AIBU to feel hurt after my stepdaughter was edited out?

[Embod9947]

So I’ve just been on a big family holiday with my mum, brother, his partner, their kids, my sister and her family and me, my partner, my kids and my step daughter. On the holiday we did a number of family photos as due to distance we do not get together very often. One of the family photos was my mum with all the grandchildren, including my step daughter (who been in my life for 11 years, since she was 4). I’ve just discovered my sister and mum have edited the photo to remove my step daughter from it and then my mum posted it online. Am I unreasonable to be incredibly hurt by this?

Except she wasn’t doing it because of any malicious feeling towards OP’s stepchild, she was doing it because she only wanted her grandchildren, all together, in it. Completely different motivation.

That they’re considered to be of significant importance on the macro scale isn’t a matter of opinion, but of observation.

My opinion on blood connections is that it’s entirely up to the individual to decide for themselves as to whether they’re of greater or lesser importance. If it’s not my family, it’s not my business. As for adoption? I have no adopted family members, so no idea whether I’d feel differently. Maybe I would, or maybe I wouldn’t.

I would be calling out. What a crappy thing to do.

Why not look at it through the eyes and mind of a child? It is a rejection of them, and thus cruel.

Does the DSC consider themselves a grandchild, though? As surely it can only be a rejection if they do?

If the grandparent hasn’t referred to them as such, it’s a mistake on the OP and her DH’s part to have let the DSC think she is. As in all of these tales, the parent and/or new partner seem to assume that their own parents and IL’s should assume a kind of role, without discussing directly with the family first.

That’s the loveliest way I have heard of describing this situation. You sound so decent. Your family are very lucky ❤️

Or like many other stepchildren they’d have no problem, because they haven’t been led to believe that OP’s mother is her grandmother, any more than OP is her mother. Who knows?

Even if it is the case that the stepchild does perceive it as a rejection, I would lay the responsibility for that at the feet of the parents who have led their child to believe something that is not true. I don’t consider that perspective one that needs to pandered to (or that it would be wise to pander to it by way of denying reality). Not everything is about the stepchild.

Wow.

The children are the innocent people in blended marriages.
Everything should be about them. They are the ones who have to live with their parent’s decisions.

You sound like you have no idea what a child is. No amount of academic theory changes how this child might feel about this or the emotional impact of rejection.

I didn’t say it did. Who knows how she feels about it?

Perhaps she would consider this a rejection, but that doesn’t actually mean that the grandmother has done anything wrong, or that she’s in any way obliged to pretend this child is something she’s isn’t to her. Like I said, it isn’t all about the stepchild.

Not ‘dictating how people feel’ works both ways.

That is unbelievably mean - taking the time to edit someone out ?

Not feeling like your stepgranddaughter is exactly the same to you as your grandchildren is one thing, but actually editing her out of a photo to post knowing that it would cause hurt is horrible. It’s not the feeling that’s the nasty bit, it’s the action.

I’m not the one extrapolating from personal experience to decide that everyone else should feel the same way they do about this issue.

I would absolutely kick off about this.