rSlash - r/Entitledparents Karen Claims She Owns My Kids!

Episode Date: November 8, 2021

r/Entitledparents OP has the mother-in-law from hell! OP has children, and her mother-in-law seems to think that just because she's a grandparent, she has the right to come and take the kids whenever ...she wants, even if OP disagrees. OP turns down her MIL's request to take the kids, so her MIL flips out and begins a day-long harassment campaign. She shows up unannounced, camps out in the parking lot outside of OP's house to spy on her, and harasses OP and her husband. She even threatened legal action! Imagine being so entitled that you think you're entitled to another person's children! Get 10% off your first month at Betterhelp.com/rslash Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to R-Slash, a podcast where I read the best post from across Reddit. Today's subreddit is R-Slash entitled Parents, where a grandmother tells two parents, give me your children, or I'm calling the police. Our next Reddit post is from Alaska Lost Angel. So listen to this week that I've had. On Friday night at around 10.30 pm, my mother-in-law texted my husband, informing us that she would be at our apartment to get the kid Saturday evening. She worded this as an FYI, not a request.
Starting point is 00:00:28 At the time, we told her that we had plans for Saturday evening, but she could come get them IF weather permitted. She argued this, but eventually gave in. Saturday night comes, and the roads are NOT safe. We've had snow and rain all day, with more in the forecast for Sunday. My husband texted my mother-in-law that the kids wouldn't be going anywhere because of these road conditions. My mother-in-law agreed that the roads were bad and we thought that was the end of it. On Sunday, my husband went to work and the kids and I went about our normal weekend routine.
Starting point is 00:01:00 Then, at noon, my mother-in-law showed up on my porch informing me that she was taking the kids. I reiterated that my husband and told her that kids were not leaving the house because the roads were not safe. She proceeded to scream at me that she can take the kids whenever she wants because they're mine! I told her to have a good day, then shut unlock the door. I then texted my husband to let him know what had happened and to expect her to contact him. She sat in her parking spot, screaming at my husband for 10 minutes on the
Starting point is 00:01:29 phone, and then left. When she left, I called a friend to come over and case my mother-in-law came back before my husband got home from work. The day was going normally, until at 3 p.m., someone tried to walk into her apartment without knocking and then began pounding on the door. My mother-in-law was back, knowing there was about five hours until my husband got home. I did not open that door. She started calling and texting my husband at work, telling him to call her or she would call the cops. My husband did not call her. About an hour before my husband got off work, my mother-in-law texted him, saying that she had called the cops and she was waiting for them to arrive. call her. About an hour before my husband got off work, my mother-in-law texted him, saying
Starting point is 00:02:05 that she had called the cops and she was waiting for them to arrive. My husband took a different route home, which allowed him to avoid walking past her car and we went about our normal night. She finally pulled out of the parking lot at 9.30 pm, six and a half hours after she first arrived. The text messages and calls haven't stopped, and today she left my husband a voicemail threatening legal action if he doesn't call her and let her see the kids. We've removed her from all the kids' information at their schools in case she tries to go that round, and we're currently looking for a lawyer to make sure that nothing happens. 911, what's your emergency?
Starting point is 00:02:42 Hello, police! I'd like to report a kidnapping. Oh, no, ma'am. I'm sorry to hear that. Your kids have been kidnapped. Yes, my precious grandchildren have been kidnapped. Kidnapped by who, ma'am? By their parents. By their parents? Yes, you understand perfectly. My son and my daughter-in-law
Starting point is 00:02:59 will let me come see my precious grandchildren. Uh, do you have legal custody of your grandkids, ma'am? No, their parents do have courts, but they're my grandchildren, so I have rights. Ma'am, I'm hanging up now. Please only call on the event of an actual emergency. Our next Reddit post is from Blue Ellen. So I used to go to this youth thing at church.
Starting point is 00:03:21 We stayed at hotels, went skiing, and listened to sermons. We also had adult chaperones to go with us. During this last year of me attending this youth church thing, I was 18. I had to go to the bathroom during a sermon, so I very quietly got up, walked to the back, and went to the bathroom. The bathroom was only like three feet from the sermon room, so I wasn't going very far. When I came out of the bathroom, an entitled parent was waiting for me. Where did you go? The bathroom? Why didn't you tell anyone?
Starting point is 00:03:51 I didn't think I needed to. Well you do. You always need to tell us where you're going. I'm 18 years old. I'm an adult. And not here you're not. We're in charge of you. You have to obey us.
Starting point is 00:04:04 I can literally go to the gas station across the street, buy cigarettes and a lighter, and you can't do a single thing to stop me. I just turned around and walked back to the sermon. 15 minutes later, I went to the bathroom again. I saw her looking at me, and I gave her a smile as I walked by. She glared at me. The reason why I was so snarky, because these were the same people who couldn't remember my name and tried to control my life. Plus,
Starting point is 00:04:31 my church was filled with stuck-up snops who thought they were better than the other church groups. Down in the comments, we have this story from Bleeding Bloop. I had a similar experience, only the pastor stopped the sermon to ask, Where do you think you're going young lady? And I said to the bathroom, and he said, No, you aren't. Sit your butt back down. And he gave my dad a disappointed look. I didn't sit back down, so he snapped at me to comply with his orders. I didn't move and just said,
Starting point is 00:05:00 Well, I will, but only if you're okay with me bleeding all over the chair. The look on his face still gives me glee to this day. He just waved his hand at me and discussed and said, be quick about it. After I was done in the bathroom, I waited for my family in the parking lot, and I never set foot inside that building again. So my husband and I were one at the last aboard a plane because he had misplaced his boarding ticket and we had to search for it. When we got on, we were walking up the plane and we could see our row.
Starting point is 00:05:29 The plane was pretty much full and all settled in, and a couple that was older than us was sitting in our seats in a row of three. I checked our tickets, and then asked a couple of what seats they were supposed to be in because those were ours. They refused to move. They had scored three seats for the two of them, whereas the row in front of them had one girl at the window seat. The stewardess came over, and since those two jerks were older and playing the age card, the hostess asked us to sit in the
Starting point is 00:05:56 seats in front. My husband argued that, in the event of an accident, our names weren't in the right locations. However, the hostess said that she would swap those over. So we sat down next to the girl in the windows seat who took up no room whatsoever. The couple behind us were very loudly gloating at their win and discussing how they would have a very pleasant 14 hour trip home. My husband told me as soon as we can to recline the seats because he was pissed off at their gloating. So here we are settled in. When this man starts walking up the plane and he's a very, very large man. He had these really long dreadlocks and he was shoving up at Get in his mouth as he made his way up the aisle. My husband just looked at me and smiled because he realized the only spare seat was the window seat that would have been next to my seat.
Starting point is 00:06:45 And yes, karma took a big steaming dump on the gloating couples lap as the man asked him to move so we could get to a seat. Once we were all settled in, the man took up a lot of space. And once we were in the air, the old lady called a stewardess down and started throwing a fit about how we had stolen their seats and that we had refused to move when they boarded. Sadly for the old lady, our argument at the start of the flight had been witnessed by the entire staff because everyone else was settled by then, so she was shut down by the staff who refused to move us. They had a miserable flight because the guy kept getting up for the toilet, extra drinks, and extra snacks.
Starting point is 00:07:24 However, he was, he was a complete gem of a human being. Haha, Opie, if I were in your shoes, I think I would have bought in a few drinks for that guy. I'm sure that he would have appreciated it, and one of the unfortunate side effects would have been more frequent bathroom trips. Today's podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. My podcast platform has this neat little graph that shows me my listener demographics, so I can see that most of my viewers are male.
Starting point is 00:07:49 That's why I'm thrilled that BetterHelp is sponsoring today's episode, because mental health among men is honestly a real problem. This statistic is crazy to me. Men make up 38% of talking therapy referrals, yet 78% of suicides are males. That means that the people who need the help the most are getting the least amount of help. Also, 6 million men per year suffer from depression, and most of these cases are undiagnosed. That's why I recommend BetterHelp. That's BetterHELP. BetterHelp will match you to a licensed professional therapist who can help you address your mental health needs.
Starting point is 00:08:25 Better help is not a crisis line or self-help. It's professional therapy done securely online. I've got a special offer for our slash listeners. Get 10% off your first month at betterhelp.com slash slash. That's the symbol slash followed by the word slash. Our next wedded post is from Maddy Hercelius. So we had this neighbor in middle school that I used to babysit for. She was a nice enough lady and she had an 8-year-old at the time. I would just go over to her house with him after school for a few hours to make some extra money. She eventually got different hours at her job, I think, but either way she didn't
Starting point is 00:08:59 need me to babysit anymore. We moved like a year later and I haven't really thought about her since. I'm now almost 25 years old. I have my own house and I work a 9-5 job. I got on Facebook like 2 weeks ago and I had a message from the woman that I babysat for. Her message was basically, it's been so long, how are you doing? You used to babysit for my son years ago when you lived down the street. My son actually had his own baby earlier this year, and I would love for you to meet her. We actually could use someone to watch her Wednesday to Friday before my son and I get
Starting point is 00:09:35 home from work. You were great with my son, so you were the first person I thought of. I was so confused by this message. I babysat her 8 year old son for maybe 6 months over a decade ago, and she wants me to come and babysit her infant granddaughter now. I was the first person she thought of. I messaged her back and essentially said, it's good to hear from you, it's so lovely that Blank had a daughter, she looks so cute in your picture.
Starting point is 00:10:02 Unfortunately, I'm not interested in watching her. I'm sorry. I work until 5 and I wouldn't be able to anyways, but I hope you find someone. So it's been two weeks since this, and I've gotten no joke. 10 more messages from her, begging me to babysit her granddaughter. I barely know these people, and she will not stop asking me. She even asked me to change my work schedule, offering me 10 bucks an hour to watch her
Starting point is 00:10:28 kid. I'm about to just block her, but I can't believe how strange this is and how odd her request is. You know that phrase that goes, everyone's the main character in their own story? That's true, like obviously everyone is living their own life, so they've got their own individual problems, they've got their own story, and so yeah, obviously this woman would consider herself to be the main character of her own story. However, I think some people like genuinely think that everyone else is essentially just
Starting point is 00:10:56 an NPC in their story. They don't realize or care or understand that these other people in their lives that they don't care about have their own stories, their own lives, their own problems. So she genuinely expects OP to just drop what she's doing and come watch her baby for, you know, 10 bucks an hour, which was reasonable 10 years ago, but nowadays like, no, come on, give me a break, man. Like, how selfish is it to ask a stranger to take time off of their work to come watch your kid when you could take time off of your work to watch your own grand kid. Down in the comments, cricket 1978 poses an alternate theory.
Starting point is 00:11:33 Maybe I've been reading too much Reddit, but my brain imagined this. My son needs childcare and a romantic partner to be a baby mama. Her now 18 year old son says, it would be great to find a teenager in the area like back when that girl babysat me. To be honest, I had a little crush on her back then. Then the entitled mother hears wedding bells ringing in the distance. And then OP replies, this is the worst case scenario. The title of this next post is, my mom made me apologize to my siblings for trying to commit suicide.
Starting point is 00:12:07 So, trigger warning, obviously. So, I just woke up in the middle of the night and I can't fall back asleep. All I can think about is something that happened to me when I was 12. I didn't grow up in the best household. I had forced homeschooling with no sports or outside activities. So, really, I was stuck home all the time. My mom, quote, taught me things while homeschooling, which was really just me in the background watching her teach my siblings.
Starting point is 00:12:34 But anyway, that's really besides the point. My main point is that I was super depressed. I tried drowning myself in the bathtub, and I got close to passing out before my body of course forced me up for air. As a child, I freaked out because I knew what I was trying to do, but not exactly why. So I quickly got dressed and went straight to my mom. My mom then asked me what I tried to do and made me show her in the bathroom, and then she just shook her head inside.
Starting point is 00:13:01 She called all my siblings to the dining room, had them sit down, looked at me and said, Do you want to tell your siblings what you just tried to do in a apologize? All I remember thinking was, is she serious? But I just swallowed my pride and told them, I tried to drown myself, I'm sorry. There wasn't really a reaction. My two oldest siblings kind of just shrugged, but then my one sister, who's a year older than me, told me that she was happy I didn't do it, because nobody would want to see my naked bloated body anyway.
Starting point is 00:13:33 So yeah, we never talked about this again, and I'm not sure if anyone ever told my dad. I made many similar attempts later in life, but I'm 21 now, still depressed and I have self-body image issues. I live with my boyfriend of 6 years and I barely talk to any of my family now. Wow OP, this post makes me sick to my stomach. Your mother isn't a TRO-SHUSH human being. Honestly, I'm not even sure if I can like throw your siblings under the bus as well, because I would imagine
Starting point is 00:14:05 that if you were abused in depressed then they were probably abused in depressed too. I'm really glad that you were eventually able to get out of that situation and I hope that you're finding happiness now OP. Oh man, I mentioned this before and when I did I kind of got bashed a little by people who emailed me saying that homeschooling is a perfectly reasonable way to educate kids, but honestly personally I just don't agree with homeschooling. I just don't. Even though there are certainly situations where parents can homeschool their kids and they give them a great education, still I just don't really feel like that's the best way to raise a kid. Because what you're doing when you homeschool is you're saying the rights of the parent to educate their kid however they want to is more important than the right of a kid to be
Starting point is 00:14:50 exposed to more than just their own two parents ideals. And it's complicated because parents should have a right to say what happens to their kid. But at the same time, shouldn't kids have some right to see more than just the four walls of their house? And shouldn't there be some like more checks and balances to ensure that if you are being homeschooled they're actually getting a real education because as it stands in America you can homeschool and basically do whatever you want There's very little oversight for the kids to ensure they're getting an education So the result is you get stories like this where a kid gets homeschooled and they don't get educated, they don't get supported, they have no escape from their house, and it's just their parents and their siblings every single day, every single day. And I just personally don't agree with that.
Starting point is 00:15:34 It feels unfair to the kid. There's much, much more to educating a child than just, you know, making sure they can read and understand math and no history. There's also an immense amount of social learning that people have to learn by hanging out with other kids, by having conflict with strangers, by dealing with other members of authority like teachers, principals. So when you homeschool, you are potentially removing them from all these like social interactions that will help them become a more rounded human being. Now obviously, I do want to say that if you do get homeschooled
Starting point is 00:16:07 by like parents who know what they're doing, then they can of course take the kids out to like social events and have them hang out with other homeschooled kids. There are right ways to do it. It's not like all homeschooling situations are terrible. On the whole, the system I feel like is just too broken, that I feel like we'd probably be better off on the whole without homeschooling. And now I'm going to piss some people off here because I know there are people who did get a decent homeschooling education
Starting point is 00:16:31 and they feel like, you know, their parents did a great job. I just don't agree with it. I just personally don't agree with it. They say it takes a village to raise a child and it's true. It really does take a huge amount of people to give children a wide array of experiences and opinions and beliefs and knowledge. And I just don't think that your parents, when are two people, can really do a good job of turning a child into a well-rounded human being. So, I'm probably gonna get dumped on for this. Sorry about that, but I don't know, that's just my opinion.
Starting point is 00:17:01 That was our slash entitled Parents. And if you like this content, be sure to follow my podcast because I put out new Reddit podcast episodes every single day. my opinion. That was our Slash Entitled Parents and if you liked this content be sure to follow my podcast because I put out new Reddit podcast episodes every single day.

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