I yell at my mom and telling her to grow up.
I am 29, 3 kids. My mom was married to Eric(step father) from when I was a preteen. It lasted a few years and ended really badly.
My mom wasn’t blameless for the relationship issues or how the end of it went down but Eric did cheat on her which was a bigger offence. She’s understandably still resentful even 16 years later and doesn’t talk to Eric.
I drifted from both Eric and his family post-divorce, of course. But I ended up becoming much closer to my (former) stepsister than I ever was as a preteen as an adult. We now babysit for each other’s kids all the time and she’s my best friend of 8 or so years.
Due to my relationship with her and because he was always a good stepdad to me at least, Eric and his now-wife are also involved in our lives, not as much as my mom but my kids still call them Grandpa and Grandma.
They’re also both retired. My mom still works M-F 9-5 and doesn’t get a lot of time off, so even though I’m still close to my mom and think of her first when it comes to grandma duties/privileges, they are almost always willing to be a backup and I trust my kids with them.
This week my husband’s brother had a serious health crisis so we’ve needed more babysitting support from my side of the family than usual. I knew my mom was working so I called Eric and asked if they could take the kids from 12-8, they said yes but only until 6 pm. I said np, and called my mom and said, “Hey would you be able to swing by after your work and pick up the kids from Eric and keep them until 8?”
My mom was annoyed at the idea of having contact with Eric but said okay and I gave her their address.
At 2pm I get a call from Eric saying that my mom had taken the afternoon off and was there for the kids. In the moment, I said okay yes that’s fine because my kids would be fine with my mom, I knew. But I was also thinking WTF why is she 4 hours early.
Eric said she showed up and was passive-aggressively demanding “her” grandchildren and saying she didn’t want them cooped up and posturing and being petty. My mom’s version is much the same, and she was almost laughing like she’d gotten one over on them, especially eric’s wife who she detests.
If there was any doubt that she had just innocently wanted to spend more time with her grandkids, I’d feel differently, but she all but admitted that she was just being petty. I got mad at her attitude and told her to grow up and said she’d broken my trust and been petty and if she was going to be a child about it then clearly she couldn’t be trusted with actual children. I also accused her of breaking our “don’t talk negatively about Eric in front of the kids” rule though she argued she didn’t say anything negative.
But I do feel bad because she was technically doing me a favor and out of context her actions were innocent. And the kids had a nice lunch with her and she spent money on them. And she does have her reasons to dislike Eric, so maybe it’s my fault for putting her in that situation.