AIBU to feel my son is unfairly comparing support?

[Appleteeth]

Hi all, first of all I want to make it clear I’m not by any means saying I have been a good mother to my son, or that he doesn’t have every right to resent me for that, I don’t want this to read as woe is me.

Background
I have 2 children they are 41 and 26, I had my first child at 21, he was for the most part raised by my mother, I was completing my nursing degree then doing shift work, I provided for him financially, took him on holiday etc, but I will admit my mother did the vast majority of the day to day care. When he was 11 he wanted to try and live with me and my then partner, he moved in for 6 months but was having problems at school, we then trialled by partner moving out, nothing improved and he insisted he wanted to go back to his grans. So he did, my partner then moved back in.
3 years later my partner and I had our daughter, her father then left and never returned when she was 6 so I raised her alone.

Lately my son has increasingly been talking about the the injustice of his childhood, how DD did more hobbies than him, how the only reason DD now owns a home is because she had more support.

1. There was little in the way of financial disparity, actually I think my son got more money spent on him over all, he had a summer holiday every year, was taken abroad etc.
2. He always had the most fashionable clothes and toys, my mother and I worked extremely hard to ensure this

Yes DD did more hobbies, but my son never actually wanted to as a child, and as a result the last time DD left the country for a family holiday in childhood she was 4, we didn’t do a single holiday between 4 and 11, not even a uk break. DDs birthday and Christmas gifts were often made up of whatever she needed for hobbies that year.

She did go on to go to university being the first in our family to do so, got married and now has children.

She owns a home but I had no involvement in this at all, she and her partner (who had been together since they were 14 saved, and received help from his family, I didn’t have any money to offer).

Now I’m mortgage free but not very high earning as I left nursing for my own health 20 years ago.

I make no difference in the gifts I give to my son’s children and my daughters. I pay for us all to go on holiday once a year (just a uk break).

My son also borrows money every month which he doesn’t always pay back in full but I’ve accepted this.

This afternoon my son came over and he was complaining that his sons didn’t have their proper PE kit and went back to school last week, I told him I don’t have anymore money to give him, he has already had £400 this month and still owes me money from last month.

He then went on a rant that he knows I spent more on my daughter’s children’s school shoes than I did on his sons. This is true but I didn’t do it deliberately, I told them both I could afford £50 per child on school shoes, DD bought her children shoes from start rite so she spent it all, he sent me a link to some shoes which were only £30, I ordered exactly what he sent me.

This then spiralled into me apparently loving my DDs children more than his! This isn’t true at all. I see DDs children a little more as she is in the same town as me and a walk away, I babysit them one day a week for 2 hours and they come over for dinner once a week. I see my son’s children once a week as he brings them over and I try to stop in and see them when I can but it’s a bus away and I’m still working. He also asks me not to come to his ok the weekend so the only option is either the day I already have DDs children or after work. I have offered him babysitting countless times and he always says no he will get his partners mum to do it.

I don’t know what to do?

AIBU to feel I’m not currently doing anything wrong even if in the past I did mess up in having my mum raise him?

Im open to advice!

OP I guess my perspective is a bit different than most people's. Briefly put, I doubt whether giving in to your son's blackmail ('I'll stop acting resentful if you reduce involvement with my sister's kids') will make any positive difference.

I had the opposite problem to your son's, my mother got very clingy when I became a teenager and didn't want me to grow up. Part of the solution for me was to flee to my godmother's, who I think of as my second mother. So having more than one person in a maternal role isn't necessarily bad.

And children being cared for by several close family members used to be quite normal and still is in some parts. In Swahili, all your mother's sisters are also called your mothers, and your father's brothers your fathers (you add adjectives to distinguish them from the parent-parents). Sorry I digress.

Something clearly has gone wrong between your son and you, but also between your son and your mother (who you say he also shouts at), and perhaps simply 'with your son', tout court?

I'm not sure you have that much to apologise for. It sounds like you did a lot to stay involved with your son, and you worked a lot in order to afford the best for him. At any rate, the pattern of you beating your chest and asking your son how you can atone, and him articulating resentment and making (to my mind, unreasonable) demands seems to have gone on for a long time without resolving anything.,

The resentment would make sense in a man under 30. He's 41, ffs.

I'd advise being very clear that you won't penalise your daughter and her children now for the fact that his childhood was what it was, twenty-odd years ago. Makes no sense.

It sounds like he gets a couple of hundred extra a month from you and your mother. Isn't that special treatment enough? It's worrying that it's so unclear where that money goes.

I think you need to stop trying to atone with either money or time commitment, and ask him what the hell is actually going on - with money, with his resentment, with his apparent active dislike of his sister. Ultimately, the only person that can heal him is he. Not you.

OP’s son reminds me of the character played by John Sims in the tv series, ‘I, Jack Wright’ who blames everyone else, except himself for his life ( and also borrows money of his parents).

Yes, the son didn’t live with his mum, but he had a fairly stable upbringing with his (youngish) gran, and op was very much present in his life.

Unfortunately, son has got into the unhealthy dynamic of convincing op that if she doesn’t lend him money, then she doesn’t love him. Not true.

Op, stop being financially, emotionally and mentally abused by your son.

I really feel for you, as many young single parents' mothers take on the childcare roles while their children work or attend college or uni for their careers. All credit to you for continuing with your nurse training, getting a job and buying your own house, you should be proud of yourself and your achievements! You did not abandon your son, put him in foster care or a children's home, but he lived in his grandmother's home to accommodate your work shifts and was well supported by you both. He even chose to live with his grandmother later, so it must have been a good experience for him plus it was what he was used to. It doesn't sound to me as though he went without anything he needed, and at 41 shouldn't be expecting your financial support for his own children. In my experience sibling rivalry is normal in most families, my adult children in their 40s are always checking who has been given what, and my friends say the same with their children. However, I just laugh it off and tell them how lucky they are to get anything at all now I am on a pension! Seriously though, it sounds like your son is trying to guilt trip you into parting with more of your money because he has financial problems himself. You are certainly being fair in treating all your grandchildren equally present wise, and particularly generous in helping with the cost of their school uniforms and shoes. But really I think you are making a massive mistake in lending your son such large amounts of money on a regular basis, which he does not pay back in full, as you will disempower him to manage his own money carefully. Your daughter at 26 is managing her own affairs with her partner, through her own achievements and obviously he is envious. But you have supported them both to the best of your abilities at the time so have nothing to feel guilty about.

I had an extremely difficult childhood. There does come a point when you are an adult (who has had children of their own)...that you have to do your own working to heal. I think OP sounds like a generous and involved grandparent.

Maybe very clear write that you realise he had a difficult childhood, that you are sorry about that.

My mother did similar to me and it was healing.

Don't be abused about money now though.

I agree.

My reaction to feeling abandoned by a parent was to become independent and not wanting to rely on anyone else.

The OP needs to stop giving her son money. He clearly still resents her, so why make herself poorer when what ever she gives him now, emotionally and financially, will never be enough in his mind to make up for the years of hurt that he still feels acutely and that is driving his current bad behaviour.

This isn’t about now it’s about his childhood.

Which you can’t change and won’t fix with money.

Would you consider both going to counselling together?

He's borrowing money off you both.

I'd stop that.

You gave him a shit childhood but your mum gave him a better one than you offered(I hope)

You might not be able to fix him. If he has therapy then perhaps that'll help.

I agree with this OP 👏 @Appleteeth

I think you need to sit down and speak to him again. Apologise (again) but say that you can't go back and change the past, you love him and DD equally. Give him a chance to say his piece and then you need to say that he needs to either move on or if he can't do that then stop punishing you.

Tell him honestly about your predicament, that he only wants you so you can't help your DD or for money, that if he wants a relationship then it has to be on both of your terms not just his. Tell him about not being able to come to his house or spend time with them easily, that he is making it hard for you to make amends in the relationship and if he actually wants a relationship with you as an adult then he needs to be the one to allow that to happen. Tell him you want to be closer to him but he needs to forgive you for what happened. He also needs to forgive DD as she was a child and could not help how she was brought up either.

He is hurting himself more than anything else. This constant testing you and competition with DD will not end until he decides to move past this. Lay the cards out on the table for him and give him the opportunity to recognise he needs to change.

I wouldn’t be putting my daughter at a disadvantage for the sake of DS if his issue isn’t he wants more support from you but he wants DD to have less. That doesn’t help him and won’t make him feel better, and I imagine even if you did free up Wednesdays for him he would reject the idea.

I do think you need to stop giving him money if he can’t explain where it goes, or isn’t even paying you back! Has he said why you can’t come over on a weekend? If they have plans fine but an hour on a Saturday morning for a cuppa? A Sunday lunch some weeks?

When you go away how are things/is he? This sounds really hard for you and him, as you can’t fix what happened as a kid but he also probably doesn’t know what would help now.

I wouldnt change anything you're doing OP except giving him so much money. He's 41 and he sounds like a prat, a spoilt prat. Refusing a relationship with his half sister and taking hundreds off family members every month? He should be embarassed.

Your reasons don’t matter. To a child, his parents abandoned him and then he see his half sister having a very different childhood to him with mother being around her, it deepen your abandonment wound.
He is an adult now but if childhood abandonment was so early to get over with and have no impact from it, nobody would need to go to therapy and there were a thousands book written on him.

Was waiting for this comment.

I read your initial post and I was 100% on you being unreasonable.

I've changed my vote now. He is clearly extremely jealous of your daughter and will do anything he can to fuck your relationship up with her.

You know you fucked up. You are trying your very best to make amends. He is clearly damaged by this. However, there comes a point where he has to act like the adult that he is. The way he treats you is unacceptable and you should not pander to it. Please don't stop helping your daughter on those Wednesdays that she needs to work.

I had a wanky childhood. But I live my best life because that's how i choose to handle it (after a bunch of counselling!). Nor do I take it out on my mum, who I know massively regrets her choices too.

He’s 41. We are all products of our childhood but we have to grow up and not keep blaming parents for everything.

Maybe or maybe he’s using it as an excuse to get money or because isn’t where he wants to be in his life.Being brought up by a loving gran and mum isn’t that bad fhs

Agree.

Very good advise.

your son's misogyny and hatred towards your daughter and hatred towards her children also, is disgusting. they are all innocent in this situation.

The difference in his upbringing to his sisters has left your son deeply insecure and resentful. He is now making increasingly difficult to meet demands on you, partly to punish you, partly to test you.
He wants you to go to great lengths to his exact requirements, to put him before his sister, to prove you love him as much as her. And when you try, he can't accept it because he's too angry. I don't see any resolve to this that doesn't involve him getting outside help to deal with the baggage.
In the meantime I think you need to resign yourself to the fact that whatever you do now its not going to change. Just carry on being fair to both your children and all your grandchildren and put up some boundaries so your son doesn't keep exploiting you.

Of course he’s jealous of his sister. You sacrificed his childhood and your relationship with him and let your daughter reap the rewards. I’m a single parent and there is no way I’d treat her like that. You basically threw him away to better yourself. You might have thought you were doing your best but it was never going to seem like that to him.

Have you ever chosen him over your daughter?

Where’s his father?
Stop doling out the cash on both sides. Your children sound like a pair of takers.

You could have done better by your son and you chose complacency because your mother took good care of him; and that's a poor show. You should have tried living with him before you moved in with a partner; and you should have tried again when y9ur partner absconded.

That said, I think the hurt your son feels has turned him into an entitled manipulator. You'll twist yourself into a pretzel and make yourself broke, and you still won't fix what is broken. His mission now is to punish you and if allowed, ruin your relationship with your daughter.
Once you're all broken, he may feel justice is done.
Have you tried family counselling?

He needs to bloody grow up and stop being a whiny little cunt!

My older brother is sadly quite similar.

He’s all ‘s’not fair’, and I had it better yet he was the one who went to Grammar School. I didn’t go because a new secondary modern had opened near to where we lived by the time I was 11 and the council wouldn’t cover the bus fare for me to go to the grammar in the next town so I ended up going to the shitty comp and leaving school at 15. I hated that school.

It didn’t stop me doing night school as a young adult though and getting a law degree by the time I was 30.

Brother and I also lived for a while with the grandparents as mum was too ill to look after us for about a year. He was spoilt by grandma as she preferred boys and I was the only granddaughter. I was treated far less kindly.

But so what? You deal with whatever life throws at you.

Your son is an immature adult and responsible for his own children’s clothing and school costs. Stop letting him guilt trip you. Honestly, I think you need to be much firmer with him and stop pandering to his nonsense.

Our mum is long dead now and I haven’t actually visited my brother in about 15years although we do FaceTime each other occasionally. If he starts with his nonsense moaning, I just shut him up. I’m not prepared to listen to his pathetic excuses for not living a better more productive life. That’s 100% on him.

Hello OP

Your son really needs you to step up and overly prioritise him and his children.

Perhaps you could try learning to drive?

Sounds like this would be a really concrete & practical step to show that:

a) you are going to go out your way (albeit this late in life) to take a practical step that will inconvenience you (by having to make the time and money and effort) to do something which it seems will

b) unblock another practical obstacle you are repeatedly bringing up as an excuse as to why you can't see him/ his DC more during the week/ on the spur of the moment.

c) be able to pop over and take his DC out etc whenever / in the same way you seem to be able to for your DDs children

You've talked a lot about buses/ journey times / shift difficulties in the past etc.

This was obviously a barrier when he was a child and clearly felt abandoned by you/ you didn't really (don't?) understand why he felt like that / then acted up / had problems etc.

Rectify it now?

Being able to drive will be a huge time saver and show - in a practical way - that you are actually listening and taking steps to prioritise him/ your other DGC.

(Apologies if I have missed a key reason you cannot drive e.g. medical)