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Dear Care and Feeding,
I’m frustrated that my parents have essentially chosen my sister and her family over mine. My mom told my oldest child that she would come watch his first play last year, but then she never came because my sister and her family moved back in with them again. The last time my mom came to visit us was three years ago, when my sister was living with us during her husband’s deployment and had a baby here. My mom even lied to me over the phone, making up health-related excuses to avoid coming here. I don’t want my children to grow up feeling like their cousins are more important to Grandma than they are. What can I do?
—Frustrated Middle Child
Dear Frustrated,
It sounds like your mother has found herself in a caregiving or at least an intensely supportive role with your sister and her family. At its most stressful, parenting can be kind of a triage situation, with your attention grabbed by whatever crisis or greatest need is right in front of you. And your mom really could have been going through some sort of health situation that made it more difficult for her to travel. I understand that you feel slighted—you absolutely deserve to see and spend time with her too, and so do your kids! But right now, it’s possible that she is just trying to react and respond to your sister’s situation, and her own, as best she can.
Instead of just assuming that your children are less important to your mother, try talking with her about how much you want her to know and have a relationship with them. If she’s routinely helping to care for your sister’s kid, that might make travel more challenging, but she should still be able to talk with your sister and plan ahead for the occasional trip. If it’s really hard for her to get away, maybe you can go and see her sometimes. She should be able to hear and understand that you and your children want to spend time with her—hopefully, one way or another, the two of you can figure out how to make a visit happen soon.
Link
I’m frustrated that my parents have essentially chosen my sister and her family over mine. My mom told my oldest child that she would come watch his first play last year, but then she never came because my sister and her family moved back in with them again. The last time my mom came to visit us was three years ago, when my sister was living with us during her husband’s deployment and had a baby here. My mom even lied to me over the phone, making up health-related excuses to avoid coming here. I don’t want my children to grow up feeling like their cousins are more important to Grandma than they are. What can I do?
—Frustrated Middle Child
Dear Frustrated,
It sounds like your mother has found herself in a caregiving or at least an intensely supportive role with your sister and her family. At its most stressful, parenting can be kind of a triage situation, with your attention grabbed by whatever crisis or greatest need is right in front of you. And your mom really could have been going through some sort of health situation that made it more difficult for her to travel. I understand that you feel slighted—you absolutely deserve to see and spend time with her too, and so do your kids! But right now, it’s possible that she is just trying to react and respond to your sister’s situation, and her own, as best she can.
Instead of just assuming that your children are less important to your mother, try talking with her about how much you want her to know and have a relationship with them. If she’s routinely helping to care for your sister’s kid, that might make travel more challenging, but she should still be able to talk with your sister and plan ahead for the occasional trip. If it’s really hard for her to get away, maybe you can go and see her sometimes. She should be able to hear and understand that you and your children want to spend time with her—hopefully, one way or another, the two of you can figure out how to make a visit happen soon.
Link
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1. LW presents Sister as the favorite and themself as the unfavorite. This may truly be the case - but they also call themself a middle child. Where does third sibling fit into this picture?
2. LW says that Mom "lied over the phone" to avoid visiting. This is quite an accusation to make! Why does LW think those health concerns were lies rather than the truth?
3. Where is Dad in this narrative?
4. Exactly how far away do LW's parents live relative to LW and Sister? Because if they're 15 minutes from Sister and a five hour flight from LW that paints a different picture than if they're in the same neighborhood as both of them.
At any rate, the first paragraph of this "advice" is making stuff up that was not in the letter, and the second is sorta useful, except it doesn't offer any practical advice for what to do if LW's understanding of the situation is correct and their parents *do* like Sister and, by extension, Sister's kids, better than they do LW and LW's kids.
And the sad truth is that in that situation all you can do is live with it as it is. You cannot make other people, including your parents, act or feel or basically be the way you want them to - even if they really ought to be better than they are. So maybe the solution is to deprioritize their kids' relationship with LW's parents (and maybe LW's sister and niblings at the same time) while emphasizing a closer relationship with their other relatives.
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When Mom could travel, it was easy enough to swap visits a few times a year, but now Mom can't travel -- so we see her when we can get down there, which is about 2x a year. It's frustrating and it makes me sad, but it's also not anyone's FAULT.
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