'AITA for going low contact with MIL for how she's treated my older kids?'
"AITA for going low contact with MIL for how she's treated my older kids?"
This has been on my mind all week and I need to know if I was in the wrong for how I reacted. On Friday my (46) MIL told me that she wanted to take my children (16m, 14f & 7f) to the movies on Saturday.
She told me when we were talking that this was her treat to them and she would be paying for all of them. I even asked if she was sure because I could send them with money and she said no.
She wanted to treat them to a nice day out at the movies. I thought this was a nice thing to do and agreed to let her pick them up after the oldest was done with baseball practice. She agreed and we set up a time for her to come.
Well Saturday came around and she arrived at 1:30ish to pick them up. Me and my husband (49) bid them goodbye and went on our way to have lunch with a few friends. We planned this since our kids were going out with grandma we decided to go out as well. It just honestly works out better for us this way.
Unfortunately halfway through our lunch our son called me and asked if he could use my card to pay for the movie tickets for him and his sister because grandma was only paying for the youngest.
I was confused because I was told by her that she was paying for them all so I asked to speak to her. When I got her on the phone I asked why she wasn't paying for the other kids like she told me she was.
She said that she never said that and told me that she was only paying for the youngest and I needed to send the oldest kids with some money for tickets and snacks.
I was extremely confused because that's not what she told me when we talked. I didn't want to fight with her and just told my son to use the card because I didn't want them to miss out on the movie.
All through lunch I was in a foul mood because I honestly felt lied to and I told my husband that. He agreed with me and was also confused as to why she backed out of paying for all the kids.
If she honestly couldn't pay for all of them she could have just told me that and I would have sent them all with money so she wouldn't have to pay anything. She could have just taken them to the movies and it would have been fine. I don't mind paying for them.
They came home and the older two were upset because grandma got the youngest ice cream on the way home and didn't offer to get them anything. I was so confused by this treatment because she has never acted like this towards them ever so I'm not understanding why she's doing it now.
I confronted her right there about it and all she said was that she didn't do that and my kids were lying. This pissed me off and I told her that if she couldn't treat all my kids equally then she didn't need to be around any of them.
She started screaming that I was keeping her grandkids from her and called me heartless for trying to ruin their relationship. I told her that this is the consequence for treating the older two the way she did.
She kept screaming that she did nothing wrong but my husband shut that down and told her by excluding the oldest two she was doing something wrong. She claimed that we were twisting her words and making her a villain before leaving right after.
After she left my husband and I asked our older kids if she had ever done this to them before and they both said yes. They told us about the time that she took them all to lunch but only paid for the youngest so my son had to use his money to pay for his and his sister. They told us that she does this every time she takes them out but they didn't say anything because they didn't want us to be mad at them.
I felt horrible and told them that neither I nor their father would ever be mad at them for this. My husband and I made the decision that night to go low contact with MIL because how she has treated our older kids was absolutely unacceptable and we told her that much in a text the next day.
This received backlash from my SIL and her husband as they told us that we were overreacting and are taking this too far for no reason. So I guess I'm wondering if I'm the AH for going low contact with MIL for how she has been treating my older kids?
Here’s what people had to say to OP:
NTA - your kids need to see you standing up to a bully who was mean to them. good luck mama.
And they need to see that it is OK to walk away from people who treat you like less and then get mad that they get called out on it. No more time with grandma. EVER!
Definitely not! Little difference situation when I was growing up, my grandma always spent more time and going to activities for my cousins. Even though we went to the same school, we got treated differently since my mom couldn’t have kids and we were adopted.
I've been with my parent since I was 4 months so part of the family for my whole life basically. In light of this, I hated spending time with her and felt like it was fake, and that I was wrong some how. Lucky my parent seen it and stepped up and never let me feel like I was out of place. You need to protect your kids.
Absolutely NTA!! I'm sorry your older kids didn't tell you this the first time it happened so you could have stopped it long ago. Make sure she can't get to the kids through their personal phones, email, or social media. She'll likely say horrible things and be really manipulative. Poor kids. You're doing exactly the right thing!
NTA. This was absolutely an overt attempt to exclude your oldest kids. Better to not have a relationship with a grandparent that excludes and plays favorites than be subjected to that.
It's not just the fact that she's treating the older two so horribly but that she's straight up lying to your face. Your older two probably don't want anything to do with her but you'll need to explain to your younger child why they won't be seeing grandma anymore.
She might take it hard cause she's the one that gets spoiled but do the best you can on an age appropriate level to explain how awful and abusive grandma is and that she's not safe.