MIL and daughter's hat.

[doomf]

My MIL looks after my DD one day a week (Tuesday) and her other grand daughter one day a week (Wednesday).

I bought my daughter a lovely hat last year to go with a coat she had. The hat went missing at the end of last winter and I'd searched high and low for it it to no avail. Is asked MIL if she'd seen it and she swore blind she hadn't (I was pretty sure the last time she'd worn it was to her house). A few weeks ago I lamented to MIL that it was a shame id never found the hat as it would still have fit my DD this winter and she agreed.

Yesterday afternoon I'd taken a day off work and had gone into town with my DD only to run into my MIL and her other grand daughter...wearing the bloody hat!!!

AIBU to think that you just don't do that?!

Bogeyface arfanarf read the full thread -thanks that's 10 minutes of my life I'll never get back- and nothing new revealed itself.

The MIL has obviously got a bee in her bonnet about the whol;e thing.So you act like a grown-up. You weigh up which is more important you, your DH and your DC's relationship with her, or a hat.Then just draw a line under it and move on. Do you really think it is worth falling out over after all she has done for you?

Incredible that such a drama can come from a hat. I wonder how the OP would have reacted had this been her own mum and not mil.

MipMipMip there's usually a link called "See all messages" or "View 1000 messages" at the top and at the bottom of the thread. Click there.

Love your username, btw

usual read the updates re the MIL behaviour and reasoning. Take the blinkers off
She looked into OPs eyes and deliberately lied. She admitted she took the hat.
You're being very narrow minded

Do you really think it is worth falling out over after all she has done for you?

She's taken something that doesn't belong to her, given it to someone else, lied, refused to give it back, and discussed someone's personal finances.

After all she has done for the OP, I think putting the DD in nursery is the OP being restrained.

princess I'd have been really fucking annoyed...even more so if my own mother had done this.

It would be even more insulting if it was your own mother!

usual you really wouldn't do anything if your child was being unfavorably compaired to her cousin, and her cousin deemed more "worthy", so your child's belongings were being siphoned off to give to her cousin?

You'ld just carry on with the arrangement and continue to send your child to that person's care?

That does NOT make you a better person than the OP, the OP is being a good parent. Being a good parent comes first before "keeping peace" with the MIL.

The fact that it's a MIL is a complete red herring.

It has precisely fuck all to do with it. Substitute MIL for mum, dad, brother, sister, friend, cousin, Martian - the reaction would be exactly the same.

ohfour

I agree

Is there any chance at all your Mil will stop behaving so oddly, perhaps if your BIL speaks to her?

Do you really think it is worth falling out over after all she has done for you?

Providing childcare does not give her a licence to take my child's belongings and give them away to someone she feels is more deserving.

The folk who've said I'm the one in the wrong have me wondering if they'd allow their children's possessions/belongings/stuff to be given away. Would you be happy that you're buying things with your hard earned cash only for someone to decide that it's to be given to someone else? You wouldn't question it? You wouldnt say wait a fucking minute? Would you only do it if the item had a larger value attached to it? An iPad for example.

ohfour has got it right. It wouldn't matter who the fuck behaved like the OPs MIL.

Then you should.

If you don't care about your child's belongings then I feel sorry for them.

Sorry - I've stepped away from this for an hour or so (cooking DH's dinner - still haven't figured out how to use that slow cooker ). Don't get me wrong - I'm in no way excusing the MIL and I think OP has acted in a polite and completely justifiable fashion. I'm just saying that I think the MIL has got herself into a pickle that she can't get out of without eating humble pie/admitting she was wrong.....and some people are just psychologically predisposed not to be able to do that. Hence she's blown up the whole "you are significantly richer than BIL" to some ridiculous proportion. Because that's the only way that she can still be "right" on her terms (not on mine, for the sake of any confusion).

But - yes - I do think that three year olds react and do the "it's not fair" thing. Not in the "they are richer than us" way that MIL may have interpreted it, but in the "I want something that someone else has" way that I think is pretty common amongst pre-schoolers. On my thesis at least, this is potentially where MIL's whole "other DGD feels left out" thing (erroneously) stems from.

mipmip type customise into the search bar. There are lots of options to do different things.

usual

So you just let your children's belongings go walkabouts.

You sound like you're trying to be nonchalant and ever so cool but I'm not buying it.

I don't expect anyone, least of all family members to effectively steal off my daughter be it a hat or something more expenskve

Ha yes I really think the brothers should visit their gp together to say how worried they are that their mother gave a hat to the wrong granddaughter and let the gp work out who the mad ones are in this situation

I wouldn't give a stuff about a hat in the first place.

Funnily enough, I feel exactly the opposite way. I'd be much less bothered about, say, an iPad, because I could go and buy another one tomorrow that was exactly the same and would fulfil exactly the same function. A hat I had chosen for my child - because I had chosen it for her and looked lovely on her and because it matched another item of clothing I had also chosen for her - would carry a lot more emotional significance.

Oooh, is there more to this than you first let on OP? Only I've had a glass or two of sauvignon and am now intrigued.
BTW I don't think YABU, I am proud of you! I'd have been too shy to let it go when my kids were little .. but now I've got teenagers and a littley, and am constantly having to defend littley with 'no, he wasn't an afterthought', I am BOLD and would have tackled this too. In fact, if I'd been having a STRONG DAY I'd have whipped it off her head.

My own mother can be just as sneaky, nothing major, just lies here and there when she feels she will be caught out on something really insignificant. I'm completely with you OP. All she's done is highlight the differences in your lifestyles even more! It's in her head, not anyone else's.

If she'd reacted differently then it may have had a different outcome.

Avoidance is way forward, she will never admit what she's done wrong no matter how much she knows she has been.