Woman Says Her Mother Told Her 3-Year-Old Son To Call Her “Mommy” — Then She Found Her Trying To Take Him in the Middle of the Night

A woman on Reddit said she left her 3-year-old son with her mother for about a year while she was dealing with serious physical health problems. She said she was too sick to care for him at the time, but she stayed in touch through FaceTime when she could and trusted her mother to take care of him until she was healthy enough to bring him home.

When she finally went to pick him up, she said her son was playing with dinosaurs at her mother’s house when he suddenly looked up at his grandmother and called her “Mommy.” The woman said she was confused and asked her mother if she had heard it too. Her mother laughed nervously, then admitted the child had been calling her that for a while. According to the post, the grandmother said she had told him she was his mother while his actual mother was away.

The woman said she told her mother she was not comfortable with that. She understood her mother had been caring for him, but she did not want her son confused about who his mother was. Her mother pushed back, saying the little boy needed a mother figure while she was gone and that she had filled that role for a year. The argument escalated when the grandmother allegedly said she had been his mother now and the woman could not simply change that.

The fight got uglier from there. The woman said her mother insulted her for being away, called her a bad mom, and said the child did not need a mother like her. That was when the woman decided she did not want her mother seeing him anymore. She packed up her son’s things and left, but said her mother kept calling, texting, and talking to relatives afterward to make her look like the one tearing the family apart.

After people on Reddit questioned why she had been away so long, the woman clarified that she had been hospitalized for physical health reasons. She said she had not abandoned her son and had not been in rehab or a mental-health facility. She also said visits would have been possible, but her mother told her it would be better if the child did not see her in that condition because he was too young to understand. Looking back, that detail became a lot harder to ignore.

In an update almost two months later, the woman said her son had started therapy and was doing fairly well, though he was still confused and seemed to think he had two moms. She had tried to ease the separation by letting her mother FaceTime him every day for hours, hoping that would keep things calmer for him. But then, she said, an incident happened that made her decide there could be no more contact for a while.

When commenters asked what happened, she said her mother tried to take him from her in the middle of the night. She said her mother still had a key from before she had gone into treatment. One night, the woman woke up after hearing the front door squeak. She found the door cracked open, went to check on her son, and found her mother in his room getting him dressed to leave. She also said the bedroom window was open, which made her think her mother may have planned to leave through it.

The police were called, but the woman said her mother was not arrested. Officers advised her to go to court for a restraining order, and she said the incident was documented. Even then, she admitted she did not want her mother in jail. She said she still cared about her and believed her mother needed help and therapy, but she also knew she needed distance. Her plan was to get the restraining order and likely move away so her son could have a chance to feel safe and clear on who his mother really was.