Family dynamics can be so interesting, especially when you’re coming at them from the position of marrying in.

Some people feel like they have to tread lightly, but when your child is wronged, most mothers will go to bat.

OP’s daughter has a favorite doll.

This past Christmas, my mother got my daughter “Amy” (4F) a doll she’d been asking for. It’s a baby version of Mirabel, from the Disney movie Encanto. It quickly became her favorite.

My husband’s cousin “Nat” has a daughter I’ll call “Julie” (6F). I wouldn’t classify her as “spoiled”, but she does have a tendency of disobeying other people.

There have been numerous occasions in which I asked Julie to do something (“please sit down”, “please don’t touch that”, etc.) and she either ignored me or went behind my back to do the opposite.

While I understand that she’s a child, Nat rarely makes any attempt to educate her daughter or correct her behavior.

When her in-laws were over, she refused to share it with her cousin.

Last week, Nat and Julie came to visit us with some other relatives. Julie saw the Mirabel doll and asked my daughter if she could play with her.

Amy refused. Julie protested, but I spoke with the girls and managed to get them to play with other toys.

They found the cousin not only playing with the doll, but ruining it.

Some time later, the kids sat down to watch TV while me and the others got dinner ready. When we went back to the living room, Julie was gone.

After a short search, we found her in my bathroom. She had taken not only the Mirabel doll, but also my nail polish carrying case.

Julie had used my nail polish to paint the doll’s hair, face and dress. It covered most of her facial painting, matted her hair and ruined her clothes.

Amy saw what happened and was devastated. When we asked Julie what she was doing, she said she was giving the doll a makeover.

OP asked that they apologize and replace the doll.

Nat and Julie left in a hurry. The next day, I asked Nat what she planned to do about it, she suggested that the girls apologize to each other (Julie for painting the doll; Amy for not sharing it in the first place) and “hug it out”, and offered to give me a couple new bottles of nail polish.

I made it clear that Amy didn’t need to apologize, and while I didn’t care about the nail polish (they cost $4 and Julie didn’t empty the bottles she used), I did expect Nat and her husband to replace the doll.

When her mother refused, OP called the girl’s father.

Nat refused. She said that it wouldn’t be fair for her to waste money over an “innocent mistake” a child had made.

She also doesn’t think Julie should be the only one apologizing, as none of this would have happened if Amy had agreed to share in the first place.

I asked her twice, she said no both times. Finally, I called her husband and explained the situation.

He apologized profusely and agreed to buy Amy a new doll. He stopped by on Saturday and gave it to us. He also brought Julie along and made her apologize to Amy.

She got what she wanted, but some in the family thinks she made a mountain out of a molehill.

Apparently, Nat and her husband fought over this, as she kept insisting that Julie was just a child and they owed us nothing.

So now, in addition to saying it was entitled of me to expect a new doll, she is blaming me for their fight.

My husband is on my side, but my MIL thinks I should apologize, as this has blown out of proportion and I could have dealt with it more gracefully.

She also thinks it was wrong of Amy to refuse to share.

AITA?

Does Reddit agree with her family? Let’s find out!

The top comment supports a scorched-earth policy.

But this person agrees they wouldn’t be seeing them again.

This commenter says the mother of the perpetrator knew exactly what happened.

They say OP did absolutely nothing wrong.

When your kid destroys something, you replace it.

No one really mentioned this, but the cousin is SIX.

That is certainly old enough to understand right from wrong.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check this one out about a man who created a points system for his inheritance, and a family friend ends up getting almost all of it.