My Parents Caused Permanent Damage to My Baby & Now I Only Allow Supervised Visits

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Many parents have argued over the appropriate age to pierce a child’s ears. Some say the younger, the better, and others want their children to be old enough to decide independently. The decision is ultimately up to the parents and no one else. No matter what your stance on piercing a child’s ears, we can all agree that it should never be something that anyone other than a child’s parent does without their consent. And yet, it happens more often than we would hope.

One dad’s parents infuriated him when they decided to pierce his 7-month-old baby’s ears behind his back after he very clearly told them no. It’s been two months, and although they had no contact for a while, he and his fiancée slowly let the grandparents back in, conditionally. He posted in Reddit’s AITA forum because he’s gotten pushback from people who think he’s being unfair to his family and that ear piercing is no big deal. Is he wrong?

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The parents explicitly said they didn't want the baby's ears pierced.

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The original poster explained that he told his family that their baby girl, Thalia, wouldn’t have her ears pierced until she expressed that she wanted to. His parents apparently pushed a lot but he stood firm.

“My parents didn’t shut up about it for a while saying ‘she’d look so cute.’ But we told them already no and that’s our answer. When they babysat for us once they got one of my mom’s friends to do it and we were f—ing p—ed they went behind our backs,” he wrote. “We stopped talking to them after that for disrespecting our decision. Everyone was saying we were making a big deal and we can’t cut them out their granddaughters life over something like that.”

Now they've decided the parents can see Thalia but not alone.

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OP understands the importance of having a relationship with the grandparents, but he doesn’t trust them to be alone with his daughter. They feel like they’re being punished for something in the past and even OP’s in-laws agree. But he’s not having it and thinks they went too far, so he wants Reddit’s help.

Redditors couldn't believe the grandparents thought this was OK.

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They overwhelmingly agreed that OP and his fiancé should be the ones in charge.

One person made a great point writing, “You’re NTA, your parents are. While this particular event is not a big deal health-wise, their blatant disrespect to you as the child’s parents is very concerning. If they’re willing to do this in complete disregard of your wishes, who knows what else they might do… The compromise of not allowing them around your child without one of you present is a reasonable one. Ignore everyone else calling you the a–holes in this situation, they are wrong.”

“NTA it was a form of assault. You did not consent,” another person wrote. “You will never trust them with a child who cannot stand up for themselves and speak out. So until then they cannot look after her unsupervised. Actions have consequences.”

Commenters agreed – these grandparents deserve to be in timeout.

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They made a decision that wasn’t theirs to make and OP called them on it. Redditors think like this wasn’t an accident; it was blatant and totally not OK.

This Redditor laid it out nicely, writing, “Your parents behaved like children therefore they deserve to be treated as such. They broke your trust, went against your express wishes and pretty much said ‘we know better than you and what you think is irrelevant’. I can’t get my head around why anyone would think you aren’t justified in your actions.”