'I told her she needed to back off and stop playing a parent role': 28-year-old mom confronts live-in mother-in-law for undermining parenting choices, ignoring household rules

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Etai Eshet • Editor
Apr 5, 2025 11:00 AM EDT

Living with extended family as adults might be a great premise for a lighthearted sitcom, filled with quirky relatives and harmless mischief. In reality, it's a marathonic binge of second-guessing, silent frustrations, and invisible boundaries being stomped on daily. You won't be sitting on the couch laughing; you'll be pacing the floors, trying to find the nerve to ask who moved your leftovers out of the fridge for the third time this week.

Life with in-house in-laws sounds like a constant battlefield of clashing parenting styles, unsolicited opinions, and enough passive-aggressive tension to power the whole house. And today's story proves it. Imagine a young mom trying to raise her kids while her mother-in-law hovers like an unpaid supervisor, ready to rewrite every rule as if she's holding a grandparenting MVP trophy. When every decision becomes an opportunity for commentary and established rules are casually ignored, the house feels less like a home and more like a poorly run daycare with too many bosses.

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  • One moment, she’s referring to the baby as her child, the next, she’s undermining safety concerns with lines like, You survived as a baby, so what’s the big deal. These little digs pile up until someone, the actual mother, finally snaps.

    Telling her to back off wasn’t unkind, it was overdue, and respect for boundaries isn’t a punishment, it’s a necessity. When everyone is crammed under one roof. It might not fix the tension, but it beats biting your tongue while someone else tries to run your life.

  • "AITA for telling my MIL she needs to back off?"

    "She's not my children's parents, she's their grandma"
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    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

  • 1 28(f) have 3 children, 9(m), 5(m) and almost 1(f). My two boys are from a previous relationship and my husband is the father of our daughter. For context, we live
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  • with MIL due to her needing help with bills. I love my MIL, she's been a great support system and loves the kids but she has an issue with interfering a little too much.
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  • Whenever there is a problem with the older kids (them not listening, talking back, doing something they know they shouldn't be) she needs to get involved. Even before my
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  • Outlaw Granny breaking house rules

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    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

  • husband or I try to take care of the issue ourselves she trys to be the parent. When we do correct them she still needs to always put her 2 cents in and also tells us what she would do instead. We've
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  • also caught her not listening to us as far as rules we've set in place and things we've asked her not to do. For example, we've asked MIL not to place our daughter in MIL's
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  • Why don't we all just get along?

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    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

  • bed for a nap because she can wake up at any moment and decided to crawl off but she continues to do so. That's just one example.
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  • We continuously tell her we are the parents and need to be the ones to parent first, unless we aren't around to do so at the moment. She also does little
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  • things like calls our daughter "her baby", has seen something my daughter is wearing and has said "I have something just like that, I could put it on and we could match" has said how much my
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  • daughter resembles her and she even mentioned to me one day how she "accidently" told my daughter to "come to mommy" when she was on the floor crawling.
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  • The last straw was when she had our daughter on her bed and my husband was standing in the doorway of her room, our daughter was crawling around and got a little too close to the
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  • edge for my husband's comfort, so he reacted and reached his hands out and slightly launched himself to the bed. MIL started yelling at him about how "she's fine, I was right here" etc and my
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  • husband told her she's his daughter and it made him uncomfortable. MIL then continued saying "how do you think you survived as a baby" etc.
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  • I lost my cool, I heard everything from the kitchen and stormed to her room, grabbed my daughter and told her she needed to back off and stop playing a parent role, she's not my children's parents,
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  • she's their grandma, and if we're not comfortable with something she needs to respect that. It's been super tense in the house the last couple of days, AITA?
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  • FamiliarFamiliar Make a different living arrangement where you don't live with MIL.
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  • Relevant Turnip_7 Oh h..l no NTA! You are absolutely right to set, and enforce, boundaries. If she doesn't respect that, then bills or no bills, she can't live in the same place. I'm guessing she never had a daughter and sees your daughter as her chance to be a 'girl mummy'. Squash that right now, it's deluded and oh-so-creepy!
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  • She needs to learn to be the grandma (which I understand is a lot more fun anyway), and leave the parenting to you and DH.
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  • Queen-Pierogi-V OP, move out. You and DH are not responsible for her financial problems. Let her get an adult roommate to split expenses.
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  • She will ruin your marriage and blur the lines of authority over your children. You are NTA. You have laid out boundaries. She continually tramples them.
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  • She is not interfering "a little too much". She is defying every boundary you have. She may provide support, but she puts your LO in danger and contradicts your rules with your older kids.
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  • That is not help, that is hindrance. I'm sure she says she loves the kids, but more she wants control. A woman who loves her grandkids doesn't correct or contradict their parents I front of them.
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  • You need your own space.
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