When you have children of your own, it’s natural to set boundaries around how others interact with your family.

You may choose for your child not to eat junk food, bring them up to practise religion, or have certain expectations around politeness and manners in both your own and others’ homes.

Or there may be certain words that are off-limits, for example, with cursing and shouting unacceptable in some family situations.

So what do you do if visitors to your home repeatedly cross these boundaries? Of course, you can’t police another adult’s behavior, but if they’re not respecting your children and your rules, you absolutely do not have to invite them back.

When the woman in this story invited her in-laws for Christmas, she never imagined that this would be the decision facing her in the aftermath.

Read on to find out how her mother-in-law’s behavior crossed the line so far that the impacts were longlasting.

AITA for asking my mother-in-law not to refer to herself as “mum” to my daughter, and for how I handled the fallout?

During her first Christmas, my daughter was five months old, and my husband and I hosted his parents and sister (my in-laws) at our home for the day.

Everything was going well until, during Christmas dinner, my mother-in-law referred to herself as “mum” when talking to my daughter.

No one said anything at the time, but it rubbed me the wrong way.

I didn’t want to cause a scene, so I waited until after I’d put my daughter down for a nap to speak to my mother-in-law privately.

Let’s see what happened when she spoke to her mother-in-law.

I calmly told her that what she said was inappropriate and that I would appreciate an apology.

She pretended not to know what I was talking about, lied to me, then gave a very passive-aggressive, “Well, I guess I’m sorry then.”

I thanked her (even though it was clearly not sincere) and asked for five minutes to calm down so we could move on with the day.

But what happened next was decidedly not calm.

Instead, she went into the bathroom, then came out storming around the house shouting and swearing at me, stepping towards me and putting her finger in my face, waking up my father-in-law and yelling that they were leaving.

She also shouted that she did nothing wrong calling by herself mum to my daughter bc she was a “proud ******* mother.”

She accused me of being “too protective,” and said that when I have a second child, I “won’t care about them.”

For context, my husband and I are both the youngest in the family, so she said this in front of her son, the second child.

Yikes! Let’s see how this woman reacted to this sudden escalation.

I tried to de-escalate the situation, even tried to have a calm conversation, but she rolled her eyes, scoffed, and mocked me.

I only raised my voice to say “don’t you dare swear at me,” and to call out how rude and immature she was being when she was rolling her eyes and throwing her hands around while her back was turned to me mid-conversation.

No one in the family seemed to acknowledge how inappropriate her behavior was.

Uh-oh. Read on to see how the rest of the family responded to this behavior.

My sister-in-law said that she didn’t think there was anything wrong with my mother-in-law calling herself “mum,” to my daughter when I asked.

Meanwhile, my father-in-law said he didn’t understand how it had escalated – despite his wife shouting through the house.

I even let her hold my daughter again later that evening to try to end things peacefully.

Let’s see how the situation is down the line.

That was almost three years ago.

When it came up between my husband and my mother-in-law recently, she stated that she had absolutely nothing to apologise for.

I’ve never received an apology from anyone, and I was told that my sister-in-law is still “haunted” by my actions that day.

AITA?

This poor woman was a proud mom to a new baby, so it’s no wonder that she felt like her mother-in-law was overstepping by trying to put herself in the same role.

Sure it could have been a mistake or a verbal slip-up, but if that was the case, a simple “whoops” and a correction would have been all that would have been required. Her doubling down on the comment just makes everything worse.

But the real issue is the complete disrespect she’s showing to her daughter-in-law and the rest of her family through her immature behavior – it really sets the red flags flying.

Let’s see what folks on Reddit had to say about this.

This person agreed that the real problem here is the mother-in-law.

While others suggested getting her husband to deal with his mother’s awful behavior next time.

Some Redditors thought her tantrum suggested no one had ever dared confront her before.

While this person suggested taking a ruthless stance.

The real crime here is not that the woman referred incorrectly to herself as the baby’s mother – it’s the complete and utter disrespect she showed when she’d clearly hurt her daughter-in-law.

There’s no excuse for not simply apologizing and moving on, but the fact that she had a full-on tantrum shows just how toxic and immature she really is.

If she wants to be a mom, let alone a grandma, she needs to learn to act like an adult.

Because this is not very grandmotherly behavior.

If you liked that post, check this one about a guy who got revenge on his condo by making his own Christmas light rules.