Kids can be a handful, but to one dad on Reddit there are no excuses for the way his mother-in-law treated his daughter during a recent visit. According to the dad, his MIL slapped his daughter when she was a little rowdy while she was trying to take a nap. Now his wife and her sister are writing the incident off as a "bad day" — but the dad refuses to let it go.
The dad has been married to his wife for over seven years and his opinion his MIL has always been a pill.
On the r/JUSTNOMIL forum, he wrote that he's always treated him with no respect, "belittles me in front if my wife [and] prioritizes her other grandkids over my 6-year old-daughter."
"She's an over all narcissist, with no empathy," he added.
Recently, they were visiting his MIL and his sister-in-law happened to be visiting with her kids, too.
His SIL's sons and his daughter were having fun outside, while the dad stayed inside and tried not to fall asleep after a long shift at work.
While they were loud "that didn't bother me, I fell asleep almost instantly," he recalled.
From what he can tell, his daughter ran to hide and accidentally ran into Grandma's room.
Who was lying down with a headache.
"Apparently when my daughter ran into her room she was screaming (out of excitement which is a totally normal behavior) my mother-in-law got angry with my daughter screaming," he explained. "I didn't know what really happened, but my daughter ran to me and she was crying."
He was stunned when she told him what happened: "She said that my mother-in-law smacked her when she was in her room."
As he tried to calm her down, his wife and her sister came into the room to see what the commotion was about.
When he told them what their mother did, his SIL immediately tried to claim his daughter was lying.
"She looked at me and said 'I'm sure that was not what happened' and tried to shame my daughter for 'lying,' saying [to her] lying isn't good," he recalled.
The dad shut her down real fast. There was no way his daughter was fibbing.
"I get that mother-in-law prefers sister-in-law's kids and ignores my daughter, I get that she hates me, but it got to the point where she'd literally be willing to take it out on my daughter just cause I'm her dad, (I could almost swear this was not about discipline)," he wrote.
His wife went into her mother's room to hear her side of the story.
She came out of the room in tears and said they needed to leave.
"I was confused, I didn't really know what was going on, I took my wife and kid and left," he continued. "I asked my wife what happened, she said her mother was just in a bad mood, and refused to even discuss why she smacked our daughter like that."
A "bad day" was no excuse to hit a child.
"So she was having a bad day, that's why she took it out on my kid? Really?" he wrote.
And his MIL had another thing coming to her if she thought he'd let her hit his daughter again.
"Thank God my daughter forgot about the whole thing, but that I was not going to let this go," he wrote. "This morning my wife received a text from her mom 'apologizing' for acting irrationally and how she blamed it all on her anger issues."
He was in no way ready to let this go.
"My wife has always endured the abuse her mom put on her, although it seems impossible but my wife is still having her in her life so now she's abusing my daughter just like she abused my wife," he added.
Commenters agreed -- he needs to put a stop to this behavior ASAP.
"Hey dude, your mother in law committed an assault and battery on your daughter," one commenter wrote. "You need to protect her by never letting her see your daughter ever again, and if I were you, I'd be pressing charges."
"Your daughter DID NOT FORGET ABOUT IT and don't you ever believe for a second that children repressing a memory of abuse are ever over it," someone else agreed. "She needs lots of love and support as her little heart was crushed."
"Nope, no more visits til she apologizes for hitting the kid and explains to the kid why it's wrong to hit," a third person commented. "And your wife needs to grow a backbone if she's crying just because she got yelled at."
After reading through the comments, the dad agreed that he'd misjudged his daughter's response.
"You guys right, It might seem that my daughter isn't upset, but I noticed her being quieter than the usual," he wrote in an update to his post. His wife is still reluctant to speak with him about what happened, but did promise to speak to her mother about what she did.
"She told me she'll talk to her mother and let her know how this hurt the three of us not just our daughter," he added.
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