‘Mother-in-law refuses to call my son by his name – so I kicked her out’

‘Mother-in-law refuses to call my son by his name – so I kicked her out’

Relationships between a person and their in-laws can sometimes be challenging – as shown by one woman’s story.

A Reddit user, LittlePeach212, recently welcomed her first child into the world with her husband. They had a son who they named Elijah.

They both really loved this name for him but it became apparent that her mother in law does not. The new mum detailed how her husband’s mum randomly started calling her son David, instead of Elijah, from when she first met him in the hospital.

Over the next few weeks, she carried on doing this. But things came to a head when her mother in law came to her house for a family dinner and called her son David in front of everyone.

She asked her to leave the house – and is now wondering if she was in the wrong for doing this. In her Reddit post she detailed: “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 situation escalated even further. LittlePeach 212 added: “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.”

To add to the tension, the user’s husband is upset with her as he agrees his mum was being “weird and disrespectful” but he thinks kicking her out “was too extreme”. She said that some family members think she “overreacted” and others agree that her mother in law’s behaviour was “bizarre.”

The user wasn’t sure if she took it too far by kicking her mother in law out of the house so she ended her post with a question for others: “I don’t know…was I really in the wrong for putting my foot down?” Her tale has garnered 13,000 upvotes and 2,400 comments.

One user said LittlePeach212 was not in the wrong and suggested what she should do: “Start calling your MIL, your husband, and every family member who says you overreacted ‘David’. All of them are ‘David’ now.”

This was the top comment with 1,400 likes, indicating that many others agreed. Another user described the user’s mother in law’s behaviour as “hella weird”.

They added: “I also find it odd that your husband thinks you overreacted, but you literally just told her to use the correct name or to leave. It sounds like she made her choice and now she’s upset with you.”

And a third gave their two pence, writing: “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.”

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