My daughter is the only grandchild on my parents side and when she was first born my mum was a doting grandmother and couldn't seem to get enough of her, but now she doesn't seem interested in her at all and seems bored if I bring her up in conversations.
What makes it frustrating for me is that my mum never stops talking about their neighbour's daughter Lily who is about 10 days older than our daughter. I understand that she sees Lily almost every day across the fence and that we live at the opposite end of the country, but it's really started upsetting me lately that she keeps referring to herself as an 'honorary' grandmother to Lily.
I burst into tears at our last visit because my mum had removed the photo of Alex from the special granddaughter frame we had given her for Mother's Day and there was a picture of Lily in it. In fact only one of the photos was of our daughter and the rest were of Lily, then my mum made a big deal of changing the photo to "make me happy" and couldn't find the photos that I had posted her a few weeks earlier.
I know it's not fair but I have started testing my mum to prove to myself that I'm not paranoid. I emailed her some photos of our daughter last week (they were actually photos of the dog) and she said they were "so cute" and "she's getting big" my mum hadn't even bothered to open the attachments.
The final straw came last night on the phone when I cut my mum off saying, "I don't really care that Lily got a new swing set, aren't you going to ask about Alex? You know your actual granddaughter?" After a big sigh my mum says, "I'm sorry, what about Alex then?" I started to tell her that Alex had taken her first steps yesterday and my mum immediately cut in saying that Lily has been walking since 10 months and is even running now, at which point I hung up.
Am I being silly getting upset by all of this? It just makes me so angry that my mum will quite happily prattle on about a kid that isn't related to her for half an hour and not once mention or ask about her own granddaughter. Will she even care when we tell her about grandchild number 2 who is due in November?
Sigh. Sorry about the rant everyone.
What makes it frustrating for me is that my mum never stops talking about their neighbour's daughter Lily who is about 10 days older than our daughter. I understand that she sees Lily almost every day across the fence and that we live at the opposite end of the country, but it's really started upsetting me lately that she keeps referring to herself as an 'honorary' grandmother to Lily.
I burst into tears at our last visit because my mum had removed the photo of Alex from the special granddaughter frame we had given her for Mother's Day and there was a picture of Lily in it. In fact only one of the photos was of our daughter and the rest were of Lily, then my mum made a big deal of changing the photo to "make me happy" and couldn't find the photos that I had posted her a few weeks earlier.
I know it's not fair but I have started testing my mum to prove to myself that I'm not paranoid. I emailed her some photos of our daughter last week (they were actually photos of the dog) and she said they were "so cute" and "she's getting big" my mum hadn't even bothered to open the attachments.
The final straw came last night on the phone when I cut my mum off saying, "I don't really care that Lily got a new swing set, aren't you going to ask about Alex? You know your actual granddaughter?" After a big sigh my mum says, "I'm sorry, what about Alex then?" I started to tell her that Alex had taken her first steps yesterday and my mum immediately cut in saying that Lily has been walking since 10 months and is even running now, at which point I hung up.
Am I being silly getting upset by all of this? It just makes me so angry that my mum will quite happily prattle on about a kid that isn't related to her for half an hour and not once mention or ask about her own granddaughter. Will she even care when we tell her about grandchild number 2 who is due in November?
Sigh. Sorry about the rant everyone.