Just wondering what others would do in my situation. I have 2 children, one 10 and one 18 months.
I have a very strained relationship with my mother (for many reasons) however she has always had an active role in my eldest child’s life. More so when he was younger and she was single, as I feel she used him for company but she is now remarried and has him one night a week overnight after school and will occasionally come to see him play football on a weekend. We do not speak at all and pick up / drop off is always at the end of the garden as we don’t converse.
I now have an 18 month old and she has nothing to do with him (just as a side note, my children have different fathers and I am in a relationship with my youngest dad who she has never met as she has never taken an interest in meeting him). She didn’t congratulate me when she found out I was expecting, didn’t ask to see him when he was born and never sent a congratulations card etc when i had him (when I had my first out relationship was better so she was my birthing partner, used to come round every day to help out as I had had a section, was forever buying him gifts and having him over for sleepovers and taking him out). After around 3 months I broke the ice and explained to her that I was upset that she hadn’t wanted to have any contact with my youngest and that I felt she was favouring my oldest, as she still continued to see him once a week and buy him things, send him home with money but none for my youngest. She will occasionally text and FaceTime my oldest but doesn’t text me to ask about the youngest. We put things to the side and I met her for coffee on around 4 occasions, and tried to be as amicable as possible and start again. Until one day She just stopped, didn’t ask about him yet again, how he was, if she could see him, how he was doing etc (this is when he was around 4/5 months old so a lot of development happening at that time). She continues to be like this now whilst still maintaining the same relationship with my eldest son that she has always had.
I am now pregnant with my 3rd, and I am really contemplating whether I should tell her that if she is not willing to treat all of my children the same, then as much I hate to do it, my eldest will have to stop seeing her. I would hate to do that to him however I am also dreading the day my youngest are old enough to understand where he is going and wonder why they are not, and feel that their not good enough or even cause a divide between my kids because of her.
What would you do in this situation?