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?!

Yeah. Not read the full thread but how was your MIL to know which hat belonged to which grandchild? How do you know it hadn't been taken home by the other grandchild and it had stayed at that house for the year. Then your MIL would have been telling the truth that she hadn't seen it.

Or perhaps it had been lost at your MILs (under the sofa, behind the radiator, etc) and she found it weeks later and she didn't give it another thought.

Whatever happened, it's a bloody child's hat! You overreacted massively. Not read the full thread but I would kind of expect the woman to be a bit salty with you after that.

Still, nothing like an excuse to bash your MIL, is there?

User you need to read the updates if it was a error then it would have been handed back. Instead Mil has refused to give it to DIL and then told DS that she has miss placed it again. She has given it to other DGD in some kind of mission to redistribute wealth.

To all those saying "it's just a hat" and "well your mother in law looks after your daughter for you saving childcare costs". It's NOT just a hat, it's a personal belonging that the OP bought with her hard earned money and clearly likes. Secondly, just because someone helps you out, it doesn't give them an automatic right to take your personal belongings. That's technically theft!

I think "it's just a hat" is going to be there with "cancel the cheque!" any time soon.

Cancel the cheque

Why not User? It has 32 pages, did you think that the OP had added nothing since page 1 or are you just claiming ignorance as an excuse to bash the OP?

I'm surprised at how many come on here that can't "grasp" the situation, and rather than look at the big picture trivialise it all by saying "it's just a hat".

Cancel the cheque, its just a hat

This is so not about the hat.
Two possibilities:
MIL either
A) has early signs of dementia, can't really remember who has what or what was said to whom, is confused and embarrassed and desperately trying to cover up her error with a saving face story that seems to be working brilliantly
OR, more likely,
B) MIL has long standing issues with her sons going back years which have never been resolved, but just festered away. This hat business is a side effect. Nothing really to do with the GDs or OP. In a very feeble way, she is trying to correct another imbalance between her sons, probably decades old & nothing to do with money or cars.
To what extent you want to get involved in addressing either of these issues, I don't know. I'd probably write off the hat and stay out of it. There might not be such blatant redistribution of assets in future if it's B) although the problem is bound to crop up in another shape.

I completely understand not have the time nor inclination to read a 32 page thread in its entirety. But why bother with weighing in at all when the info you're weighing in on is likely to be have been expanded upon or even retracted entirely?

The MIL's motives or lack thereof were by no means clear at the beginning of the thread anyway, so to lambast the OP for supposedly flying off the handle when there was ALWAYS the possibility this was a calculated act is utterly stupid anyway. And, as I turns out, that is exactly what ended up having occurred:

Surely if you were planning on commenting upon a thread this far into its lifespan you'd at least read the arse end of it to get some idea of whether or not you were about to make a twit of yourself?

You're not being unreasonable at all. I wonder what's happened in the past that your DH and BIL are not close and if these same mind games and playing one kid off against the other were played out by your MIL in the past too.

It's all very odd on the part of the MIL.

You mean there are no pictures of a stolen hat? Hmmmm. Wonder why.

(And yes, links to items in online catalogues usually expire from year to year).

I don't take pictures of all my ds's clothes. Especially clothes they don't have because MIL stole them to give to their cousins. But that's probably just me.

Well as mil has the hat, maybe op should text her and ask mil to take a photo and add it to the thread.

Chipped.

Astounding that the arrogance of some posters who do not / have not RTFT!!!
We're now at 780 posts, has it not occurred to any of you that perhaps the thread moved on and before throwing I your tuppence you should at least read the OPs updates. FFS

I think both the MIL and the OP are nuts.
Do people really think if the MIL felt so strongly she wanted the niece to have some nicer things, she would have addressed the problem by stealing a flipping hat of all things?
The niece has come without a hat one day , the gm has put it on her head and the child has taken a fancy to it, and the GM doesn't have the heart to take it off her.The GM doesn't have the heart to take it off her, thinks you are being petty given the thousands she has saved you in childcare.Pound to a penny that is what's happened.
People keep bleating on this thread is not about a hat, but it is. I think thye OP has been spoiling for a fight with the GM and this has given her the chance.
Psychologically healthy adults with a good relationship, even when they are a bit pissed with each other, would have drawn a line under the whole business and moved on.The OP obviously has much deeper issues with her MIL and this is just a vehicle to express them IMO.

I have read the thread, before anyone starts. But... the hat went missing last winter. Children and adult lose hats and gloves all the time, well I definitely have lost a hat and gloves - and was disappointed.

Do people then lament about a child's hat the next winter? Which Op did to mil before the dn was found wearing it.

Op did you always think she had something to do with the hat dissappeance?

I'm sure some posters are taking inspiration from these

It's easy for people to sit with a coffee and hob-nob to tell you to cut all contact etc. This situation could easily get out of control and end with all the family falling out.
I've read the full thread and if i were you I'd leave it for a week and let things calm down a tad before you make any big decisions.
Once something is said it can't be unsaid.

Lola, you clearly haven't read the thread.

MIL has ADMITTED that she stole the hat from OP's DD and re-gifted it to her other granddaughter because she thought it was unfair that one of her sons had more money than the other.

It is arrogant, underhand, and stealing. A "psychologically healthy adult" would not let it slide.

Head>desk

Lola. Read the op's posts. MIL has admitted that she gave the hat to her other granddaughter to essentially "even things up" - I.e.that op's dd didn't need it as she has too much compared to her other granddaughter.

In simple terms, she stole from one to give to the other.

Please please please tell me that you understand this post because in light of op's own updates your last post makes completely zero sense.

I agree that advocating a campaign of malice against the MIL achieves nothing but the OP has been entirely measured. The MIL's behaviour is - in addition to being utterly awful - bonkers in the extreme. She stole an item from a 4 year old girl in some demented attempt at playing Robin Hood! Everyone else in her family thinks she's behaving like a loony.