Mother-In-Law Refuses to Spell Grandson's Name Correctly & Reddit is Divided
When someone spells your name wrong, it can be annoying (my name is spelled Sydni — trust me, I get it). Usually, incorrect spellings on your Starbucks cup or from random emails is NBD, but when someone consistently spells your name wrong — especially someone you know — it can be downright rude. One mom on Reddit is going “insane” by the way her mother-in-law has been spelling her one-year-old son’s name.
“MIL will not spell my kid’s name correctly and it’s driving me insane,” this mom wrote on the Parenting subreddit.
“So, for about a year now, my MIL has been spelling my son’s name incorrectly,” she explained. “His name isn’t uncommon. Not highly common, but you probably know someone who has the name. It’s also spelled in the traditional way. Nothing fancy. If his name was ‘Tyler,’ she would be spelling it ‘Tylur.’”
It’s a little weird for a child’s grandmother to not bother to spell his name correctly, isn’t it? The OP thinks so, which is why she’s pointed out the correct spelling multiple times.
“It’s not a huuuuuge deal,” she added, “but me and my husband have both told her on multiple occasions how to spell his name, she just refuses! I don’t get it!”
She added, “He has stuff with his name on it that she’s seen, held, and commented on. I know I can’t stop her, but it’s driving me mad every time I text her. I don’t want to show her things because she’s going to spell his name wrong… this is the end of my rant.”
Reddit was divided on her motivations. Was this intentionally rude or a case of memory or a language issue?
One person wrote, “So I’m not making broad excuses but I’m dyslexic and this is something I obsess about and I’m sure I still mess up constantly.”
Another asked, “Is she problematic in general? I could for sure see some of my family members doing this, and just being oblivious. Like my son’s name has an A and people write it with an E instead even if they’ve seen it before. Some people aren’t good with language stuff, so is it possible that’s going on?”
And the OP replied, “She was an English major. Absolutely this is intentional. If there was a language thing, it wouldn’t bother me in the slightest.”
The mom also clarified in a comment that this is not a medical issue or a joke with her mother-in-law. “It’s not even a joke, she just ignores it. She ignores us! We confront her and she says ‘oh okay, I thought you spelled it this way’. And that’s it, she never fixes the behavior! It’s maddening, but, I could totally see it being a control thing with her. She loves the name she said, but I guess not the spelling.”
“My grandma did this to me,” another person commented. “I have a common name that has two acceptable ways to spell it. She thought my parents picked the wrong way so she always wrote it her way on all my cards and stuff. Drove me nuts.”
Someone else shared a story about their grandparents consistently spelling their name wrong “in new and interesting ways (extra letter, missing letter, wrong letter doubled, etc.)” They decided to go no-contact with them. “I don’t miss them,” they wrote. “How little they cared about me to the point that they couldn’t bother to spell my name correctly was really hurtful. I still remember that and it still hurts.”
The OP commented on this story, saying she may use it as an example with her mother-in-law. “I may point out this scenario to her then, whenever we tackle the spelling issue again,” she said. “I know that she only means to irk us, she does love my son very much. If I told her it could be potentially damaging to the grandma/grandson relationship, I think that actually might bring her to actually fix her error. I’m sorry that they did that to you and I hope you are well now.”
Hopefully the mother-in-law will stop being petty with her grandson’s name — ruining a relationship over this would be so sad!
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