For many people with essential jobs, family stepped in to provide childcare during the pandemic.
For an ER nurse with a doctor husband, her mother babysat their 5-year-old daughter while they had to work. But her mother-in-law begged to take their daughter over night when the couple had a rare day off.
After the mother-in-law's turn as babysitter resulted in an unsafe situation, the daughter-in-law turned to the "Am I The A**hole" (AITA) subReddit for feedback on her reaction.
In a since deleted post, she asked:
"AITA for refusing to let my MIL ever see my daughter again?"
The Original Poster (OP) explained:
"Husband is a doctor, I'm an ER nurse. We've both been working crazy hours."
"We've managed to sync up our days so one of us is always at home with our daughter or at the very least, my mom has occasionally watched her as my MIL was always busy and has made it clear she doesn't do babysitting. Husband and I finally got a day off together and decided to have a date night in our house. "
"We were gonna make arrangements with my mom to watch her overnight until MIL chimes in she really wanted to watch her granddaughter. I was skeptical about her sudden change as was my husband but she seemed changed so we dropped daughter off."
"All seemed fine.Things ran smoothly until our house phone went off about 1am and the number was my MIL's landline."
"We were weirded out as she has our mobile numbers but when we answered we were shocked that it was our daughter who keep in mind is 5 was calling. She said, 'Mommy, Daddy please come get me. Nanny isn't here'."
"It took a few minutes of explaining for her to tell us that MIL had been drinking all night, left our kid without any food and eventually left saying she was going out drinking with her 'man'."
"Our daughter didn't know what to do for a while until she managed to find out home number in her Nanny's phone book."
"Well, we were furious and went to the house which was unlocked!"
"We decided to stay there until the morning when MIL showed up in an absolute state. She was still drunk, wearing half her clothes and became verbally abusive saying 'the kid was fine'."
"My husband lashed out and I lost it and said, 'you put the life of a 5 year old in danger. I trusted you for one night to look after your grandchild and you couldn't even do that after begging us to let you look after her! You are a train wreck and mark my words, you're never seeing her again'."
"We walked out and ever since that day, husband and I have been bombarded with texts from her saying we're depriving her from her grandchild."
"My husband says maybe we should let her have supervised contact or let her prove she can be trusted again and I'm absolutely refusing."
Redditors were unanimous in their judgment of NTA.
"NTA. '...let her prove she can be trusted again...'."
"By using your 5-year-old daughter as a guinea pig? No." ~ WebbieVanderquack
"This right here....top answer. Remove the fact that she's blood related/his mother and see if he'd still feel the same."
"Family doesn't get a free pass to be abusive just because they're blood. NTA."
"Keep your child away. What a train wreck of a mother/grandmother." ~ ducktruck27
"And allowing supervised visits would probably mean placing your daughter in a situation where MIL tries to manipulate her into asking to come see her."
"But kudos on teaching such a young kid how to contact you and for being brave enough to act while being scared and alone!"
"NTA—and as long as MIL keeps up with the bombardment, it means she hasn't grasped the severity of what she did and in that case she DEFINITELY shouldn't be trusted!" ~ Thedonkeyforcer
"Exactly. Also: how would she prove she can be trusted now that she's already proven she in fact cannot?"
"By not abandoning a 5-year-old again next time she babysits? That's "proof" then?
No f'king way." ~ 619190401
With no update it's unclear if the OP has changed their mind. But it is clear Reddit thinks whatever they decide to do, they're not the a**hole in this situation.