A young mother has taken to Reddit to vent about how her mother-in-law blames her for her grandchild’s “bad genes”.
The 25-year-old said she is tired of her mother-in-law associating any seemingly “negative” behaviour from the eight-month-old with her side of the family, and every positive trait with her own side of the family.
Posting in the Am I The A**hole subreddit, the Redditor sought opinions on whether or not she was in the wrong to eventually snap at her mother-in-law after eight months of “harmless” remarks.
She explained that her husband was a “well behaved” baby who was always calm, didn’t cry or throw tantrums, and wasn’t picky about food.
So when the grandchild came along, the mother-in-law expected the new baby to be just like her dad.
Although she is well behaved, she can be picky sometimes — like every other baby.
She explained: “Whenever she shows her negative traits, my mother-in-law says something along the lines of ‘oh it’s probably from you’ and any positive trait she goes ‘ah, just like how my son was’. I’ve been sucking it up ever since she was born but it kinda hurts.”
When her daughter would be picky over food, cry or throw tantrums, or put toys in her mouth, she said her mother-in-law would snipe “my son wasn’t like that” and “it’s from your side of the family” — despite all of these things being very normal for babies and toddlers.
She said all these “countless little harmless comments” have been taking their toll on her. She eventually snapped when her mother-in-law remarked that, at eight-months-old, her husband was already walking. “You were probably a slow walker and that’s probably why she can’t do it,” the grandmother allegedly said.
The Redditor said: “I flipped out and told her to stop associating all of my kid’s negative traits with me and the positives with my husband. I told her it’s rude, and grabbed my kid and went to my place.
“My husband thankfully took my side and agreed it was indeed not right.”
Despite this, her phone is now buzzing with texts from her in-laws saying she overreacted and caused her mother-in-law to cry.
In an edit, she added that her mother-in-law is struggling after the death of her husband a few years ago, so it’s “an iron-clad rule in the household to not do anything that would make her sad because it could spiral her depression.”
She said that is why she didn’t say something sooner, although she did tell her a couple of times that she wasn’t a difficult child, but that didn’t stop the comments.
The top comment with over 16,000 upvotes said the Redditor was in the right, and wrote: “Let her sit there and cry #narcissist. She’s upset she got called out and is now trying to guilt trip you. Information diet and restricted access until she can respect your boundaries.”
Another commenter wrote: “Next time your daughter has a tantrum, tell MIL [mother-in-law] it must be her genes.”
One commenter points out that crying, putting things in their mouth, and not walking until their first birthday are normal, healthy things for a baby, and it can be sign that something is wrong is the baby doesn’t cry.
They added: “Please don’t even tell yourself that these are negative traits, these are all normal, healthy developmental things that your child is doing/not doing. MIL is the only negative thing here and a big crybaby at that.”
Another Reddit user said: “Your MIL is literally using your daughter as a tool to bully you. I doubt your husband was as perfect as she claims, she is just using that as an excuse to treat you poorly.”
Although troublesome in-laws are a common trope on stories from Reddit, nothing quite takes the cake like the grandparents who secretly DNA-tested their grandchild to ensure the baby belonged to their son.