Grandparent Favoritism: What to Do When Your Dad Loves Your Oldest Son But Ignores Your Second Child
Last Sunday, my dad showed up for dinner with a crumpled dinosaur activity book tucked under his arm and a pack of the sour gummy worms my 7-year-old son Jax has been begging for since our zoo trip three weeks prior. My 3-year-old daughter Lila, our second, launched herself at his knees before he’d even kicked off his scuffed work boots, and he ruffled the top of her hair once, mumbled “hey, squirt,” and stepped around her to kneel down and show Jax the pull-out T-Rex skeleton on the book’s first page.
That’s how it’s been since Lila was born, really. It’s never mean, never overt. He never snaps at her, never says he doesn’t want her around. He just doesn’t see her. When Jax has a soccer game, he shows up 20 minutes early with a folding chair and yells so loud after goals that other parents glance over and smile. For Lila’s first tumble recital last month, he called an hour before to say a plumbing job had run late, and showed up 10 minutes before the end, head down scrolling work texts the whole time she did her forward rolls. When Jax rambles about his Minecraft world or the frog he caught in the creek behind our house, dad asks follow-up questions, teases him, remembers the frog’s name a week later. If Lila climbs onto the couch next to him holding a crayon drawing, he’ll glance at it for half a second, say “nice, kid,” and turn back to his football game or his conversation with my husband.
For a long time I made excuses for him. Jax was his first grandbaby, born the same month dad retired from his full-time handyman business. He watched Jax three days a week for the first two years, changed every diaper, knew exactly how he liked his apples sliced, sat through endless repeat viewings of his favorite construction truck cartoon. By the time Lila came along, dad was bored of retirement and had picked up part-time contract work, so he never had that same stretch of slow, daily time with her. He grew up with two brothers, only had me, and still fumbles with little girls’ pigtails and stuffed animal tea parties. Jax was a loud, grabby baby who demanded attention the second he walked in a room; Lila hangs back, quiet, waiting to be invited. I told myself it was just a gap, that it would close on its own as she got older and easier to talk to.
That stopped feeling good enough two months ago at the neighborhood park. Jax dragged dad off to the swing set 10 minutes after we arrived, and Lila stood by the park bench holding her favorite floppy rabbit for 15 whole minutes, just waiting for her turn. When dad finally wandered back to sit down, he pulled Jax onto his lap to pull up a truck video on his phone, and Lila didn’t yell or cry. She just turned around, walked slowly back to me, and rested her head on my arm. I brought it up at her 3-year checkup a week later, and her pediatrician said something that stuck: kids pick up on uneven attention long before they can name it. It’s not the occasional lopsided gift or missed recital that leaves a mark, it’s the consistent, quiet message that one kid is worth leaning in for, and the other isn’t. The favored kid doesn’t get a pass either—Jax had already said a few weeks prior that “grandpa only likes playing with me, Lila’s too little,” like that was just how the world worked.
I didn’t blow up at dad over dinner that night, or call him up yelling that he was a terrible grandfather. I waited a week, asked him to stop by for coffee on a Saturday when the kids were at a cousin’s birthday party, no audience, no distractions. I didn’t lead with “you favor Jax and ignore Lila,” because I knew that would make him defensive and shut the whole conversation down. Instead I named specific, small moments, no broad judgments. “I noticed when Lila brought you that drawing of our cat a couple weeks ago, you only glanced at it for a second,” I said. “She worked on that for 20 minutes while you were watching the game, and she asks every single day when grandpa’s coming over again.”
He huffed at first, crossed his arms, said he brought her stuff too, he didn’t know what I wanted from him. I didn’t push back. I just said, “I know you don’t do it on purpose. You had two whole years of daily time with Jax before Lila was born. You never got that chance to learn all her little quirks. I don’t need you to love them exactly the same right now. I just need you to give her a chance to know you.”
We didn’t make some big, dramatic plan after that. We started small, low-effort, the kind of thing that didn’t feel like another chore on his to-do list. Every other Saturday, he picks Lila up for 45 minutes on his way to the hardware store to restock for his jobs. No planned outing, no expensive activity. She just rides in the passenger seat of his truck, holds the tape measure while he picks out supplies, gets a cherry lollipop at the checkout. When he comes over for Sunday dinner, I don’t wait for him to notice Lila anymore. I hand him her latest art project as he walks in, and say, “Lila, tell grandpa what color you painted the unicorn’s horn this week,” instead of leaving her hovering by his knees waiting. If he brings a little gift just for Jax, I pull him aside before he hands it over and grab whatever small thing I have stashed by the door—stickers, a pack of gum, a leftover bakery cookie—to give to Lila, no fanfare. After the first two times, he started bringing something small on his own.
With the kids, I don’t lie about what’s happening, and I don’t badmouth their grandpa. If Lila says “grandpa only plays with Jax,” I don’t tell her that’s not true, because that just tells her her own observations are wrong. I say, “Grandpa’s still learning all the things you like to do, just like you’re still learning to ride your tricycle. What’s one thing you want to show him next time he comes?” I also pull Jax aside to prompt him to include her, instead of letting him soak up all the attention by default: “Hey, go show grandpa how Lila can stack blocks taller than you, okay? He’s never seen that.”
It’s not fixed, not by a long shot. Dad still spends most of Sunday dinner talking to Jax about soccer and video games. He still sometimes checks work texts while Lila babbles about her stuffed rabbit’s birthday. He missed her rescheduled tumble recital last month when a client had a burst pipe. But last week he showed up to dinner with the usual gummy worms for Jax, and a crumpled bright purple paint swatch pulled from his work pocket for Lila. He said the hardware store had a new display, and he thought she’d want it for her next drawing. She dragged him over to the fridge, where she tapes every swatch he brings her, and he stood there for 10 whole minutes while she pointed out every single one.
I used to think this had to end with some big, perfect moment where he loved both kids exactly the same, and all the hurt disappeared. But most of this kind of uneven care isn’t cruelty, it’s just habit and time. He built two years of small, daily memories with Jax before Lila was even born, and you can’t make that up with one conversation. You build it one boring hardware store run, one purple paint swatch, one 10-minute chat about crayon drawings at a time. Some days I still get angry when I see her hanging back, waiting to be noticed. I don’t know if he’ll ever feel as easy around her as he does around Jax. But last week she told her preschool teacher her grandpa takes her to pick out paint colors. For now, that’s enough.
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