Relationships with in-laws can be complex – and one woman’s story on Reddit highlights this perfectly.
A user by the name of LittlePeach212 recounted her experience with her mother-in-law, which has sparked a fair bit of discussion online. After having her first child, a son named Elijah – a name she and her husband adored – it became clear that her husband’s mother was not a fan.
The Reddit user described how her mother-in-law began referring to her grandson as David – a name with no familial or sentimental significance, starting from their first meeting in the hospital. Despite the couple’s dismay, the grandmother persisted with the name, even calling him David during a family dinner at their home, which led the new mum to ask her mother-in-law to leave.
Now she’s questioning whether her reaction was justified. In her post, she explained: “Neither my husband nor I know anyone named David. It’s not a family name. There’s no sentimental reason behind it. It’s just a completely random name she decided to call my child, despite us telling her not to.
“At first we tried to let it go hoping she’d stop if we ignored it. But it only got worse. When we FaceTimed her, she’d coo at him saying ‘Grandma loves you, David’. She even started knitting a baby blanket with the name David embroidered on it.”
The Redditor continued: “The final straw was when she came over for a family dinner and kept referring to him as David in front of everyone. My SIL (sister in law) asked, ‘wait… why do you keep calling him David? ‘ and MIL (mother in law) just laughed and said, ‘because that’s his name to me.’
“That’s when I lost it. I said, ‘no, his name is Elijah, and if you can’t respect that, you don’t need to be here’. She rolled her eyes and tried to wave me off, but I wasn’t having it. I told her to leave. She looked shocked, but she left without much of a fight.”
While the user’s husband acknowledges his mother’s behaviour as “weird and disrespectful”, he thought his partner’s reaction “was too extreme”. Some even accused her of “overreacting” – but thankfully Reddit users were on her side.
The top commenter on the thread advised: “Start calling your MIL, your husband, and every family member who says you overreacted ‘David’. All of them are ‘David’ now.”
Another user chimed in, labelling the behaviour of the mother-in-law as “hella weird.” Meanwhile, a third added: “It’s your child, and you and your husband chose his name. She’s being incredibly disrespectful and manipulative, and you were perfectly within your rights to ask her to leave.”