Trying to boil years of history down to a few sentences here.
Dh has 2 grown up kids. He split with their mum when they were 6 and 3, they're now 26 and 23. Split seemed to be amicable enough although there was unpleasantness at times like when they were dividing up their assets, when he and I first got together, then a bit more when we got married and had kids. Their mum was not keen for me to be involved in their lives at all, there was a long list of things she considered to be a mum's role and I wasn't to do them.
Dsd is not close to us. She is very close to her mum. Fair enough, we've got 3 boys, she was never allowed to go out shopping or anything with me, she drifted away. I think dh should have tried harder, he likes sport and cycling and hiking and running, she doesn't. They have little in common.
Dss does play a bit of sport with dh, they text back and forward, they're a bit distant but fine.
Both are closer to dh's sister who has kids their age, and they are both, dss especially, regular visitors to dh's elderly parents.
Here's the thing. Our ds is 15, he adores his older siblings. But they're not very interested. They're not interested in us as a group, they're not all that interested in their dad. Partly I think because they're young adults doing their own thing, dss has a fairly new job and a fairly new gf, dsd is at uni, has her own flat, would rather be out drinking with her pals than be visiting her much younger brothers.
But a big part of why they don't come and see us/their brothers is because we're just not that close, for the reasons I've tried to explain above. They're just not that interested. And I can't blame them. I kept my distance when they were younger because that's what their mum told me to do, and we thought it was best to do what their mum said. That was a mistake, I have no independent relationship with them at all. Dh finds it really hard to connect with his dd, his ds would just rather do other things.
There are lots of things with hindsight we should have done differently, but we are where we are.
I see my family all the time, my brother, my parents, my cousins. Ds can't understand why he's not so close to his step-siblings. He gets really hurt when he hears they've been out with their cousins (closer in age, one is a girl so close to dsd). He wants to see them way more than they want to see him and he takes that very personally.
If I start any sort of conversation about the history of why they're not that keen to see us it opens up a massive can of worms. And I feel that I have the least stake in the story tbh, it's not really mine to tell.
If I tell my version of the story "Well I didn't ever do anything independent with them because I was scared of their mum so now we're virtual strangers and I'm not in a position to help you build a relationship with them", he would tell them and they would tell their mum and that wouldn't help anyone.
And I can't tell him "well I feel like your dad didn't try hard enough to build a relationship with them on their terms and I'm actually quite angry with him about that, even though he feels he did all he could and circumstances got in the way", that's for dh to discuss with him really.
Tbf he's not a phenomenally different dad to our kids, he's quite serious, quite rigid in his thinking, he tends to expect them to join in things he's doing rather than him join in things they're interested in, he's a bit of a lecturer in parenting style rather than a listener, he tends to tell them what he thinks they should do, tells then what he did in a similar situation 40 years ago. And of course he was really clever, passed all his exams, followed a perfect career path, so a hard act to follow. But because we're together as a couple we compliment each other and it works fine, his older kids just see him on his own.
So far I've just gone for "oh well they're young adults, they're busy, they're interested in other things right now" and change the subject.
What would you say?