To not feel the same about DIL’s DD as my own granddaughter?

[NotHerGran]

I know this may sound awful, but I genuinely don’t know if I’m being unreasonable.

My youngest son married a woman who already had a 2 year old daughter. We helped with the wedding and contributed towards the deposit for their house.

They now have a daughter together, who is 7 months old, and we absolutely adore her. My husband and I are lucky enough to have plenty of time and the means to be very involved grandparents. We have her for at least a few hours each weekend, buy her lovely things, and are more than happy to help financially when needed. We bought her a beautiful pram, for example, and if her parents ever wanted help with private school or something similar, we’d be in a position to do that too. Our door is always open to her.

I also try not to intrude on their little family bubble so we would never invite ourselves over and I’ve made it clear that I won’t expect to be invited, but whenever they do want me there, I’ll always come and prioritise it over other plans. They’ve asked me many times to come over to cook dinner, look after my granddaughter while DIL has a shower, nap or goes for coffee with friends, to allow them to have a “date night” or simply to help with something, and I’m always happy to do it. I’ve never expected anything in return - time with my granddaughter is a gift in itself.

The problem is that my DIL now expects us to do the same for her older daughter. She has 2 other sets of grandparents who are both involved, but apparently this isn’t enough. In fairness, they live further away - I’m 10 minutes walk and her parents about an hour drive. She gets upset that we don’t buy her daughter gifts in the same way, and now wants us to take her when we have our granddaughter.

We do give her little gifts. I’ll happily buy her a nice puzzle for her birthday, for example, and she’s always welcome in our home. But there is a difference between that and what we would naturally do for our own granddaughter. If our granddaughter were turning 5, we’d probably buy her a lovely new bike with all the accessories, rather than a £20 birthday present. I don’t expect her daughter’s dad to have any responsibility towards my granddaughter either, and that seems perfectly natural to me — she isn’t his child

I don’t dislike the little girl at all, but she isn’t my grandchild and I don’t feel the same responsibility towards her. I’m happy to be kind to her, include her in family things and make her feel welcome, but I don’t want to become her grandparent or regular childcare.

I also don’t want to create an expectation that because we have the time and money, we’re automatically responsible for providing the same for every child in the family.

AIBU to feel that there is a difference between my granddaughter and my DIL’s daughter?

She's so little I couldn't treat her differently

Um no, as in, one child won’t be napping while the other one is taken to school. One won’t need to be fed in a high chair while the other has a toddler tantrum.
Much easier and expected for someone to babysit a 4 and 6 year old together compared to a baby and 2 yr-old. When they are older it will be pretty shit for the OP to say ‘I can look after the 4 yr old tonight but not the 6 year old!’

I agree but the situation is very different.

Your daughter does not live with her siblings father.....

That is the kicker, she doesn't ever see her siblings paternal grandparents while the older child see's you

Feel that way all you like but two things to consider

1. You are missing out when you don't open your heart to living this little girl like your son has
2. You are creating divisions in their family and that never goes down well

Totally misread it, apologies

@cantthinkofagoodusername2026 I think that reducing the babysitting time is the best way to go in this situation.

The OP can offer perhaps one evening a week babysitting both children so the parents can go out. Plus, the occasional day out with the children perhaps. No more ad hoc morning lie-ins and being available whenever they ask, she's turning herself into a doormat and it's not good for anyone.

As you say, most people don't have free babysitting on tap and it's better to reduce it to some set times now, rather than create resentment.

Edit to say that she could also offer to look after the baby more when the older daughter is with her Dad during the holidays. That would give the parents couples time and both children would be getting plenty of one-to-one attention.

The difference with the gifts is passive aggressive IMO. One child gets a small puzzle and the other a bike with all accessories. Just plain nasty behaviour from someone who is clearly well off.

Surely the children share a parent, they share the same mother.

They have the same mother. They are half sisters.

DiL's DD is 5, and OP's DGD is a baby. So that's quite an age gap, they're unlikely to ever have similar play interests.

They have the same mum

the mum is the shared parent to both kids... jfc

It's worth thinking about what you want your son to say about you. What kind of mum are you?

Is your son saying
"My mum has my back, anything I do, she's all in. Whether that's bio kids, step kids, climbing a mountain. She. Is. There."

Or is he saying

"Mum had the idea of the perfect family and she acts like I've let her down. I work hard all week, I look after my kids, I want to support mum as she gets on too, hiwever she needs me. But she doesn't seem to understand that the help I need is sometimes not about the quantity of time and money she wants to give. It would be so much better if she did half as much, but included both kids. So if anything, i want less than she can give, she just has a very fixed idea of help, and actually that isn't help at all, it's actually just about what she wants but framed as help that I should be grateful for, when in reality no help would be better because it causes different problems."

There’s no such thing as an ‘idealised MIL experience’ because most women would be perfectly fine cutting out a MIL they don’t particularly like and who treats their DD like an outsider….

It’s OP who loses out most of all if the relationship breaks down. Like others, I’d be limiting contact and paying for childcare.

@RandomUsernameHere The two daughters share the same mother.

So they do, I’m a moron

That says it all. It's not about the grandparents' feelings (well it is, but that wasn't what I was saying towards the end of my post): it's about the children's feelings. The older daughter would have two sets of loving grandparents, the younger one would only have one. Why? Because apparently the mother would be entitled to deny her youngest child a loving grandmother because said grandmother wasn't treating her half-sister - who already has grandparents of her own - as a grandchild. So eldest granddaughter should get 6 loving grandparents, and youngest only 2? Really? You think that makes for a happy and secure youngest child?

As i said, MN is mostly used by the middle generation so of course answers are going to skewed towards whatever makes their lives easiest despite being the ones who fucked up and got everyone - children and grandparents alike - into these situations in the first place. No child or grandparent asked for this, yet 99/100 they're the ones paying the price.

Just the fact that he could adopt her shows that the child's bio-dad wasn't on the scene. So a complete different situation to the OP's. You're comparing apples and oranges.

@RandomUsernameHere They'll always be in each others lives.

Well of course you're not going to feel the same that's only normal but are you saying that there are no people in your life that aren't blood that you care about?

I think sometimes proximity has something to do with it too. my dd has had two partners and they had children previously I didn't know them because I live in another country and they were much older.

If it was the same situation that you have is that they are close by where you can visit regularly and a two-year-old and a baby but that's not much difference in age I think I would treat them mostly the same I don't see why I wouldn't.

If the situation was and I'm not sure if that's what you're saying is that the DIL is ringing you up to provide child care to both of them on short notice then I'm not sure how much I would go for that because I worked full time and I just couldn't do it

Is that the situation?
They ring you up to come over and provide a service for them as in cooking the meals and child care while they go out?

If I was willing to come over and do those things I wouldn't mind doing them for both children

I have a toddler (split from my ex) and this is why im seriously considering being one and done tbh. I'll probably only date men who have their own children and do not want any more because there's no way I'd allow DC to feel othered by their step family compared to a biological sibling.

I'm a step child and have been treated equally by my stepfather and his family, introduced as daughter/granddaughter not step, despite my mother having a biological child with him.

You feel how you feel and you're not unreasonable to feel like that, as you had no say in having a step-grandchild but you should try to treat them as equally as possible, because selfishly or not, if I was your DIL I'd be restricting access to both children and seriously considering my marriage to DH for supporting your behaviour. You clearly have alot of disposable income would it kill you to get the children equal christmas/birthday presents?

So selfish. It's the CHILD who loses out. OP had her children, she had her grandparents. If DIL cuts out OP, it's the second daughter who loses out the most. Paid childcare = going to grandma's? I feel so sorry for you if you feel this way, you obviously don't know what grandparents can bring to a child's life.

Agree with this. If OP is going to call spending time with her granddaughter 'babysitting', that implies it is useful to the parents e.g. freeing them up to work/go out/do chores etc.

Unless the older daughter is having contact time with her father or his family, offering to babysit only the younger one is of limited practical use. MIL used to offer to just babysit either one of my DC but not both (and they are both biologically related to her) because she felt both was too much. Fair enough but not actually much practical use, so we ended up making alternative childcare arrangements a lot of the time that included both DC.

This!!

Really what this boils down to is what you wish to model and teach: exclusion or inclusion, division or togetherness, harmony or tension.