perfect sweet blonde headed little boy its almost like a bereavement as they don't exist anymore but have been replaced with a dark haired 6ft tall bearded man. I know I'll be looking for shadows of that little boy when my DS has his own kids.

It changes anyway as they get older I think
My DC always looked the spitting image of me as babies/ young kids to the extent that DH would have been within his rights to wonder if they were his. MIL was definitely the only person who ever said they looked like DH because they didn’t! Strangers on the street would comment on how like me they looked.

However now that DD is an adult I can see that stuff that is not set as a child like her body and face shape are actually more like his side. She has very long legs and a short torso which is unlike me. Not to mention personality where she is much more like him than me.

Try to laugh it off and not take it to heart. You are their mum. You are not erasable

I think people see different things. I was always told that I look like my dad. The one time at work my mum had to call in and one of the bosses told me I looked like my mum. First time anyone had said that to me but he had never seen my dad.

I honestly get how this can be annoying, at the same time, I think it's more about being a grandparent than anything.

Grandparents get a glimpse at the past, those years where the days could be long and hard, but they passed by in a flash, they see their child in their grandchildren because tiny little things bring back so many memories. It doesn't even truly need to be physically about their looks. The parent could have had dark hair and dark eyes, their grandchild could be fair, with blue eyes and blonde hair, but a shy smile, the tilt of a little head, they will see their own child, a complete flashback in that second.

If it helps to reframe it, I think it comes from love.

I say this as someone with four adult children (who look like their father) and no sign of any grandchildren at all. I'm sure we will get one eventually and I'm trying to keep note of all the ways I could be annoying, so I can try not to be annoying, pretty sure, despite that, I'll put my foot in it somehow, and be annoying. But I'll try not to be.

Haha my in laws do this! I think it’s kind of sweet really (even though it drives me nuts) because it’s almost their way of saying how the baby is part of their family.

I try and tell myself it would be worse if they spent their time saying how much the baby looks nothing like DH 🤣

Honestly, I think most gps do this and it's because it brings their dc's childhood back into focus. They are remembering all the lovely things their dc did as a child and seeing them reflected in the gc.

I think as a mother when you are going through the sleep deprivation phase you see your dc as yours and pretty much only yours. And what you are feeling is resentment that the world in general and your in laws in particular aren't acknowledging it on a daily basis.

I just had my sil here with her baby (my niece) and my nephew (her step dc). I was constantly noticing the similarity between my niece and my nephew. It wasn't that I didn't think that my niece didn't look like her mother and nephew like his, it's just that I took that for granted and noticed the bits that didn't, if you see what I mean. I'm sure niece is also the spitting image of members of sil's family, but I wouldn't know because I haven't met them!

I find it really interesting listening to everyones responses!

We actually saw them today with my mum and when she said it (as she always does) my mum responded that my son looks like my brother when he was small. My mother in law told her no he doesn't as he's the spitting image of my husband 😂. It's obviously just a thing 🤷‍♀️.

".. and every child is unique.. a mixture of all their heritage and ancestors.. aren't we lucky to be continued into the future..."
😉😉

Thing is, they are both right. I gathered a few pictures from myself, dh and my siblings when we were small, and a few pictures of ds. I could match each picture of ds with one of either dh, me or my siblings so you could almost believe it was the same child.

That's the wonder with genes. We mix them all up and what comes out seems to be all of them together.