In Laws

[ahwe11]

About 4 years ago I got totally disheartened with In Laws lack of interest in our children now aged 5 & 7 (the first and apparently desperately wanted granchildren for MIL & FIL).

Once my brother-in-laws later went on to have families of their own, the already rare contact with our children (maybe 2 or 3 times a year) absolutely dried up. FIL has seen our children once in nearly 3 years - MIL doing much better - she's seen them twice in the same period

Other grandchildren get seen pretty well everyday (yes there is a geographic issue - we are 1.5 hours drive away not 5 mins) - In Laws have totally immersed themselves in the other grandkids - providing daily childcare - including at weekends.

Now before anyone says "its not a competition" (I'm not that shallow!)... has anyone gone through something similar and have any advice.

Up until about 3 to 4 years ago I used to e-mail In Laws regularly as to what our kids were up to... friends said this probably meant In Laws felt like they had regular contact - which was far from reality. They suggested I reduce contact - which I thought would be make or break... It was break... even the twice yearly meet-ups have now disappeared.

At least I'm no longer getting disheartened - rather now resigned to things never changing (unless someone has some pearls of wisdom for me!)

Cheers

Ahwe11

PancakeFlipper my il's are exactly the same as yours,they favour sil's 2 dd's & dh has pulled them up on it a couple of times now.

FIL's response was she needs more help as she has a loser boyf/single mum (delete where appropriate)

Last yr for ds's bday party i had organised it at the local sweet shop,none of them came.
I asked them the day before as they hadnt let me know,mil said they were babysitting for sil's youngest & then an hr before the party sil rung dh & said she wasnt coming at all to the party.So that meant the il's would be free to come to the party - yes? No they went out for the afternoon together!

It used to really hurt me,as in their lounge they have got a pic up of ds that we gave them for a gift & they have a few pics up of their gd's.as this is the room that people see they havent favoured anyone over anyone else,but go into the conservatory & its like a bloody shrine to the girls.

FIL once told dh not to tell me why they favoured the gd's,as far as i am concerned now they can go fuck themselves.

They are not in the best of health & sil has always been a spoilt brat,leaving Christmas duty to fall to me,well no more it doesnt,she has had to step up to the plate,seeing as she gets ALL the childcare off them & days out etc.

DS is loved by my parents so he does know what its like to be loved by gp's.

It is awful when this happens. For some reason completely unknown to me, I was the favoured GC, and my GPs were always spouting about how talented and well behaved I was. (Was neither of these things in truth. Not talented at anything much, and was cripplingly shy which they interpreted I guess as 'well behaved') The result was a huge amount of resentment among the aunts and uncles, and my cousins refused to speak to me, or were openly hostile. It was pretty horrible actually. 40 now, and my cousins can barely manage to rouse themselves to acknowledge my existence still- even at the annual family reunions.

Anyway.... it is awful, but please don;t resent the childen for it.