As a parent, would you ever require your children to learn something? I don’t mean going to school, but learning something of your choosing (not theirs) with private lessons for many years.

In today’s story, the lesson in question involves learning to play the violin, and while one child’s mother isn’t necessarily opposed to her child learning to play the violin, she’s pretty upset at the idea of a pushy grandmother requiring her child to learn to play an instrument.

Is she overreacting?

Let’s read the whole story.

AITA for telling my MIL she shouldn’t have given my 3-year-old son an expensive violin?

My husband is one of six children and all of them were enrolled in music classes by my MIL from a very young age (all played string instruments, either violin or cello).

Four of them are now professional musicians, my husband and one of his sisters being the exception, though they still play as a hobby.

Even before having a child, I told my husband I wasn’t against our kid taking music classes, as long as it was at a time we thought it was right and with none of the pressure that he had to deal with, and also considering whatever other activities that could be more relevant and we could afford.

He agreed.

Her MIL dropped some not so subtle hints.

Now our son just turned 3 and my MIL – after dropping some hints that I’ve previously ignored for the sake of keeping peace such as ‘soon he’ll reach the age to start learning music’ and ‘I talked about him to the teacher that taught my kids when they were little’ – gave him a crazy expensive violin as a birthday gift.

Not only that, she said to my son something like ‘soon you’ll be playing like your father and your uncles’ etc.

I didn’t say anything in front of anybody (this happened during the birthday party with friends and family), but at some point I found her alone and I was like ‘you should have talked to us before buying that violin’.

And she acted like I had offended her personally.

She tried to explain.

I said I didn’t want to create this expectation of getting music classes, and I wasn’t even sure we could afford it right now.

And she said she’s more than willing to pay for those classes, like she does for some of her other grandchildren (that was the first I heard about this).

I didn’t want to push this further, but I feel her dream of having like this large family of musicians is now being passed down the new generation.

My husband talked to me later, told me his mother talked to him about what I said to her and was taken aback by my reaction. But to me this was not just about the violin as a gift, but her overall meddling in how we raise our child. AITA here?

I do wonder why her MIL is so obsessed with all of her kids and grandkids learning to play instruments. It’s not a bad thing, it’s just a little unusual.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

This person encourages the mom to let her child learn an instrument.

Another person thinks her mother-in-law is offering a great opportunity.

She needed to be honest with her mother-in-law a long time ago.

She doesn’t have to accept the gifts.

A former violinist weighs in.

Not everyone wants to learn to play an instrument.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.