Just wanted some advice. I have one DS who is married with children. Whilst we are comfortable, my DIL comes from a much richer and more upper class family. My son is incredibly bright, going to Oxford and has a really well paid good career. He married a lovely girl who he met there who is always very polite and welcoming but there has always been an undercurrent of knowing that we are not the normal type of people she is used to. She isn’t snobby or rude and is welcoming but it’s just an unacknowledged obvious thing.
Her family are much richer then ours, her father is incredibly successful (they own 5 houses) and are obviously very generous with the grandchildren which we are not able to be. They are also very generous with ds/DIL which we can’t be. For example I found out her parents give her £5000 as a gift to buy something nice for Christmas. Again they are never anything but polite to us, but it’s clear that we aren’t their sort of people.
My grandchildren are just so different to us, they have been sent to private school and whilst they do seem to love us, are quite clearly much closer to her family. Over Christmas I used the words settee and lounge and was corrected by my GD, my DIL winced with embarrassment as she obviously wants me to feel welcome but obviously my GC are being taught not to use ‘lower-class’ words like us. Another example is stockings. We still do stockings for our children (2) which are cheap and cheerful, but I recently found out that when my DS has Christmas with his in laws they do him a stocking with really nice presents. Now I feel like it was rude for me not to do one for my DIL, but she wouldn’t want our cheap one anyway. When we’ve bought her presents in the past she’s always been very polite but they don’t get used. For example we bought her a footstool we thought she would like, but DS said we shouldn’t have as she is very into interiors and likes to pick everything herself. I’ve only seen it used once and obviously that was to be polite.
I probably sound jealous and of course it would be nice to have more money, but I think it boils down to knowing in my heart we will never measure up to her family in generosity and that they are already so much closer. It doesn’t help we are the ‘paternal grandparents’.
Am very proud of my DS for moving on up in the world and we have a great relationship, but am I just destined to be a poor relation and is there anything I can do.
