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Woman 'Completely Thrown' When Mother-in-Law Tells Her to Get a Babysitter on Christmas — Despite Asking for Grandkids for Years
By Hannah Sacks Updated on December 26, 2025 01:01PM EST
A woman is left "baffled" and "hurt" after her mother-in-law bans her kids from attending their Christmas Eve dinner.
The original poster (OP) shared her story on Reddit and explained that she has two kids — a 10-year-old daughter and an 8-year-old son. She added that they are "completely normal, well-behaved kids," and although they can get excited and loud, they're good kids.
OP said she was invited to her mother-in-law's house for Christmas Eve dinner and was asked ahead of time to get a babysitter for their kids. OP said she was "completely thrown," especially since it was a family holiday dinner.
OP explained that she also didn't understand since her mother-in-law had spent years "begging" them for grandkids. She said she and her husband were the first of her five kids to have kids and now that they have two of her three grandkids, OP's mother-in-law acts like their presence is an inconvenience.
She went on to say that she never asks her mother-in-law for help with the kids. A few months ago, OP asked her to watch them while she went to get a haircut, but her face "dropped like she was so disappointed that I asked." Since she was so upset, OP decided to stop asking. Her husband said that he thinks his mom raised her kids and now wants to be done, but OP said that while she respects her mother-in-law's time, she did ask them for grandkids.
"She's retired, single, has a busy social life. I respect her time," OP wrote. "But you don't get to desperately want grandchildren and then treat them like party crashers at Christmas."
OP said they couldn't find a babysitter on short notice, so she and her husband ended up bringing their kids to Christmas after getting her mother-in-law's permission. While she was polite to them the entire night, OP said she was "so annoyed" by the whole situation that she just stayed in the living room with her kids while her mother-in-law cooked in the kitchen.
"It didn't feel right. It felt like we were uninvited guests," OP said, adding that her sister-in-law was also there with her newborn baby. But OP didn't ask if she'd been told to get a babysitter as well.
Now, she asks if anyone else has experienced this and asks for advice for her kids.
In her comments, many were confused by OP's mother-in-law's actions.
"Honestly, I wouldn’t have gone or even tried to find a sitter. I’d have let her know that her request was completely unreasonable and offensive, and that I wouldn’t spend a holiday where my children were unwelcome," one person wrote. "I’m pretty shocked that you’d even entertain her request by trying to find childcare so your children could be excluded from a family holiday."
Another pointed out that OP's husband should be standing up to his mom.
"This isn’t your battle or conversation. My husband would cry if he couldn’t spend Christmas with our daughter. He’d say 'absolutely not' to his mother in a heartbeat if she tried to exclude his own child from Christmas," they said. "There is no 'neutral' to this situation. He’s supposed to be on the side of his literal children. His babies."
A third suggested that OP's mother-in-law loves when her grandkids are babies, but then loses interest when they get older.
"Sounds like she wanted grandBABIES, not grandCHILDREN. She's the absolute worst type of person," they said.
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