Should I make contact with my late husband's family for my child?

[Pinz369]

Will try to keep this story as short as possible.
When my son was 2 and a half, my husband sadly died. As you can imagine, it was a horrific time.
Aside from my MIL and FIL, some of my husband extended family cut me and my son off. Around a year after his funeral, I started a relationship with someone else, who is now my husband and I have another child to him. Long story short, his aunt and two female cousins deleted me from Facebook after my MIL told them I was seeing someone. In 7 years, they have not made any attempt to see my son.
I get on with my MIL and FIL but it has been rocky over the years for different reasons. My younger son now calls them his grandparents and they have a great relationship.
The problem is, my MIL keeps giving my oldest presents from the aunt, cousins and his second cousin. As in literally every time he sees them he gets bombarded with stuff. My MIL constantly talks about his "cousin" to him, but only when I'm not there. So he will come home and is confused as to why he keeps getting presents from someone he has never met. I suspect most of the presents are bought by my MIL, as it is her writing on the tags.
Now he is older, he has started to ask about this side of the family and I don't know what to tell him. I don't feel it would be fair to tell him the truth - i.e. they have not tried to see him since he was a baby, and have purposely cut off his mum. They are not the easiest people to deal with, there is a lot of alcoholism in the family, and they have regular fall outs with my in-laws that I hear about.
I feel sad that the only people who have kept in touch with us are my MIL and FIL. It's not from me not trying. It feels like it has been more of a divorce than a death.
I am not sure if I should try to initiate contact with them for his sake. I don't really want to, but I don't want him to resent me when he is older.
Help!

I don't have advice, sorry, but you might get more traffic on the 'relationships' board

Just don’t bother, there is little to be gained by trying to forge a relationship with people like this. He has his grandparents in his life which is the important thing. Explain that he has cousins but that not all families are in contact with each other.

Could your MIL facilitate the contact?

It sounds like they dealt very badly with you starting a new relationship reasonably soon after you lost your DH. Their reaction wasn't acceptable imo, but grief does funny things to people and makes them behave in bizarre ways.

Now a lot more time has passed, maybe the relationship could be repaired somewhat.

I would leave it to MIL/PIL to be the custodian of your DC's relationships with that side of his family.

Talk to them about the things he's been saying, and how best it can be handled. Do they ever have larger family gatherings (where people might behave themselves!) at which he could at least put faces to names?

I would tell your DC an age appropriate version of the truth. It will be much easier to have it always part of the conversation than having a big reveal when he's older.

I wouldn't make any effort to reach out to them, but would try and respond kindly oyf they made the effort to make contact with you.