'AITA for telling my wife's best friend to stop telling our kid he's their uncle?'
'AITA for telling my wife's best friend to stop telling our kid he's their uncle?'
Background: Me and my wife have a 3 year old Tommy. My wife has a friend 'Stevie' she's known him since high school and they are very good to best friends. I have 3 brothers, my wife has one sister.
Stevie means well but he's never been good with boundaries. He lives nearby so sometimes will pop in unannounced. Before anyone insinuates anything, he's gay, there's nothing romantic between them.
Most of the time he's alright around Tommy but something that really grinds my gears is that lately he's been calling himself 'Uncle Stevie' to Tommy and uses that word all the time. We are trying to teach Tommy what words mean and family relationships.
Since he has 3 bio uncles + my SILs husband as an Uncle I've asked him to stop that so he learns what Uncle means. My wife agrees and has asked him to stop many times, including a pretty intense argument about it (probably more about his undermining her/us than the word, but she hates it too).
He'll say ok and go right back to it. I don't care if he wants a nickname but we are trying to teach our kid a vocabulary and its confusing him. My wife agrees and has asked him to stop repeatedly but when he doesn't listen she just says whatever. Then the next time he'll come over the whole thing starts again.
Yesterday he came over unannounced again and did the same thing and we kind of got into it. My wife says Im overreacting and even though it bothers her too, maybe should just get over it. Maybe she's right but it really annoys me, admittedly more than it probably should. Am I just being an AH here?
Note: The thing is we have a lot of good friends who come around often and none of them pretend to be his uncle/aunt. Maybe its a cultural thing but growing up my parents had lots of friends and none of them pretended to be an uncle/aunt either. That word was always reserved for my parents siblings
Here's what people had to say:
Unit-00 writes:
You know it's like super common for friends of a parent to be called aunt and uncle right? I have so many non blood related aunts and uncles. It's just a way to signify important adults to a child. That being said I guess NTA since you and your wife are on the same page, even if I think that page is written wrong.
Legitimate_War_397 writes:
100% my mums best friend from school was “Auntie (insert name) to me my entire life, but I know and have always known there is no blood relation.
crystalbxtch writes:
worst part is that i’m not even sure they’re on the same page. OP said she asked him to stop, but she also told OP he was overreacting. it sounds like OP’s wife doesn’t agree with him, but asked the friend to stop just so her husband would stop complainingš¬
BeneficialTable7314 OP added:
She hates conflict. Yes, sometimes that leads to her exploding after holding it in for awhile.
JVonDron writes:
YTA - Friends are always uncles/aunts and it does no harm. Your kid will come to understand he's not an actual blood uncle in time, but for now, uncle is just 'adult you can trust and have fun with'
Pepper-90210 writes:
YTA. He’s like a brother to your wife so let Tommy call him Uncle Stevie. There’s literally no harm in it whatsoever.