I’m really sad to be writing this but I’ve just had a major blow argument with my parents regarding their presence in my 2.5 year olds life.
As a back ground, it was always very clear from a young age that my mum favoured my sister. She was always very loving with me but a lot closer to my sister, maybe this was because my sister was very different in personality to me, she suffered a lot with anxiety and was very needy. But as we got older my mum would do things like invite her and her boys around every other week to cook for them, go around her house to clean it. General tasks like this continued when I had my first newborn and still no help was really offered to me, and I use to feel so upset struggling with them first few months knowing my sister and her children were around my mums eating a home cooked meal whilst I was hectic my trying to prepare a meal for my husband to come home to after being awake all night.
Flash forward to having a toddler my husbands parents are incredible! They have our daughter at any possibility and my mother in law has her 4 days a week whilst I work AND cooks us all teas on the nights i work. My parents however make zero effort with our daughter and the only time they see her is if I take her over (they live two streets away).
Today being Father’s Day, I was enraged when I found out they had been round to my sisters house this morning who lives directly over the street from my house and not called in to say hello to my daughter again! I later confronted the situation on the phone and explained I wouldn’t be going round to take my dads present today. I was very aware that they had been to my sisters and not called round, I explained that I won’t except them being in and out of her life like they do and if they wanted to make an efffort they would. She replied by saying now she’s getting older there’s no time after working all week because she’s got stuff to do at the weekends. I explained again, calmly that seeing my daughter should be a priority not a task. I said that they were missing out and if they wanted to see her they would and that I was not longer going to be the one taking her to see them just so that happens.
My dad then said, I’ll say this for the final time keep your daughter then because we don’t need the stress. At this point I hung up and this was how it has been left.
Am I wrong here? Has anyone else faced this? And I’m I right protecting my daughter from feeling second best to her cousins or having contact with them whenever they decide they have time?!