Kate Hackett
u/buttsforhats shared a story on Reddit’s AITA platform that has absolutely EVERYONE scratching their heads.
After all, how can you possibly raise girls and come up with the assertion his mother in law gave? That a young child doesn’t have a …I can’t believe I’m writing this… real vagina.
What.
But yes, that’s what happened — OP explains that his MIL watched his sick kid one day this week.
My 4.5 yo daughter has a stomach bug, and has been having some diarrhea. My wife needed to take our son to an appt nd I needed to WFH today so my MIL came to watch after our daughter.
After another round of being sick, the daughter asked her dad for help wiping. She said that Grandma did it wrong – she wiped in, not out.
My daughter needed to use the bathroom, and I was going to excuse myself from my online meeting but my MIL said she had it. A bit later, my daughter came up to me and asked me to wipe her. I said to her, didn’t Grandma help you? (She knows how to wipe, but with her having diarrhea we’re helping her). She said yes, but Grandma wiped wrong. She said Grandma wiped in instead of out. (We’ve taught her to wipe out instead of in.)
OP left his WFH meeting and helped his sick daughter out, then spoke with his mother-in-law.
I excused myself from my meeting to help wipe my daughter correctly. I went to find my MIL in the kitchen. I asked her, [daughter] says you wiped in instead of out? She said, I wiped her, you think there’s a better way?
He explained that she should have wiped out, not in, and the MIL got huffy. OP countered by saying he didn’t want his kid to have an infection.
I told her it’s not healthy to wipe into the vagina, you need to wipe out. She said, and you have a vagina? I said no, but I have a daughter, and I won’t let her get an infection by wiping poop into her vagina.
And here’s the insane line: this woman claimed that OP’s daughter doesn’t have a real vagina yet (???) and wouldn’t have one until she was a teen.
She said, [daughter] doesn’t have a real vagina yet, there’s no chance of infecting anything. I said, what…? Of course she has a real vagina, she’s a female. She said, girls don’t have real vaginas until their teenagers. And that there’s no chance of any infection because their vagina doesn’t actually develop until they’re a teenager. I was… dumbfounded. And I got angry.
OP met absolute insanity with anger and snapped at her.
I said to her, “You’re a woman, you raised three daughters, I’m married to one… you can’t possibly be this stupid?”
The MIL said she’d leave if her help wasn’t appreciated. This has caused a pretty huge amount of drama, even though OP’s wife is on his side.
She told me I’m out of line and said if I can’t appreciate her help then she’s leaving. I told her I’m perfectly, in fact definitely more capable than her of caring for my daughter, and that she’s welcome to get out. She did leave, and about ten minutes layer my wife called me and said her mom was furious with me and said I was terrible to her and made her leave without any reason. After explaining, my wife is on my side.
AITA for defending my daughter’s “real” vagina?
Reddit users knew right away this was a not the asshole situation. “NTA, your MIL is profoundly stupid, not for not knowing how to wipe, but for not realizing that 4yo girls have fully formed genitals. God knows what other pearls of wisdom she has in her brain,” wrote one user.
Another cheered on the daughter, “NTA obviously but I just want to take a moment and acknowledge that your daughter did such a good job of advocating for herself in that situation!! I hope you and your wife have a talk with her to reinforce that she did the right thing!!”
