A grandmother always felt her 15-year-old granddaughter, Lindsay, looked a little different from the rest of the family. While her siblings had dark hair, Lindsay had blonde, curly locks. Still, she brushed it off as genetics being unpredictable—until things took a more serious turn.
When Lindsay became curious about her lineage and wanted to take a DNA test, her parents firmly forbade it. That only made things more suspicious. “I told my son and [daughter-in-law] that there was something fishy about her birth that she needed to know,” the grandmother wrote. “They denied it and told me to leave it alone.”
Lindsay, however, wasn’t willing to let it go. After her biology teacher admitted that her traits were unusual for her family, she turned to her grandmother for help. “She came to me distressed, asking me to buy a DNA test since she needs to know,” the grandmother explained.
So, she did—and the results confirmed their suspicions. “Long story short, she is not her mother’s biological child,” the grandmother revealed. “My son got someone else pregnant, and her biological mother gave her up.”
What made the situation even more shocking was that Lindsay wasn’t the oldest child—meaning her father had fathered a baby with another woman while still with his wife. The family had apparently hidden it well, as they had been living across the country when Lindsay was born. By the time the grandmother met her at six months old, no one had questioned it.
Once the truth came out, family tensions exploded. Lindsay was furious, and her parents cut off contact with the grandmother. But was she wrong for taking matters into her own hands?
Commenters on Reddit overwhelmingly supported her decision, emphasizing that Lindsay had a right to know her genetic background, especially for medical reasons.
“Your son and his wife suck for lying to her until she’s 15 about something so important,” one person wrote. “There are medical reasons a person might need to know their genetics, and if you hadn’t helped her, she would have found out another way.”
Another commenter pointed out the potential harm of keeping such a secret:
“Lying about adoption is linked to increased suicidal ideation, anxiety, and depression. You put her safety and comfort ahead of your son’s preferences. Maybe some things, like a child’s well-being, should matter more than a parent’s right to lie.”
However, not everyone agreed with the way the grandmother handled it. Some felt she should have pushed the parents to be honest rather than taking such drastic action.
“A DNA test is the absolute worst way to be told,” one commenter argued. “It would have been better to convince the parents to come clean, rather than forcing the truth onto them angrily.”
Regardless of how it was revealed, Lindsay now knows the truth about her origins. The question remains: Should the grandmother have stayed out of it, or was she right to help her granddaughter uncover the family’s secret?