From time to time, we hear stories about children feeling that either they or their sibling is being favored by their parent or grandparent. Usually, these stories come with their expression of hurt, disappointment, and often without a proper reason from the (grand)parents' end.
Yet, today we're serving you a story from another point of view – the one of the grandmother explaining why she favors some of her grandchildren. The most interesting thing is that her explanation kind of makes us take her side, which is rare in favoritism stories.
More info: Reddit
Sadly, parental or grandparental favoritism is way more common than it should be
Image credits: prostooleh / Freepik (not the actual photo)
This story is another one about it, but with a twist – this time it's a grandmother explaining why she plays favorites
Image credits: Freepik / Freepik (not the actual photo)
This woman married a man with kids from previous marriage, but the oldest of them kept constantly mistreating and ignoring her
Image credits: Freepik / Freepik (not the actual photo)
When they left home, they went no contact for years, until they needed money and decided to reconnect
Image credits: Freepik / Freepik (not the actual photo)
When the entitled stepdaughters had the kids of their own, the author started clearly favoring the stepson's kids, since he wasn't as nasty to her
Image credits: Aggressive-Rhubarb56
This angered the two stepdaughters, who used to mistreat the post's author and they started a campaign with extended family to call her behavior out
The OP has stepchildren from her husband's previous marriage. All of them are adults – one is in his late 20s, while the other two are in their late 30s. The older ones are stepdaughters, who never acknowledged the original poster in any way. Or sometimes even worse – they painted her as a “pick me girl”, who tried to replace their mom.
After the girls left home, they went no contact with their stepmom and low contact with their dad. Then, they came back to his life when they needed money for the wedding and a house, which made the author feel like they were just using him. Thus, the OP chose not to reunite with them – they used to ignore her, so any efforts to reconnect just didn’t seem genuine.
The thing is that the same stepdaughter started wanting their stepmom in their life when their younger brother, who wasn’t as cold to their stepmom as they were, had kids. Now the women wanted their kids to get involved with step-grandma, too.
Yet, the original poster wasn’t having it – she showed clear favoritism towards her stepson's kids. This made the women spiral, starting a campaign against it, but that didn’t really bug the OP, no matter how hard the stepdaughters tried to change her mind.
Image credits: Freepik / Freepik (not the actual photo)
After all, it isn’t like the author completely ignores these kids – she spends time with them when they’re together with other grandkids. She never reaches out for additional contact besides that.
On one hand, we can understand where the moms are coming from – kids who understand that they aren’t favored by their grandparents tend to suffer. Especially if they often see the other child, whether it’s their sibling or cousin, being favored instead. They might feel hurt and insecure. These feelings can strain not only their relationship with said grandparent, but with the sibling or cousin that’s been favored, too.
Not to mention how harmful it can be for them personally over time. When it comes to parental favoritism, this detriment even has a name, “parental differential treatment” (PDT), as it is considered an important factor in a range of emotional problems. So, it wouldn’t be surprising if something like that would exist in relation to grandparent favoritism – often these people tend to be important role models for the kids.
At the same time, at least in the eyes of netizens, the grandmother from this story had a relatively good reason to show favoritism. The extended family seems pretty difficult to deal with, starting with the entitled behavior during girls’ childhood, to the hate campaigns right now. So, if favoritism is the only way she feels she can get back to them, let it be!
Do you agree with such an opinion? Maybe your stance on the whole situation differs? Please, share it in the comments.
Netizens thought that the woman playing favorites wasn't that off-putting in this case, as there was a good reason for her to act this way
