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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To think dh is pathetic for throwing away ds present from grandad

291 replies

Lionking1981 · 05/07/2017 22:01

My family and dh support rival football clubs. The family team is our local one and the mascot has been into ds school, all his friends support the team and he has recently been saying that he supports them too which my dad found really funny. For his Bday this week, my dad cheekily gave him the strip and toy of the mascot. Today, he asked where they were - we couldn't find them anywhere. Dh has thrown them away. I get that he wants him and ds to bond over football and take him to games but I just find this a waste of money and horribly pathetic. Aibu?

OP posts:
strikealight · 06/07/2017 08:49

I'm in Manchester- it comes up. In this day and age I know if no family that is twatty to other family members that are red/blue - some light hearted joshing. I know young twins one red one blue. My family was Blue. I married a red. It's all bollocks to be mean about it. Our school is a mix of red and blue although we are a blue area.

Motherbear26 · 06/07/2017 08:49

This ^

MaryPoppinsPenguins · 06/07/2017 08:58

It's grown men kicking a ball into a net. People who love football this much make me sad for their lives.

Shakirasma · 06/07/2017 09:05

You DH has been an utter twat. He had absolutely no right to to take DS present and throw it away.

unless it was a Man U strip in which case he should have burned it with fire

MuddlingMackem · 06/07/2017 09:09

Ah, that was really mean of your DH. YANBU at all.

I'm a football fan, and had dreams of going to away matches on the train with at least one of my kids. I've managed to get eldest along to a few home league cup matches but he really isn't into football, and neither is youngest. Such is life.

Double whammy as mentioned on this thread. I loathe the colour pink, avoid it as much as possible. Unfortunately for me DD loves it. It was also my mam's favourite colour so, when she was alive, she was the one who would by DD pink stuff as nobody else would and I just had to grin and bear it when she did and DD wore that stuff. Grin

As for your DS, OP, it's totally reasonable that he will be interested in his local team, especially as one side of his family support them. They will feel more real to him than perhaps his dad's team do. I don't know if they do community links with schools, many clubs these days do, so if they've had players or community workers from the club in school that will also give him an interest with the team that he perhaps will never have with his dad's.

mrsm12 · 06/07/2017 09:12

Im in the your dh is an arse camp. Me and dh support different teams, my dad would have bought ds the strip, mascots, teddys etc, dh just accepted this, waited it out and now ds supports his team and mine are his second choice!

JungleInTheRumble · 06/07/2017 09:16

It's a difficult one. Your son is probably likely to want to support the local team now if that's what all his friends support but maybe in the future he'll follow his dad.

I think grandad overstepped the mark unless your son specifically asked for this kit.

QueenofallIsee · 06/07/2017 09:18

I think your husband was bang out of order - I would be furious with him. He had no right and needs to apologise to your son and your father for his shitty behaviour (it wasn't an Albion strip was it, cos we hates the baggies #wearewolvesaywe)

KoalaDownUnder · 06/07/2017 09:19

It's a difficult one.

Really? What's difficult about 'Don't throw your child's presents in the bin'?

JungleInTheRumble · 06/07/2017 09:25

Ok the throwing presents in the bin is clearly unreasonable behaviour. But I think buying the kit in the first place unless the kid specifically asked for it is also unreasonable.

Theresnonamesleft · 06/07/2017 09:28

It's not really difficult. So what if the child supports a different team. Doesn't give the manchild the right to throw the stuff away.

araiwa · 06/07/2017 09:32

I think comparisons between football, religion and so on are valid.

They can affect some people very deeply and it was highly inappropriate for gf tobuy such a gift. Dh couldve handled it better but his reaction is very understandable

RhiWrites · 06/07/2017 09:55

He threw his kid's birthday present away because he disapproved of it.

No discussion.
No explanation of how he'd like to go to matches and support the same side.
No offer to swap for his team's strip.

He just chucked his kid's present away like rubbish.

He's an arse.

MommaGee · 06/07/2017 09:59

If your DH can only bond with DS over the same football you and your child have bigger issies5to deal with. If he throws out anything he doesbt like irrespective of yours and DS feelings you have bigger issues.

I'd be beyond fuming and would expect an apology and a replacement t

Squishedstrawberry4 · 06/07/2017 10:11

I think you should hide something your DH values highly. Immature but might get the message across

GerdaLovesLili · 06/07/2017 10:52

Your DH is behaving like a petulant bully. This could have been an opportunity for a talk about tolerance and how we can love people despite their quirky differences. Your DH could have bought your DS a kit and mascot for his own team. Then your DS could have chosen one, both or neither team to support as an individual.

Instead your DH has shown your DS that he doesn't value his own individual choices, and that he can't deal with another adult's valid choices either. What a hero. Not.

RhubardGin · 06/07/2017 11:04

I would be furious. Your DH sounds like a twat.

I hope he's going to compensate your dad for the money he spent.

deffoncforthis · 06/07/2017 11:05

Isn't it a bit pathetic that DH and Grandad are doing this whilst there's a kid in the mix

There isn't a "kid in the mix", there is no mix here FiL isn't some ex partner or something, he's making mischief and really should retract his nose from the matter forthwith because these things can go beyond a joke. I'll also point out that someone who would do this and find it amusing, would doubtless have been absolutely bloody hopping mad if their own kids had been pushed to declare for the opposing team by his FiL and his own family had helped.

Football is a a viscerally tribal thing for a lot of us, wrapped up in concepts of family, loyalty and memories of departed loved ones who passed the torch down. It is not an opinion or merely an interest but something more.

So yeah, this is fine if you take something similarly important to you, at a basic level, and you would be fine with MiL encouraging them to openly signal their opposition to it every day.

user1476869312 · 06/07/2017 11:05

Parents who would throw away items that didn't match their superstitions are also shit parents. The point is not whether it's about a brand of imaginary friend or a preference for one lot of overpaid knobs running around over another - it's about morons so tied up with their tribal identity that they think it's OK to bully and mistreat their children.

OP, have a think about the rest of your H's behaviour. Does the family revolve around his wishes in other ways? Are there disproportionate punishments for anyone who disobeys or disagrees? Are you all used to letting H have his way in order to avoid sulks, tantrums, witholding of money or damage to property?

It may well be that it's only football which makes him behave like a shitbag, in which case a sustained campaign of mockery might sort him out. But, if it's other stuff as well, it might be time for a rethink of the whole marriage.

Because, don't forget, destroying other people's possessions is a fairly classic abuser tactic.

user1476869312 · 06/07/2017 11:07

Defcon: people who take football that seriously shouldn't be treated as functional adults, because they aren't. It's ridiculous behaviour to be so obsessed by something so meaningless that you would bully and shun other people and damage their property over it.

Anyone who takes any kind of 'loyalty' to that level is fundamentally untrustworthy and best avoided.

KurriKurri · 06/07/2017 11:10

If the child had said he supported Dad's team and Grandad had bought an opposing teams strip, that would have been a deliberate wind up, but the child had already said he liked the Grandad's team - the mascot etc had been into school, so it was his preference. So Grandad bought him something he knew he;d like while at the same time being amused that child had chosen a rival team.

I don't see Grandad as trying to stir things. OP has already said grandad is friends with rival supporters - it's only a game FFS, anyone ho would throw away a child's birthday present over something as silly as this is a total dickhead IMO. Hope your H is embarrassed and ashamed of his behaviour and replaces the kit for your son and apologises to DS and Grandad.

LittleLionMansMummy · 06/07/2017 11:12

What would your dh have done if he had a son who really wasn't into football? Plenty of other things to bond over. Dh and I support rival football teams, as does my dad. We've joked in a similar manner quite often and it's always taken the right way. Turns out ds has a mind of his own and isn't remotely interested in football. Or ends up saying he supports a team that has no relevance to our family!

Imbeingunreasonable · 06/07/2017 11:12

This is appalling. It doesn't matter what the 'reason' was that grandad bought grandson a gift. It doesn't matter if it was done cheekily or not. No one had the right to dictate what happened to it afterwards apart from DS.

If someone buys a gift for somebody else whether it's done tongue in cheek or not, it doesn't give anybody else the right to throw it away. Basic fucking human courtesy I would have thought.

DH is a dick!

Imbeingunreasonable · 06/07/2017 11:14

My brother bought his son a Liverpool kit. His partner likes Man United and she hated the Liverpool kit. She didn't throw it away though.

deffoncforthis · 06/07/2017 11:44

FiL bought something they both knew SiL would find appalling, apparently as a joke-but-not-really, and SiL did what he probably would have done himself and been a bit careless so it was "lost", probably in a similar spirit of joking-but-not-really. I know other MNers have done this with gifts they find appalling, this is a thing sometimes.

Both a bit PA to be honest.

people who take football that seriously shouldn't be treated as functional adults, because they aren't. It's ridiculous behaviour to be so obsessed by something so meaningles

PIcture this:

A world where different things are important to different people, and what you see as "meaningless" is not an "objective benchmark" for whether anyone else is a functional adult.