The man, who lost his wife years ago, shared his worries about how his ex-MIL seems to be trying to manipulate his daughter and change her perception of her own family.\n

He wrote:\n

\u00abMy first wife and mother of my daughter (now 9), passed away during childbirth. Naturally I was devastated, as was my ex-MIL, \u201eGill\u201c (a fake name). My late wife was an only child, so Gill started to view my daughter as her replacement. I was never comfortable with this, but understand people grieve in their own ways, so I never said anything.\n

I put a stop to any boundary stomping, though. For example, when introducing my daughter to people Gill would always say \u2018this is my baby\u2019 or \u2018meet my daughter\u2019, and she set up a nursery in her own home for when my daughter went to live with her (yes, she actually said my daughter would live with her). She even tried to convince the nurses at the hospital to let my daughter go home with her after she was discharged. It took almost 2 hours to prove that she was actually my daughter and would be going home with me.\n

For the first two years of my daughter\u2019s life, I focused entirely on her and didn\u2019t do any sort of dating. When she was 3 I met my second wife, who loves my daughter like she is her own. When my daughter was 6 we sat her down and explained that her biological mom was in heaven and my wife was her stepmom. Gill doesn\u2019t like my wife at all and hates the fact that my daughter has a mother figure in her life.\u00bb\n $\"\"$ \n

\u00abMy\u00a0wife and\u00a0I are now married, she is\u00a0pregnant with our son, and we\u2019re in\u00a0the process of\u00a0moving to\u00a0another state. I\u00a0was offered a\u00a0transfer from my\u00a0job with a\u00a0pay rise, and there are better school\/daycare opportunities for my\u00a0daughter and the baby. Gill has known since we\u00a0first started looking at\u00a0houses and has done almost everything possible to\u00a0stop it\u00a0from happening.\n

She called Child Protective Services on\u00a0us, claiming we\u2019re neglecting my\u00a0daughter over our unborn son and aren\u2019t fit to\u00a0care for her. She knows she would probably get custody of\u00a0my\u00a0daughter if\u00a0she were taken away. Thankfully, both the state we\u00a0currently live in\u00a0and the state we\u2019re moving to\u00a0don\u2019t have grandparent\u2019s rights. Gill is\u00a0convinced we\u2019re doing this to\u00a0spite her though.\n

Finally, I\u00a0got tired of\u00a0her antics and told her that my\u00a0daughter is\u00a0my\u00a0child, so\u00a0I get to\u00a0decide what\u2019s best for her. Despite not liking Gill very much, I\u2019ve never kept my\u00a0daughter from her. She visits Gill often and has sleepovers there. However, after her last visit, I\u2019m uncomfortable sending my\u00a0daughter there unsupervised.\n

On\u00a0the drive home, my\u00a0daughter was unusually quiet. After prying a\u00a0bit she asked me\u00a0if\u00a0we\u00a0were going to\u00a0abandon her when the baby was born. Of\u00a0course, I\u00a0said no\u00a0and asked why she thought that. She told me\u00a0that Gill has been telling her that we\u00a0won\u2019t care about her and only Gill will love her.\n

My\u00a0daughter also told me\u00a0that for the past year or\u00a0so\u00a0Gill has been making her call her mom but was told to\u00a0not tell me\u00a0or\u00a0my\u00a0wife about\u00a0it. She\u2019s also been telling my\u00a0daughter that she would be\u00a0better off living with her and will find a\u00a0way to \u2018make it\u00a0happen.\u2019 I\u2019m so\u00a0confused about what her endgame is\u00a0here because I\u2019m obviously never going to\u00a0let that happen. She was going to\u00a0spend a\u00a0few nights at\u00a0Gill\u2019s before we\u00a0left, but now\u00a0I don\u2019t want her\u00a0to.\u00bb\n\n

People in\u00a0the comments felt this dad\u2019s hurt and confusion, and shared advice with him about what\u2019s been going on\u00a0in\u00a0his life:\n\n
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She wants your child as her do-over daughter. She is actively brainwashing your little girl. Stop under reacting. This has been going on for years and you, my friend, are in the fog.
\nStop giving her chances to ruin your family. Therapy ASAP for your child and block Gill on everything. It is your number 1 job as her parent to protect her from the toxicity of people. \u00a9 tattoovamp \/ Reddit
\nPlease do not let her spend the night there again. Shame on her grandma! I understand the loss of a child (I lost my 36-year-old son a little more than 3 years ago), so I get it. But she is not respecting you or your new wife at all.\n
She should be happy that you\u2019ve found someone to love and someone that is good to your daughter. It\u2019s exactly what I have now. My daughter-in-law is now married to a man that I couldn\u2019t wish for a better father for my grandkids if their dad can\u2019t be with them.
\nIf anything, have a supervised visit before you leave to another state but make sure you are there the whole time (not your wife alone because MIL will try and walk all over her). I hope everything works out wonderfully for you and your family. \u00a9 KMinNC \/ Reddit\n
Oh gosh. The secret this girl had to carry! When you are that young, you feel everything SO intensely, and you hardly have the vocabulary to describe it all! I feel so sorry for your daughter. In my personal opinion, any and all visits to MIL cease. Daughter gets therapy, so this manipulation gets documented. And any and all fears get handled for her to feel safe again. I also think you, dad, must spend a lot more time with her, to get the feeling of abandonment out of her and out of the way completely because MIL put it there. I think she needs the support. Having to keep secrets, ordered by her grandmother, causes such deep fear, and I feel very strongly that that is the first thing to address. She may have a relationship with MIL, but it\u2019s definitely not a healthy one, and kids feel that. Daughter may not care to see MIL ever again. And even if she does, I prefer her learning that she\u2019s a \u00abtricky person\u00bb than that she continues to believe MIL\u2019s behavior is okay. \u00a9 Unknown author \/ Reddit\n
Inform your daughter that what grandma did was wrong on many levels and therefore grandma is on an extended time out. Tell her, if you haven\u2019t already, how proud you are of her telling you what was going on at grandma\u2019s house and how this is not her fault. The fault lies squarely on the adult\u2019s shoulders. Let her know she can tell you anything and does not have to keep secrets such as that away from you. \u00a9 Notmykl \/ Reddit
\nYour ex-MIL cannot be trusted at all. Document what has been said by your daughter, and let that be the last unsupervised visit with Gill. It might not be a bad idea to get her to see a therapist or see one as a family as this is a big thing for her as Gill has essentially been manipulating and doing all she can to poison her mind. \u00a9 Dangerfyeld \/ Reddit\n
Family feuds are no stranger to anyone. Each person\u2019s relationship with their mother-in-law is different, but many people report issues with theirs. And even the smallest things can trigger a huge argument. It\u2019s the case with a woman whose MIL burst in tears after seeing her son wash dishes. The woman then overheard her MIL say things about her. We featured her story in this article.\n\n
Preview photo credit creepyex-Mil \/ Reddit, DC Studio \/ Freepik\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
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The man, who lost his wife years ago, shared his worries about how his ex-MIL seems to be trying to manipulate his daughter and change her perception of her own family. He wrote: \u00abMy first wife and mother of my daughter (now 9), passed away during childbirth. Naturally I was devastated, as was my ex-MIL, …\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":75227,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[642],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-moral-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/echowoven.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/echowoven.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/echowoven.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/echowoven.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/echowoven.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75226"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/echowoven.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75226\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75228,"href":"https:\/\/echowoven.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75226\/revisions\/75228"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/echowoven.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/echowoven.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/echowoven.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/echowoven.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}