Woman Tells MIL She Can't Buy Stepson a Tablet—Nobody Prepared for Response
Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content.
A mother-in-law has been slammed online for her response to being told that she couldn't buy a tablet for her autistic grandson.
In a post on Reddit, u/bbywace turned to the r/AmIOverreacting subreddit to ask: "Am I overreacting?" Newsweek reached out to u/bbywace via Reddit.
A strict and anxious mature mother-in-law lectures her grown daughter, left, on the sofa at home.
A strict and anxious mature mother-in-law lectures her grown daughter, left, on the sofa at home.
fizkes
The original poster shared screenshots of the exchange that began at 7:47 a.m. with a text from the mother-in-law asking if she could buy another Amazon Fire tablet for her grandson, referred to in the post as "Green."
The timing and content caught the poster off guard, given their prior conversations about how tablet use significantly increased Green's screaming—already a major challenge in their household.
"I'd prefer if he doesn't have it, it causes him to scream a lot more," the poster responded, adding, "but it's up to you. I won't be mad lol [laugh out loud]."
The mother-in-law's tone quickly shifted. "I'm just trying to stay a part of his life but I can tell I'm getting push back and rejection," she wrote, eventually concluding: "I guess it's better I stay away and wash my hands."
The poster replied: "Nobody is rejecting or pushing you back, we just don't want him having things that cause him to scream … You are welcome to call him on my iPad, anytime we have him … Buying things for him does not equate to being a part of his life."
The mother-in-law's final response read: "No worries. No lectures needed … I would not want to disrupt everyone's life/time with screaming."
In her Reddit post, the poster provided important context. Green, her nonverbal stepson, has level 3 autism and is currently being reenrolled in Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) therapy—something she says has intensified his behaviors.
The family had already determined that screen time, especially on tablets, was a significant trigger.
"If you don't know what it's like to sit in a small house with someone screaming at the top of their lungs every 2 minutes as is, I'm jealous," the poster wrote.
She added that, after the mother-in-law previously brought a secondhand tablet to a birthday party—despite being told screen time worsened Green's symptoms—her husband informed his mother that the device hadn't been given to him due to its performance issues.
The final straw for the poster was the mother-in-law's sudden outreach after a month of no contact, timed during a chaotic Monday morning as she scrambled to get two kids ready for therapy appointments.
"She hasn't tried to talk to either kid since," the poster added, adding that the mother-in-law had continued to interact with her on social media "like nothing happened."
At the time of writing, the post has sparked hundreds of supportive comments, with many other users calling out the mother-in-law for being manipulative.
"It's crazy to me you're even allowing her around him still after that—that's grounds for no contact," one user wrote.
"I have relatives like this. Trust me, they don't recognize they are doing something wrong. Here is where they begin to martyr themselves because they're 'just trying to do something nice', and they just. don't. Understand. why they are being 'pushed aside'" another added.
Others also empathized with the challenges of raising a neurodivergent child and the emotional labor of managing in-law dynamics.
"You're not overreacting; she's making it about herself and not what is actually helpful for the children or your family," a third user commented.
For the stepmom, it is not about cutting someone off—it's about setting necessary boundaries in a high-stress, high-needs environment.
"I decided after her visit to our state for my son's first birthday I was done reaching out to her to push a relationship," the poster wrote.
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