do grandparents show favoritism in your family?

[MELISAZACK]

ceiligh 1 is right it does effect kids! now that I give it somemore thought
grandma goes even further in our family...My dad had another child 27 yrs after me...(my parents are divoriced) my son was born 9 months later.
and You can even see the favortism there - She perferrs my son her great-grandson to my brother her grandson...but we all now the hevans would part if my cousin has a kid that will be gods gift to the earth and both of the other boys will be put out for that child....I am starting to get to the point now especially with all the house buying and seeing all the family for what they are and how money hungry they can be to agree w/ dh and cut some ties but I don't want to do that to my son until he is old enough to make that decision for himself...So right now we watch and make sure nothing hurts his feelings in anyway. I also noticed that my aunt gives more to the 1/2 brother than my son she says she feels sorry for him since his life ins't normal...well whos fault is that and why should my son see the fact he gets less from the family because his grandfather screwed up late in life...
but that is another topic of conversation.......its hard and everyone...
all we can all do is try and keep the peace and smile with all our families that pull this stunt! at least we can all see we are not alone in this.

 

[ItsonlyExperiment626]

MIL favors our nephews. They live closer to MIL so she sees them more often. Nephews gets really nice presents as our kids pretty much gets junk, but DH will say our kids are her favorites. I say keep on dreaming.

 

[Grumpy's Gal]

so are all of you dreading the holidays? I am!

 

[skuttle]

I think my grandparents have showed a bit of favoritism towards me through the years, and also now for my son. My mom is there oldest child and only daughter. My parents divorced when I was in the 4th grade so I spent a lot of time with my grandparents and I think I make more effort for my son to spend time with them now than my other cousins.

 

[ElizaB39]

deleted post

 

[mamaprincess]

and my kids are the beneficiaries!

 

[crs7568]

My husband's parents are unique in that they are too selfish to care about any of their grandchildren. They have similarly shallow relationships with all of them.

My father is remarried so the stepgrandchildren get more favoritism since my stepmother is the one who runs the house. He was not a very attentive father, so I am not surprised that he is a pretty univolved grandfather.

My mother favors my brother's daughter since she has a pretty lousy home life. Her parents are divorced, her mother has a new husband and there is a new baby that gets all of the attention. I am aware that my niece needs the attention far more than my children.

I am sad that my children will never know the great relationship that I had with my grandparents. However, my husband is an excellent father and we make our children the center of our lives so maybe they will not need their grandparents as much as I did while I was growing up.

 

[Grumpy's Gal]

I am sad that my children will never know the great relationship that I had with my grandparents. However, my husband is an excellent father and we make our children the center of our lives so maybe they will not need their grandparents as much as I did while I was growing up.

I could have written this myself. It makes me so sad in our family that the grandparents are missing out on some really great, interesting people!

 

[melo1@cox.net]

Just curious -- it would appear that my inlaws show quite a bit of favortism between the grandchildren eventhough they are all in town, all about the same age, all visit the grandparent's house, etc. It's not just an occassional favoritism either....it's all the time. Very, very obvious. Is it this way in your family?

Hello there!

I read your posting and wanted to know if you had any ideas on my problem.

My MIL to be has favored my stepson Cameron (6 years old) since I met her. When I had my son Mason (10 Months old), she was happy. Although she favors Cameron so bad. For instance she took 6 Fridays off this summer to take Cameron to the beach. She NEVER invites Mason and I. She even came by my house today with Cameron to get his Boogie board for the beach.
WHAT NERVE! When my husband -to -be asks her what her problem is she say's "It's so much easier to take care of Cameron than Mason". "He's to hard to take care of at the beach". However, she told me this past winter " Oh your gonna love taking Mason to the beach, when Cam was a baby I took him all the time, he was a little beach bum"! What a jerk huh! Can you help me
on what to do or how to handle this. I feel so bad for my little boy. Even though he doesn't know it yet he will when he gets older.

Any thoughts?

Thanks

 

[sugarpie]

My MIL favors her my SIL's kids terribly. SIL's husband left so she bought SIL a $400,000 house and moved in with her to help her with the kids. She takes them to school, picks them up, takes them to karate, soccer, & music lessons. She cooks them dinner. She takes them on vacations the other grandchildren are not invited on. She buys them toys & clothes.

When we ask her to watch our kids she can't because she's too busy with the other grandchildren. They need her more, she says. She lives 20 minutes away & we only see her every couple of months, usually when we go there. She's been to our house 6 times in the last 5 years, for the girls birthdays. It's sad.

 

[The Mystery Machine]

can I add a 2nd part to this post? How do you explain it to the children who are constantly being left out?

I used to say things like they are busy, they work, they can't do this and that...blah, blah, blah...
Well my youngest and brightest piped up and said "they really don't care."

I was forced to look at the actions of my parents and family. It broke my heart.

We moved 600 miles away. My kids and I still love our family and we visit, but the miles apart have lessened the constant pain we used to have.

 

[TheOtherVillainess]

Definately. I don't know why..I never asked for this and I always try to play down the favors I get by being the one 'good' (and I mean that sort of loosely)grandkid.

TOV

 

[disneymouse]

Yup. My in-laws have a huge problem not hiding who their "favorite" is. It was obvious growing up that they favored SIL over my DH. And now it is evident in the family who the favored grandchildren are.
Of course, SIL's kids come first...but you can tell of her 3 kids , which one comes first.
And with our two,...it has been so blatantly obvious that they favor DS over DD....that my DS who is 7, has confided to both DH and I that he feels sorry for his little sis.

wow. we have the same situation too. the thing is our MIL and SIL are two peas in a pod so naturally they are emenshed (they helped SIL buy a house down the street from them) so now that she is pregnant i already know they will all a sudden be like the grandparents of the year.
when our kids were born it was like 'we aren't ready to be grandparents' DS6 and especially dd2 barely know them.

 

[disneymouse]

so are all of you dreading the holidays? I am!

we were dreading it but DH came up with the idea of just going to WDW for xmas this year for a stress-free christmas. sometimes i love that man

 

[The Mystery Machine]

Not dreading the holiday's this year.

DH's mom is coming for Thanksgiving and we our staying put or vacationing for Christmas.

 

[padams]

No issues on my side as I'm an "only" so my parents only have DSs as grandkids.

MIL has 2 DSs and a DD. DD has always been her favorite child and now DD's kids are her favorite grandkids. When we're with MIL, she talks constantly about how brilliant DD's kids are. At ages 8 and 10, I know my boys are catching on about MIL. When they ask, my response is "it's not fair, is it? Will you do that as a parent or grandparent?" Of course, they say "NO!". MIL will actually acknowledge the favoritsm, and say "well DD is my only daughter".

FIL (divorced from MIL) has always favored DH's brother, and of course, his favorite grandchild is the brother's kid. FIL said to me this summer that he is so much closer to the brother's kid because he sees him so much more. FIL splits his time between Atlanta and the city where brother lives. When he's in Atlanta, he's too busy to see us because he has to see 2nd wife's DDs and grandkids. Whose fault is that?

As an only child, I really don't get the favored child/grandchild thing. I love both of my boys equally. Sure there are days where one is easier to parent than the other, but I always love them both as much as it's humanly possible to love someone. If one had been a daughter, I just can't imagine favoring her over a son.

I usually dread the holidays but this year, it's already been arranged that we will all (DH, sibs, grands) spend Xmas with MIL at BIL's house because it's her 70th bday. I know MIL buys the other grandkids more presents than DSs receive from her. Also, they get new stuff, and my kids get junk from thrift stores. I'm looking forward to seeing how she handles it.

A couple of years ago, we all spent Xmas Day together at MIL's house. MIL had BIL and SIL and their kids open their presents on Xmas Eve when we were not invited. I know how much and what the others received because the toys and clothes were still all over the house. So the others wouldn't see how little we receive, MIL had us open our presents in a back room of her home while the others were clearing and cleaning the dinner dishes (and ironically, SIL gets ticked because we didn't help clean up ). I would be perfectly happy if she didn't give us anything at all. I really don't care what we get; I just hate the inequality.

 

[elizke]

Hello there!

I read your posting and wanted to know if you had any ideas on my problem.

My MIL to be has favored my stepson Cameron (6 years old) since I met her. When I had my son Mason (10 Months old), she was happy. Although she favors Cameron so bad. For instance she took 6 Fridays off this summer to take Cameron to the beach. She NEVER invites Mason and I. She even came by my house today with Cameron to get his Boogie board for the beach.
WHAT NERVE! When my husband -to -be asks her what her problem is she say's "It's so much easier to take care of Cameron than Mason". "He's to hard to take care of at the beach". However, she told me this past winter " Oh your gonna love taking Mason to the beach, when Cam was a baby I took him all the time, he was a little beach bum"! What a jerk huh! Can you help me
on what to do or how to handle this. I feel so bad for my little boy. Even though he doesn't know it yet he will when he gets older.

Any thoughts?

Thanks

I see you brought up an old thread to ask your question. It sounds like you have a difficult situation, and not unusual in these times of mixed families.

I do have some thoughts. One is, know that favoritism from grandparents does exist, even when they have the same parents. My MIL always doted heavily on my stepson, and not so much on my stepdaughter, even though they had the same parents and both were easy kids. I think there are quite a few underlying causes for this, that would take way too long to analyze here. But for years it was painfully obvious and everyone in the family knew it, including the kids. There were stages we went through. First she denied it completely, then she'd say it was because he needed her and missed her the most when she left, then she got to where she could joke about it, and now I think it's more a soft spot she has for him that no one really minds anymore.

My mom does not favor any of the grandkids so much as disfavors some of them. I swear there's one (not one of mine) that she never has a good world to say about. Strange.

So I guess I'm saying it may have nothing to do with you and try not to take it personally. My stepdaughter has a very good relationship with her grandma now, and I think Grandma's favoritism has diminished once they became adults. I'm not saying it's okay, but I do think you must tread carefully because getting her defensive may make it worse.

E.

 

[SplshMtn99]

First let me say, we don't have any children. One of the grandfathers does play favorites, but not at holiday time. Its more through out the year. He seems to feel that its his job or role to be the dad of his daughters son. She is divorced. He feels its his job to think about his future education ($ & plans) & stuff like that. The kid has a dad....who even lives in the same town. She's not a single parent. I also think its pretty clear that his daughter is his favorite child too.

However, we never see him interested in future education about his other 2 grandchildren (whose parents are still married).

As, for us....I've heard from others AND from grandpa himself that he even thinks that my DH is not even his son. Its pretty clear too as we are the last to ever be called or be told anything. DH's mom insists that his dad IS his dad. (His dad walked out when DH was 3 yrs old.) Hard to tell since DH looks like his mom....but DH's siblings clearly look like their dad. We also know the man that grandpa feels is DH's real dad. Its hard to tell in my opinion. It just hurts DH that his dad treats him differently for no REAL proof.

 

[ItsonlyExperiment626]

Yes, Yes and Yes. Have heard my MIL has always played the favortism game with her kids and it still continues with the grandkids. Sad too that my SIL, BIL and DH favors these same two kids over the other ones as not to go against their mother.

 

[Disney Doll]

I used to say things like they are busy, they work, they can't do this and that...blah, blah, blah...
Well my youngest and brightest piped up and said "they really don't care."

I was forced to look at the actions of my parents and family. It broke my heart.

We moved 600 miles away. My kids and I still love our family and we visit, but the miles apart have lessened the constant pain we used to have.

Children can be amazingly perceptive, can't they?????

DH's cousin has fraternal twin daughters. One looks like DH's cousin(their father), one looks like the mother. DH's aunt(twins paternal grandmother)favored the one who looked like her son and basically ignored the one who looked like her DIL until the DIL laid down the law and said "treat them equally or you don't see either of them".

I am amazed at some of these stories, although I do think, in general, that there is usually favoritism shown to daughters and their families. There is also favoritism shown to the ones who are perceived as "weaker", or less able to cope.