This has been playing on my mind for a while now, and I wanted to ask people what they genuinely think is the problem here. I posted this somewhere else (not Mumsnet) and the consensus seemed to be that there's nothing wrong with my brother not wanting to see his niece. However, I thought I'd ask a few mums what they think!
My brother is 4 years older than me, in his forties, and lives with his girlfriend (who is about my age). Before they lived together he had about 4 framed photos of my daughter in his living room (if I remember they were the only photos he had). Before I had my daughter he said that he would always help out, babysit etc - but this has never happened. I don't have too much of a problem with this, but am just illustrating the difference in terms of his attitude now and then. We used to live a few doors apart a couple of years ago and he would regularly visit with cakes, food etc and for a chat.
Since he's bought a place with his girlfriend, the photos have gone and been replaced with 4 very prominent photos of her nephew (the photos were literally removed from their frames and replaced with photos of her nephew). My mum asked him why this was and he didn't really respond, but begrudgingly put an old photo of my daughter out in the hall (by the coats and the door).
He very rarely, if ever, comes to visit us. To such an extent that my daughter asked him yesterday "Why do you never ever come to see us?" He said he did and abruptly changed the subject. Just before Christmas, his girlfriend fell out with her sister and apparently visited her (with presents), only to be told that she didn't want to see her and they came away with the presents. Lo and behold, my daughter's presents were for a baby boy. His girlfriend was telling me about how she felt about this trip a few months ago, and accidentally let drop about all the times she and my brother go up to visit her sister and nephew and babysit.
I'm now starting to see that my brother is very dismissive of my daughter. The other day she innocently commented that she thought he was a farmer because he has so many animals (cat and 2 birds). He got very dismissive (quite sneery) and odd with her and started responded "Oh thats your logic is it?" (strange response to a 4 year old). On her birthday he seemed very sneery about the whole thing, wouldn't touch any of the birthday food and hardly talked the whole time. When I showed him a pair of trainers that I had bought her for a sports day they were dismissed as 'chavy.'
My mum let drop last year that she had said to him "I've never asked you how you feel about (my daughter)." To which he responded "Oh don't try and get me on that one." I tried to probe a bit further, but she got all vague.
I have searched and searched for reasons why my brother may have problems with my daughter and can only think that my brother is concerned about my mum's will (he is very money orientated). I have this feeling that my mother will probably leave everything in her will to my daughter when she dies (I don't know this for sure, but my hunches are usually right). I don't have much of a problem with this, as we are not close and I don't expect anything from her in her will and have told her this when she mentioned her will. I wonder if my brother thinks that this will happen too and is taking this out on my daughter or whether there are more reasons to all this than what I can see.
What do people think?