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?

Awful way to treat young children imo.

The problem is the oldest child sounds like she’s more or less living full time with DIL so it will be fairly obvious to her as she gets older how differently she’s treated. Yes, she’ll be her other grandparents favourite but she won’t feel that on a week to week basis.

It’s a bit sad that she has been part of the family since she was two but will likely grow up feeling like she doesn’t belong.

What happens if your DS and DIL have another baby in a couple of years time? Will you be able to watch the younger one crawl whilst making pancakes with your GD then? Or will you only be able to have them one at a time so you can fully focus on each child?

Your DIL’s daughter is your son’s daughter now too, OP. There doesn’t seem to be any recognition of that in your posts.

Imagine being that little girl who has had to adapt to a new family unit, step dad and also a new sibling who at some stage she'll realise her sister is both mom and dads biological child and she isnt. You have a chance here to treat the girls the same and be an example that people make a loving home, not the dynamics.

I completely agree with the things such as when you say if your granddaughter needs watching for example vs the school run for the step then yes watch the grand baby.

I don’t feel that gifts have to be exactly the same either. Though £200 v £20 is a big difference.

If dil and son want a night out and ask to baby sit surely your watch both rather than split them up however?

However I get asking if you can watch baby for an hour or two as you wanted time rather than as an asked favour and then not including the other child.

If it’s becoming a problem though stop babysitting too much she will either be grateful for what’s offered or not.

Make plans via your son as well not just her. He should ultimately be your contact for visits she is not his personal assistant.

Also without being overly obvious plan things for when you know the other child will be at her dads/other grandparents.

Open a savings account for grandchild and put money away for grandchild to cover the gap in gifts to bring them more in line is another option as well. So if you’re spend £200 on grand baby and £20 on step. Give them closer to the same and bank the extra you would have given to grand baby. Then when she is 18 it can be given to her and do the same for any other grandbabies that appear.

Be nice. Be polite. Let her call you granny if she wants to and still bake those cookies with both of them when they are together with you but no you don’t need to just invite her or take both as a package deal anymore than you would full siblings tbh.

All children deserve a little one on one and I’ve never make a grandparent take all three or none of mine and they are all her grandchildren.

While I do understand the view of ‘mom and DD were a package’, I imagine I’d feel the same as you OP if I were in your position. Especially since she has 2 sets of involved grandparents. I don’t imagine her dad’s parents going out of their way to take care of your GD or treating them in any way equally. I can see when it comes to inheritance etc the mom expecting them to be treated equally so you may want to think how that’d work. It’s good you’re clear on your boundaries.

Maybe the OP wouldnt have come accross so badly if she hadn’t said that she didn’t want to babysit the step GC or make pancakes with a child she’s not related to!! Money and inheritance is one thing, but that is a whole new level of cold.

Growing up I had a best friend who lived over the road. She came on our caravan holidays with us. I went to the airport with her to pick up her and her nan eg we did mundane things together and with each others families. She said my childhood home was her second home.
It didn’t mean my family had to love her like their biological child but she was just part of the family. I had Sunday lunch with her mum and dad last week. I think in life various people just get caught up and included with families. So I think it’s fine to do things with just your biological grandchild but it’s not a big deal to bring her sister along sometimes.

He older daughters dad might strongly disagree with that.

Even the dil might disagree apart from wanting gifts and childcare.

I’m with you, OP. Just who does this little madam think she is? Inserting herself into YOUR family at age 2, and hijacking YOUR son? No thank you. And she has the gall to want to be loved by the adults in her life? Unbelievable. There’s a cap on how much love adults can give to small children, and this little madam is trying to steal it from your other GC. CF.

Well maybe that's entitlement ... of course you love your own children, and by extension of that your grandchildren.
But you're not obligated to treat anyone elses children as your own.

I imagine she'll be fine because DIL will tell her not to worry about what the OP thinks, she's just being weird and nasty, and will limit both DC's time with the OP. Children know who matters to them and who doesn't. I have an 8yo who understands that not everyone likes him and that some people can be unpleasant, but he knows that I've got his back and he doesn't have to spend time with those people. So there's no way he'd be spending family holidays and Christmases feeling sidelined, he'd be having a great time with people who appreciate and love him instead (along with his youngers sibling, who looks up to him and follows him in everything).

Wow.
You teach your child that if someone doesnt like HIM... its because THEY are nasty?
People are allowed to not like other people you know... its not mandatory.

Of course not, but grandparents with such a view will need to STFU when their adult children decide to protect their young family from them.

Personally I had kids to see them happy. I want to indulge them. They want stepkids, fine, I'm there. Fur babies? I'm there. I'm not there to make their lives harder by dressing up my indulgent Bio-grandkid only fantasy as a conditional favour.

Exactly! Only on Mumsnet do you see these ridiculous ideas!
Of course OP shouldn’t be expected to treat her actual grandchild the same as the daughter of her son’s partner! It’s only natural that she will love her own DGC more just as I’m sure the step GCs grandparents will love her more. OP does not deserve the nasty comments on this thread. She has not been cruel to the child and has welcomed her into her life. When it comes to birthdays and Christmas etc of course she should be spending more on her own GC! There are some deeply unpleasant people on here sometimes!

Welcome to the world of blended families. To make that omelette, crack the kids

It's fine not to like others. It's not fine to then expect them to spend time with you (especially if they're young children) for everyone else's convenience. My DS doesn't have to spend time with people who don't like him.

So he'd be given the choice... spend time with these weird people who don't like you and fawn over your younger sibling, or have a day out instead. Pretty easy choice, really.

And the younger one would prefer to be with her older brother anyway... so she'd be miffed and grumpy about being dragged to a family event with her dad to play happy families and provide the picture perfect 'grandparent experience' instead of going trampolining or climbing with her brother.

No these ridiculous ideas become and issue when there is wealth disparity.

OP, whilst you're not unreasonable per se to feel the way that you do, your DIL is also perfectly within her rights to raise both of her daughters in the way that she chooses and guess what... what she decides overrules what you want. Take the date night scenario, why on earth would she bother arranging you to look after your bio GD and then have to make a separate arrangement for her Mum to look after the 5 year old. Much more logical to have her mum look after both, despite the additional distance. The more you try to isolate your grandchild from her sister, the more I would expect your DIL will pull away. For us, babysitting with MIL became too conditional compared with my DM so unsurprisingly, my children went to DM instead and we stopped asking MIL completely. Even less surprising is that in the later years, my children were much closer to DM than MIL. Funny that...🤔

Why can you not enjoy those special moments with your step granddaughter?? What about enjoying seeing the bond between your bio grandchild and their sister? I honestly think your posts are some of the most awful cruel things I’ve read in a long time. That poor little girl is just a child who didn’t ask for any of this, a new dad, moving house, a new sibling and now being left out of her siblings family.

It doesn’t matter if you can’t love the little girl the same as the bio grandchild but you are being awful to even contemplate showing it to them through your actions. You absolutely should be pretending and faking it. She was only a baby when you met her, an innocent child. What can she possibly have done so wrong to make you feel so negative towards her? I really really hope that you reconsider or if not, that your son and DIL put boundaries in place to minimise your contact with both children.

Agree completely. Stunned to find that OP's favouritism extends to interactions with both children. I can imagine the older girl trying to talk to or play with OP and OP brushing her off bc she only wants to interact with her sister. WTF.

I don't come from a blended family, but we had a similar issue with favouritism from our paternal grandmother. My dad had a brother and a sister. All three siblings had kids. His sister had two sons and one daughter. Altogether my paternal grandmother had seven grandchildren.....but only one of them was her daughter's daughter. Oh my, the favouritism was off the charts! Let's call the daughter's daughter Jane. Us grandchildren are now in our fifties, but Jane being the golden child (in Grandma's eyes) is still a family joke, even now.

Let's just say that my sister and I FAR preferred our maternal grandparents. We remember them much more fondly, speak about them much more fondly, and are much more interested in our family history on that side. Paternal Grandma is not remembered so kindly....

Well put! If you don't have a pot to piss in, it is easy to spend the same 20p on your biological and non-biological gc.

'she was just part of the family' - the most feeble of all expressions. Usually used by aristocracy in relation to their staff, to justify not paying them enough. Just part of the family. Do they get inheritance then, like part of the family should?

God I feel sorry for children in ‘blended families’. They always come last. No wonder so many adults are fcked up.